Dear Friend,
So take a breath and, amid all the bad news pouring in about a deadly global pandemic, consider this: when it comes to energy, what was expected to take at least two decades in the IEA’s most optimistic scenario may now occur in just a few years. It turns out that the impact of Covid-19 is reshaping the world energy equation, along with so much else, in unexpected ways.
As the COVID-19 cases increase in India so have been the attack on medical professionals across India.
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The Beginning of the
End for Oil? Energy in a Post-Pandemic World
by Michael T Klare
https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-oil-energy-in-a-post-pandemic-world
So take a breath and, amid all the bad news pouring in about a deadly global pandemic, consider this: when it comes to energy, what was expected to take at least two decades in the IEA’s most optimistic scenario may now occur in just a few years. It turns out that the impact of Covid-19 is reshaping the world energy equation, along with so much else, in unexpected ways.
Energy analysts have long assumed that, given time, growing international concern over climate change would result in a vast restructuring of the global energy enterprise. The result: a greener, less climate-degrading system. In this future, fossil fuels would be overtaken by renewables, while oil, gas, and coal would be relegated to an increasingly marginal role in the global energy equation. In its World Energy Outlook 2019, for example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that, by 2040, renewables would finally supersede petroleum as the planet’s number one source of energy and coal would largely disappear from the fuel mix. As a result of Covid-19, however, we may no longer have to wait another 20 years for such a cosmic transition to occur — it’s happening right now.
So take a breath and, amid all the bad news pouring in about a deadly global pandemic, consider this: when it comes to energy, what was expected to take at least two decades in the IEA’s most optimistic scenario may now occur in just a few years. It turns out that the impact of Covid-19 is reshaping the world energy equation, along with so much else, in unexpected ways.
That energy would be strongly affected by the pandemic should come as no surprise. After all, fuel use is closely aligned with economic activity and Covid-19 has shut down much of the world economy. With factories, offices, and other businesses closed or barely functioning, there’s naturally less demand for energy of all types. But the impacts of the pandemic go far beyond that, as our principal coping mechanisms — social distancing and stay-at-home requirements — have particular implications for energy consumption.
Among the first and most dramatic of these has been a shockingly deep decline in flying, automobile commuting, and leisure travel — activities that account for a large share of daily petroleum use. Airline travel in the United States, for example, is down by 95% from a year ago. At the same time, the personal consumption of electricity for telework, distance learning, group conversations, and entertainment has soared. In hard-hit Italy, for instance, Microsoft reports that the use of its cloud services for team meetings — a voracious consumer of electricity — has increased by 775%.
These are all meant to be temporary responses to the pandemic. As government officials and their scientific advisers begin to talk about returning to some semblance of “normalcy,” however, it’s becoming increasingly clear that many such pandemic-related practices will persist in some fashion for a long time to come and, in some cases, may prove permanent. Social distancing is likely to remain the norm in public spaces for many months, if not years, curtailing attendance at theme parks and major sports events that also typically involve lots of driving. Many of us are also becoming more accustomed to working from home and may be in no rush to resume a harried 30-, 60-, or 90-minute commute to work each day. Some colleges and universities, already under financial pressure of various sorts, may abandon in-person classes for many subjects and rely far more on distance learning.
No matter how this pandemic finally plays out, the post-Covid-19 world is bound to have a very different look from the pre-pandemic one and energy use is likely to be among the areas most affected by the transformations underway. It would be distinctly premature to make sweeping predictions about the energy profile of a post-coronavirus planet, but one thing certainly seems possible: the grand transition, crucial for averting the worst outcomes of climate change and originally projected to occur decades from now, could end up happening significantly more swiftly, even if at the price of widespread bankruptcies and prolonged unemployment for millions.
Oil’s Dominance in Jeopardy
As 2019 drew to a close, most energy analysts assumed that petroleum would continue to dominate the global landscape through the 2020s, as it had in recent decades, resulting in ever greater amounts of carbon emissions being sent into the atmosphere. For example, in its International Energy Outlook 2019, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy projected that global petroleum use in 2020 would amount to 102.2 million barrels per day. That would be up 1.1 million barrels from 2019 and represent the second year in a row in which global consumption would have exceeded the notable threshold of 100 million barrels per day. Grimly enough, the EIA further projected that world demand would continue to climb, reaching 104 million barrels per day by 2025 and 106 million barrels in 2030.
In arriving at such projections, energy analysts assumed that the factors responsible for driving petroleum use upward in recent years would persist well into the future: growing automobile ownership in China, India, and other developing nations; ever-increasing commutes as soaring real-estate prices forced people to live ever farther from city centers; and an exponential increase in airline travel, especially in Asia. Such factors, it was widely assumed, would more than compensate for any drop in demand caused by a greater preference for electric cars in Europe and a few other places. As suggested by oil giant BP in its Energy Outlook for 2019, “All of the demand growth comes from developing economies, driven by the burgeoning middle class in developing Asian economies.”
Even in January, as the coronavirus began to spread from China to other countries, energy analysts imagined little change in such predictions. Reporting “continued strong momentum” in oil use among the major developing economies, the IEA typically reaffirmed its belief that global consumption would grow by more than one million barrels daily in 2020.
Only now has that agency begun to change its tune. In its most recent Oil Market Report, it projected that global petroleum consumption in April would fall by an astonishing 29 million barrels per day compared to the same month the previous year. That drop, by the way, is the equivalent of total 2019 oil usage by the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Still, the IEA analysts assumed that all of this would just be a passing phenomenon. In that same report, it also predicted that global economic activity would rebound in the second half of this year and, by December, oil usage would already be within a few million barrels of pre-coronavirus consumption levels.
Other indicators, however, suggest that such rosy predictions will prove highly fanciful. The likelihood that oil consumption will approach 2018 or 2019 levels by year’s end or even in early 2021 now appears remarkably unrealistic. It is, in fact, doubtful that those earlier projections about sustained future growth in the demand for oil will ever materialize.
A Shattered World Economy
As a start, a return to pre-Covid-19 consumption levels assumes a reasonably rapid restoration of the world economy as it was, with Asia taking the lead. At this moment, however, there’s no evidence that such an outcome is likely.
In its April World Economic Outlook report, the International Monetary Fund predicted that global economic output would fall by 3% in 2020 (which may prove a distinct underestimate) and that the pandemic’s harsh impacts, including widespread unemployment and business failures, will persist well into 2021 or beyond. All told, it suggested, the cumulative loss to global gross domestic product in 2020 and 2021, thanks to the pandemic, will amount to some $9 trillion, a sum greater than the economies of Japan and Germany combined (and that assumes the coronavirus will not come back yet more fiercely in late 2020 or 2021, as the “Spanish Flu” did in 1918).
This and other recent data suggest that any notion China, India, and other developing nations will soon resume their upward oil-consumption trajectory and save the global petroleum industry appears wildly far-fetched. Indeed, on April 17th, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that the country’s GDP shrank by 6.8% in the first three months of 2020, the first such decline in 40 years and a staggering blow to that country’s growth model. Even though government officials are slowly opening factories and other key businesses again, most observers believe that spurring significant growth will prove exceedingly difficult given that Chinese consumers, traumatized by the pandemic and accompanying lockdown measures, seem loath to make new purchases or engage in travel, tourism, and the like.
And keep in mind that a slowdown in China will have staggering consequences for the economies of numerous other developing nations that rely on that country’s tourism or its imports of their oil, copper, iron ore, and other raw materials. China, after all, is the leading destination for the exports of many Asian, African, and Latin American countries. With Chinese factories closed or operating at a reduced tempo, the demand for their products has already plummeted, causing widespread economic hardship for their populations.
Add all this up, along with a rising tide of unemployment in the United States and elsewhere, and it would appear that the possibility of global oil consumption returning to pre-pandemic levels any time soon — or even at all — is modest at best. Indeed, the major oil-exporting nations have evidently reached this conclusion on their own, as demonstrated by the extraordinary April 12th agreement that the Saudis, the Russians, and other major exporting countries reached to cut global production by nearly 10 million barrels per day. It was a desperate bid to bolster oil prices, which had fallen by more than 50% since the beginning of the year. And keep in mind that even this reduction — unprecedented in scale — is unlikely to prevent a further decline in those prices, as oil purchases continue to fall and fall again.
Doing Things Differently
Energy analysts are likely to argue that, while the downturn will undoubtedly last longer than the IEA’s optimistic forecast, sooner or later petroleum use will return to its earlier patterns, once again cresting at the 100-million-barrels-per-day level. But this appears highly unlikely, given the way the pandemic is reshaping the global economy and everyday human behavior.
After all, IEA and oil-industry forecasts assume a fully interconnected world in which the sort of dynamic growth we’ve come to expect from Asia in the twenty-first century will sooner or later fuel economic vigor globally. Extended supply lines will once again carry raw materials and other inputs to China’s factories, while Chinese parts and finished products will be transported to markets on every continent. But whether or not that country’s economy starts to grow again, such a globalized economic model is unlikely to remain the prevailing one in the post-pandemic era. Many countries and companies are, in fact, beginning to restructure their supply lines to avoid a full-scale reliance on foreign suppliers by seeking alternatives closer to home — a trend likely to persist after pandemic-related restrictions are lifted (especially in a world in which Trumpian-style “nationalism” still seems to be on the rise).
“There will be a rethink of how much any country wants to be reliant on any other country,” suggests the aptly named Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I don’t think fundamentally this is the end of globalization. But this does accelerate the type of thinking that has been going on in the Trump administration, that there are critical technologies, critical resources, reserve manufacturing capacity that we want here in the U.S. in case of crisis.”
Other countries are bound to begin planning along similar lines, leading to a significant decline in transcontinental commerce. Local and regional trade will, of course, have to increase to make up for this decline, but the net impact on petroleum demand is likely to be negative as long-distance trade and travel diminishes. For China and other rising Asian powers, this could also mean a slower growth rate, squeezing those “burgeoning middle classes” that were, in turn, expected to be the major local drivers (quite literally, in the case of the car cultures in those countries) of petroleum consumption.
A Shift toward Electricity — and a Greater Reliance on Renewables
Another trend the coronavirus is likely to accelerate: greater reliance on telework by corporations, governments, universities, and other institutions. Even before the pandemic broke out, many companies and organizations were beginning to rely more on teleconferencing and work-from-home operations to reduce travel costs, commuting headaches, and even, in some cases, greenhouse gas emissions. In our new world, the use of these techniques is likely to become far more common.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is, among other things, a massive experiment in telecommuting,” observed Katherine Guyot and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution in a recent report. “Up to half of American workers are currently working from home, more than double the fraction who worked from home (at least occasionally) in 2017-2018.”
Many such workers, they also noted, had been largely unfamiliar with telecommuting technology when this grand experiment began, but have quickly mastered the necessary skills. Given little choice in the matter, high school and college students are also becoming more adept at telework as their schools shift to remote learning. Meanwhile, companies and colleges are investing massively in the necessary hardware and software for such communications and teaching. As a result, Guyot and Sawhill suggest, “The outbreak is accelerating the trend toward telecommuting, possibly for the long term.”
Any large increase in teleworking is bound to have a dramatic dual impact on energy use: people will drive less, reducing their oil consumption, while relying more on teleconferencing and cloud computing, and so increasing their use of electricity. “The coronavirus reminds us that electricity is more indispensable than ever,” says Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA. “Millions of people are now confined to their homes, resorting to teleworking to do their jobs.”
Increased reliance on electricity, in turn, will have a significant impact on the very nature of primary fuel consumption, as coal begins to lose its dominant role in the generation of electrical power and is replaced at an ever-excellerating pace by renewables. In 2018, according to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2019, a distressing 38% of world electricity generation was still provided by coal, another 26% by oil and natural gas, and only 26% by renewables; the remaining 10% came from nuclear and other sources of energy. This was expected to change dramatically over time as climate-conscious policies began to have a significant impact — but, even in the IEA’s most hopeful scenarios, it was only after 2030 that renewables would reach the 50% level in electricity generation. With Covid-19, however, that process is now likely to speed up, as power utilities adjust to the global economic slowdown and seek to minimize their costs.
With many businesses shut down, net electricity use in the United States has actually declined somewhat in these months — although not nearly as much as the drop in petroleum use, given the way home electricity consumption has compensated for a plunge in business demand. As utilities adapt to this challenging environment, they are finding that wind and solar power are often the least costly sources of primary energy, with natural gas just behind them and coal the most expensive of all. Insofar as they are investing in the future, then, they appear to be favoring large solar and wind projects, which can, in fact, be brought online relatively quickly, assuring needed revenue. New natural gas plants take longer to install and coal offers no advantages whatsoever.
In the depths of global disaster, it’s way too early to make detailed predictions about the energy landscape of future decades. Nonetheless, it does appear that the present still-raging pandemic is forcing dramatic shifts in the way we consume energy and that many of these changes are likely to persist in some fashion long after the virus has been tamed. Given the already extreme nature of the heating of this planet, such shifts are likely to prove catastrophic for the oil and coal industries but beneficial for the environment — and so for the rest of us. Deadly, disruptive, and economically devastating as Covid-19 has proved to be, in retrospect it may turn out to have had at least this one silver lining.
Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, the latest of which is All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change (Metropolitan Books).
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Originally published in TomDispatch.com
Copyright 2020 Michael Klare
Global Arms Race
by Naveed Qazi
According to Frank Rose, a former assistant U.S. secretary of state for arms control, verification and compliance: ‘the INF’s demise is the latest installment in a larger story – and it means the collapse of the U.S.-Russia bilateral strategic stability framework’. In order words, it is an open invitation for an arms race, which will also enable
countries such as Russia to spend money on updating and amplifying its weapons systems. There are already announcements of new Russian weapons including a nuclear torpedo, and a nuclear powered cruise missile.
In mid April 2020, a report issued by the United States State Department called “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments (Compliance Report)” raised concerns that China might be conducting nuclear tests with low yields at its Lop Nur site, in violation of its Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) undertakings.
The U.S. report also claims that Russia has conducted nuclear weapons experiments that produced a nuclear yield, underlying the CTBT. Russia and China have rejected the U.S.’s claims. With growing rivalry among major powers, the report harbingers a new global nuclear arms race, which would mark the end of the CTBT that came into being in 1996.
In search of a political diplomacy, it was in March 2020, when Donald Trump recently agreed to a proposal that China should join for a new round of arms control talks, along with four other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The goal, according to government officials, is a tripartite agreement among China, Russia, and the United States, to limit nuclear weapons.
In a three-way agreement, it would be unrealistic to presume that Washington or Moscow would keep the same number of weapons as China. It would also be unrealistic to believe that China would accept unequal limits. That’s why China has rejected in participating in any three-way agreement, citing large differences in nuclear weapon levels. But, in the scenario of global arms race, Beijing’s ambitious plans for new enrichment and recycling capacities, capable of producing material for nuclear weapons, in order to achieve parity with United States and Russia, could no longer be undermined.
Currently, there are strategic mysteries surrounding Chinese behaviour, in the global arms race, which include its unclear doctrine for using nuclear weapons, and its rising capacity to make nuclear explosives.
Despite China not having a strike first nuclear policy, it will soon, however, deploy a nuclear triad of strategic land, sea and air launched nuclear system, similar to the United States. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency projects that China’s nuclear warhead stockpile may double by 2030. It is also investing in intercontinental ballistic missile, which may be filled with hypersonic glide vehicles that travel at high speeds on random trajectories, making them difficult to intercept on missile defense systems.
With its enrichment capacity of making an additional fifteen hundred warheads each year, it would enable Beijing to achieve parity with United States in just ten years. In addition to that, China plans to buy another plant from France that would produce enough plutonium for a further sixteen hundred warheads per year. All this signifies that China could be a serious contender in the global arms race. On top of that, China may also join Russia in accelerating the arms race in space, given its ground-based lasers, anti satellite missile, and robot satellite killer operations. As of now, security experts believe that its anti-satellite operations greatly contradict its official no strike first policy.
When Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was drafted in 1987, the world was a small place. As the treaty was withdrawn in 2019, due to Russia’s development of new weapon classes including missiles such as 9M729, and China not being covered in its scope, there is a dire need to address various emerging concerns of threats and national security the United States is facing in a volatile global political environment.
As per reports by the Guardian, the Trump administration may withdraw the United States from the Open Skies Treaty, in fall of 2020. The treaty allows for short-notice, unarmed, observation flights over the territory of treaty parties to collect data on military forces and activities.
The New START treaty will also expire soon. That’s why, President Donald Trump is also proposing an extension of New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, an agreement initially signed in Moscow in 2010: it limits USA and Russia to fifteen hundred fifty deployed nuclear warheads, and seven hundred deployed delivery systems. There are talks that under the upcoming treaty extension, Russia’s new Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle could be counted along with other Russian nuclear weapons.
Conversely, if New START expires and doesn’t go through, there would be no legally binding, verifiable limits on the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, for the first time, since 1972. The risk of unrestricted nuclear competition, would lead to even more agitated U.S.-Russian bilateral relationship.
However, the inclusion of hypersonic weapons, in a possible upcoming extension of New START treaty, will raise concerns of ‘invisible arms’, which cannot be intercepted by defence systems. In 2019, China became the first country in the world to publicly announce deployment of hypersonic weapons, when its DF-17 missile featured in the National Day military parade. However, in comparison to Russia’s Avangard, DF-17 is a low tech one, which can travel at a speed of Mach 6.
If tensions were to spike over Taiwan or the South China Sea, for instance, China might be tempted to launch preemptive strikes with conventional hypersonic weapons that could cripple U.S. forces in the Pacific Ocean. China’s military sees its hypersonic weapons as an ‘assassins mace’, a folklore term for a weapon that gives an advantage against a better-armed foe.
The U.S., on the other hand, has also resumed hypersonic missile development under Donald Trump, after his predecessor Barack Obama suspended the program, but the U.S. is yet to announce the full-scale development of its own weapons. At the present, its Department of Defense is pouring in more than one billion U.S dollars into hypersonic research. Currently, the Pentagon has nearly a dozen programs tasked with developing and defending against the new breed of weapons. In 2019, the Pentagon awarded two multibillion-dollar hypersonic weapons contracts to Lockheed Martin.
According to news agency Tass, Moscow could also arm its new warships with hypersonic weapons, and retrofit its existing vessels with the missiles. If realised properly, the move could become a game changer in the global arms race. For Russia, it might be a hedge against future U.S prowess, especially at shooting down its ICBMs.
Margaret Kosal, an associate professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Institute of Technology, in the U.S., has different opinions though. She recently said: ‘the hypersonic technology would not become a game changer because evidence suggests the technology would not replace nuclear weapons as the most effective strategic deterrence tool’.
It means hypersonic weapons might increase the cost of war, but none of the three major powers would likely use them as a pre-emptive strike tool, and might continue to enhance their nuclear technology. The countries, associated with making hypersonic weapons, could also work to avert a potential crisis, by agreeing not to arm them with nuclear weapons. As a diplomatic reaction, the hype surrounding hypersonic weapons will also generate enough interest to ensure productive discussions, and increased Track I and Track II diplomatic efforts, both bilaterally and trilaterally
With regards to INF treaty, the United States believes that Russia broke it decades ago, when it deployed multiple ground launched cruise missiles with the ability to strike critical European targets. Russia, on the other hand, insists that U.S. withdrawal of the treaty is a part of a larger ploy to weaken norms surrounding the use of nuclear weapons.
In August 2019, the U.S. test of the country’s first post-INF Treaty missile called BGM-109 Tomahawk, a variant of the BGM-109G Gryphon, had Russia and China rattled, with each nuclear-armed rival, warning that the U.S. was igniting a great power arms race. The U.S. military conducted its first flight test of a conventional ground launched missile banned under I.N.F treaty, two weeks prior to its expiry.
The I.N.F treaty was meant to eliminate the presence of land based nuclear missiles, and medium range arsenals between 500 km to 5,500 km from Europe. The treaty’s expiration, however, enables U.S. to resume development of its own medium range, land based arsenal.
According to Frank Rose, a former assistant U.S. secretary of state for arms control, verification and compliance: ‘the INF’s demise is the latest installment in a larger story – and it means the collapse of the U.S.-Russia bilateral strategic stability framework’.
In order words, it is an open invitation for an arms race, which will also enable countries such as Russia to spend money on updating and amplifying its weapons systems. There are already announcements of new Russian weapons including a nuclear torpedo, and a nuclear powered cruise missile.
(Naveed Qazi is an author of six books in fiction and nonfiction genre, and can be mailed at naveedqazi@live.com)
The Days from Hell
by Sally Dugman
Sometimes, I wonder what Gandhi might think if he were to see the world as it is today. Would he be gloomy? No, I doubt it. He would muddle through just as we do during coronavirus times. He was strong and in love with the world as many of us are. So he would Not have succumbed to the doom and gloom. He would just carry onward until he always did while alive
COVID-19: Attacks On Doctors And Media : A Few Case Studies
by Countercurrents Collective
The Ordinance on punishing “miscreants” who attack healthcare personnel was issued on April 22. Whether it would really put an end to attacks etc
is to be seen in practice. A few case studies of attacks on doctors and their media coverage will be useful in this connection. Hence this news analysis.
India’s poor: Caught between Hunger and Covid 19
by Shah Hussain
A few weeks back, a heart wrenching short video thronged internet, displaying a man scooping and collecting milk hurriedly, in a container that was spilt on a road, while a pack of stray dogs were drinking the same milk. This scramble between the man and the dogs sent shivers down the spines and visualized the unheard pangs of destitute in India going hungry, adding to the crisis of Coronavirus Lockdown
A few weeks back, a heart wrenching short video thronged internet, displaying a man scooping and collecting milk hurriedly, in a container that was spilt on a road, while a pack of stray dogs were drinking the same milk. This scramble between the man and the dogs sent shivers down the spines and visualized the unheard pangs of destitute in India going hungry, adding to the crisis of Coronavirus Lockdown. The place, where this incident took place, is just some six kilometers away from the historical monument, the Taj Mahal. This particular incident stands as a symbol of millions of famished people left without food, and are thus in dire Straits, more miserable than ever.
Lockdown : The only vaccine
The whole world is under a strict lockdown, as has been forced by the Global pandemic, which seems not holding back anytime soon. The global pandemic has proven to be another quiver in the arrow, thus adding to the already existing woes of the world. Over 3 million positive cases of coronavirus have emerged, while the total number of deaths have crossed 200000 globally. When Coronavirus set it’s foot in India, being the 2nd most populated country in the world with a population of over 1.3 Billion, having a suboptimal health infrastructure, and struggling with umpteen shortcomings, India was forced to observe a country wide lockdown in order to halt the wave of mass spreading of the virus. With no vaccine in hand, the whole world including India was left with the only viable option of massive lockdown despite the untoward economic and social ramifications in coming. On 22 March, 2020, a fourteen hour voluntary public curfew was enforced in India and the 21 day nationwide lockdown was ordered on 24 March, 2020, when the total number of confirmed positive coronavirus cases was nigh on 500. Considering the no – holding back of the pandemic, India extended the nationwide lockdown on 14 April, till 3 May.
Poverty in India
For a country like India, the lockdown, on one hand has halted the community spread at large while on the other hand, it has severely affected the already wobbling Indian economy. Consequently, millions of poor have been driven into hunger and penury. In India, more than 800 million people are considered poor. Not only this, India is home to the largest number of hungry people in the world. Moreover, over 200 million people are food insecure. In the 2019, Global Hunger Index, India was ranked 102’nd out of the 117 qualifying countries, portraying the gravity of the hunger crisis in the country. Worsening the plight of the poor, amidst the Coronavirus lockdown, millions of people, including daily wagers, migrant workers and laborers have been left most vulnerable. The International Labour Organization (ILO) in it’s report fears that over 400 million workers in the informal economy in India are at a greater peril to sink deeper into poverty, during the pandemic crisis.
Migrant workers crisis
After the enforcement of complete lockdown, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers thronged Anand Vihar Bus Terminus, on the Delhi-UP Border, to head back to their homes after being rendered homeless and jobless. The Government ordered the blockade of entries and sealed the borders, thus preventing the exodus. “We fear hunger will kill us, before coronavirus” was the tagline, palpable on the faces of these impoverished workers caught between the hunger and Coronavirus. So far, many migrant workers have lost their lives during the lockdown. Despite the arrangements made by the government, local administrations, and Samaritan groups, the number of destitute is overwhelming and are struggling to feed themselves. Unfortunately in many places, the police has resorted to unacceptable violence. Fears of mass starvation hangs over millions, due to the absence of a healthy policy on the poor, by the government. Similar incidents took place in Mumbai, Kolkata and other parts of India. People residing in villages, mostly earn hardly enough to make their ends meet. Rickshaw drivers, daily wagers, laborers, local vendors, milk sellers, and those doing other daily chores are without work now, thereby driven into extreme poverty.
Too little, too late
Lately, the Indian government announced a 1.7 trillion relief package for the poor, making an attempt to tackle the poverty and food crisis hit by the lockdown. The proposed package constitutes about 1% of the country’s GDP. However this seems to be not enough. Activists and economists are of the view that this relief package may exclude millions. The predicament lies in the non availability of documents, registrations with schemes, faulty Adhaar systems, and unequal distribution. The poor implementation on ground is yet another challenge. Nobody denies the fact that poverty is a grave challenge for India and given the magnitude of the challenge, it cannot be eliminated in one go, however the communal, biased and pompous policies of the Modi government have proliferated the gap between rich and poor. The grandiose and hyperbolizing speeches in “Man Ki Baat” fails to act on the ground, and continues to befool and flatter the right wing only.
The Government’s Pomp and Show
The worsening condition of farmers and increase in the number of suicide cases, inefficient implementation of GST and demonetization, fake promises, mere slogans, hate cultivation underlies some of the dead in the water policies of Indian government, primarily responsible for the dwindling condition of those in penury. The Indian Premier built a world’s tallest statue of Sardar Vallabhai Patel at a whooping cost of almost 3000 crore ($430 Billion). On the other hand, over 1500 farmers threatened to drown themselves, during the unveiling of ghe Statue of unity over the 12 crore unpaid dues for selling their sugarcane to the already closed Sardar Patel Mill. Indian farmers in unison have been struggling to make their ends meet as the Indian economy continues to plummet while the country’s premier fiddled away the national wealth at the cost of spurring the poverty. The only thing India managed well was the Trump’s India visit. The Modi government spent over 100 cores , to host his short visit to India. Though shameless, as well as an act of violation of human dignity, a wall was built in Ahmedabad to keep Trump’s eyes off the slum settlements. Furthermore over 45 families, living on the encroached road for over two decades, were forced to evacuate their homes. All this was done to meet the objectives of hiding India’s poverty and perhaps making the POTUS believe that India is more developed than the US. Contrary to the expectations, the world could not resist laughing at this absurd window dressing of India. The government cited that funds was not a constraint for the event. Ironically , this is the same country, where over 20 crore people go to bed hungry every night. The same government has given India a 45 year-high unemployment rate.
Long Story Short
Whether it’s Covid 19 or not, the sufferings never go on holidays, for a poor man. Given the predicaments being brought by this global pandemic, it has only mushroomed his existing calamities, thereby jeopardizing his survival. Who will kill him first, hunger or the novel Coronavirus, however remains a question mark. May God be with them!
Shah Hussain, MBA from University of Kashmir
COVID-19 Lockdown And Violence Against Women In Home
by Adv Dr Shalu Nigam
In order to combat the situation and to make homes as safe zones, special measures are required. The government
needs to declare domestic violence as essential services’ and must take steps to provide immediate relief to women and children. In the long term, the need is to address entrenched structural discrimination in order to ensure gender equality within homes. Lockdowns may be interpreted in different ways. One is to lockdown our collective imaginations and allow the pre-existing stereotypical gender notions to continue and reiterate, or it could be, to isolate the world from the patriarchal notions and to reimagine a violence free gender just world.
Life or Livelihood – No Choice
by Chittarvu Raghu
There is no choice between saving lives and protecting livelihood. The State has to strike a balance between them. The lockdown exit programme should be a balancing act between the lives and livelihood.
World should have ‘listened carefully’ to WHO coronavirus advice back in January, says director-general
by
Countercurrents Collective
The WHO D-G Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a virtual press briefing on Monday: On January 30, we declared the highest level of global emergency on Covid-19. During that time, as you may remember, there were only 82 cases outside China, no cases in Latin America or Africa, only 10 cases in Europe, no cases in the rest of the world. So the world should have listened to the WHO then carefully.
As more than three million cases of Covid-19 have been recorded worldwide, more than 210,000 people have died, and both the World Health Organization (WHO) and world leaders face criticism for mishandling the coronavirus, officially Covid-19, pandemic, the WHO director-general claimed: Countries that ignored the WHO’s advice at the end of January have been less successful in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic.
The WHO D-G Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a virtual press briefing on Monday: On January 30, we declared the highest level of global emergency on Covid-19. During that time, as you may remember, there were only 82 cases outside China, no cases in Latin America or Africa, only 10 cases in Europe, no cases in the rest of the world. So the world should have listened to the WHO then carefully.
He added: The countries, which followed the WHO,’s advice – by extensively testing their populations and implementing contact-tracing technologies – are “in a better position than ours.” But the WHO only operates in an advisory capacity and cannot mandate governments to follow its recommendations.
However, even as the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” on January 30, critics were already arguing that the declaration was too late and did not convey the seriousness of the looming pandemic.
Moreover, WHO assured the public less than two weeks earlier that the virus could not pass from person to person, and even as infections soared in late January and early February, the WHO insisted that travel bans – particularly those affecting China – were “ineffective” and promoted “stigma.”
On the world stage, U.S. President Donald Trump has been one of the loudest critics of the WHO. Trump has accused the organization of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus” and made the decision to withdraw U.S. funds indefinitely.
Trump’s response has been criticized. Though Trump implemented a partial China travel ban on January 31, Trump’s opponents say he repeatedly ignored briefings from the intelligence community about the scale of the outbreak, telling the public even in late February “the coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
Trump has also been slammed for his government’s delay in rolling out the “millions” of tests promised in early March.
In the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been flayed in the media for his initial dismissal of the threat. The UK lagged behind its European neighbors in shutting down businesses and amenities, while Johnson himself insisted on shaking hands long after leaders around the world advised against the practice.
The British government at one point mulled a “herd immunity” strategy, which would have seen the population exposed en masse to the virus.
Mortality in French ICUs 3-4 times higher than official figures
Citing a new study Le Monde newspaper reports: The number of people dying of the Covid-19 in French intensive care units (ICU) could be between three and four times higher than the figure provided by the French government.
Between 30 and 40 percent of all Covid-19 patients, who are transferred to ICU and are put on ventilators in France, are dying, a new study by the European Research Network on Artificial Ventilation (REVA) suggests. This figure is several times higher than the data revealed by Jerome Salomon, the director general for health, a high-ranking official within the French interior ministry.
In mid-April, Salomon said that the mortality rate in French ICUs is only ten percent. Now, these estimates are disputed by a collaborative clinical research network uniting up to 200 ICUs across France and financed under the health ministry’s own hospital clinical research program (PHRC).
As of Sunday, 4,682 Covid-19 patients were treated in ICUs across France. The study conducted by REVA involved an analysis of 1,000 similar cases of patients who were treated between March 28 and April 25.
Matthieu Schmidt, an intensivist at one of Europe’s largest hospitals – Pitie-Salpetriere University Hospital in Paris – and a REVA coordinator, described the mortality rate as “a huge figure.” The medics are still evaluating some data provided by several centers and the eventual figures could be slightly adjusted. The general trend is unlikely to change and Schmidt described it as “indicative” of the situation in French intensive care.
“We have never seen such death rates,” he told Le Monde, adding that the mortality rate during the 2009 swine flu outbreak stood at 25 percent even “with the most serious cases.”
He added: Covid-19-linked figures might not be a result of the French health system’s shortcomings but rather an indication that the novel coronavirus causes a severe complex pathology, which is not limited to pneumonia alone.
Apart from causing pulmonary organs failure, the disease also causes severe inflammation and affects the vascular system and kidneys, the doctor said.
The French government figures were based on data received from March 16 to April 12, the French media reported. At that time, the Covid-19 death rate in French intensive care units was indeed close to ten percent. Yet, only slightly more than a half of all intensive care patients were put on ventilators then. By the time of the REVA study, this figure had grown to 80 percent.
Tai Pham, a resuscitator at the Bicetre hospital in the southern suburb of the French capital, said the ministry’s data reflects the situation at the very beginning of the epidemic, when the fate of many intensive care patients was still unknown. He also noted that patients suffering from less severe symptoms were admitted to intensive care at that time, contributing to a lower mortality rate.
Professor Djillali Annane, from a hospital located in another Paris suburb, also called the ministry’s data “premature.” Still, even the information provided by REVA could not be considered as a final assessment. The French medics will need a “long-term study” that could take up to a year to conduct, they said.
To date, France has seen more than 125,000 confirmed coronavirus cases. Almost 45,000 have since recovered while over 22,800 people have died nationwide.
Cease arms race and invest more on health, Corona’s message to world leaders
by Pardeep Singh Bali
Hope the situation may also change the approach and orientation of governance worldwide by investing more in healthcare and other human resources rather than competing for military might. We must understand that
nature is all powerful and we must look reality in the eye and see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
The world is going through difficult times, as one of its kind in century, Corona virus has hit the earth with all its might, claiming more than 211,768 lives and infecting over 3,073,603 World over. Forget about developing and third world countries that lack proper health infrastructure to cater the infected patient population, but developed countries like United States of America, Italy, France, Germany and Spain among others are also struggling to come out of this pandemic, despite having world class health facilities. United States alone has more than 56,803 deaths, followed by Italy, Spain and France. The numbers are multiplying with each passing day, forcing respective governments to impose complete lockdown, thus bringing earth on standstill. Developing countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh among others are as of now doing well, but the matter of fact remains that if this pandemic reaches these nations with all strength, there would be havoc, considering the population and poor health infrastructure of these nations. Thus, a proper and well detailed preparation is needed to not only avert this pandemic but also to reduce its effect in the subcontinent.
Corona Virus has brought world leaders on their knees, making them contemplate over their mistakes of investing hugely in arms and weapons, instead of health infrastructure. For instance, in the last couple of decades, all countries have concentrated focus on the manufacturing, export and import of arsenal and high tech weapons. Developed and developing nations, in the name of security and defence, invested more on arms, particularly after Second World War. The world eventually accelerated this arms race during cold war, which is considered as an intense period between the Soviet Union and the United States. This was one of the main causes that began the cold war, and perceived advantages of the adversary by both sides (such as the “missile gap” and “bomber gap”) led to large spending on armaments and the stockpiling of vast nuclear arsenals. Proxy wars were fought all over the world (e.g. in the Middle East, Korea, Vietnam) in which the superpowers’ conventional weapons were pitted against each other. Resource-rich developing countries, in the wake of storing more arsenal sparked competition by using their wealth to build up their combat aircraft fleets.
This arms race was followed by attainment of supremacy, wherein those possessing nuclear weapons claimed to have formed the elite group of super powers, seeing others as just allies to strengthen their power and preeminence. Hundreds and thousands of dollars have been pumped into manufacturing of arms and nuclear weapons. The developing countries like India, Pakistan among others also followed the suit and instead of working on removal of poverty and strengthening health infrastructure, started pumping huge funds into purchase of nuclear technology. The growing danger of the nuclear-arms race failed to inspire much debate. Nuclear policy is no longer extensively discussed in the media; the public has been told little about a subject of existential significance; and questions once fervently argued have been largely forgotten. Why do we have nuclear weapons? What they are for? How might they be used? Instead, these questions are being addressed by a small group of policymakers. Many of the crucial details are top secret, and the mundane terms used in official discussions tend to hide the apocalyptic consequences at stake. The present situation has taught these nations that instead of spending too much on weapons, there is a need to heal the environment and strengthen the health infrastructure.
If we talk about India, there is hardly any health care system in place where government can treat one lakh persons at a time. As per reports and various disclosures there are few lakh ventilators across the country of over 1.3 billion population. The numbers are scary in itself, but this is the harsh reality. In arms import, India is at number two and quite potential contender to be included in the list of superpowers. As the Covid-19 pandemic begins making its way through India — the country has documented 939 deaths and more than 29, 000 confirmed cases so far. To fight the Covid-19, India is testing few thousand symptomatic patients, instead of going for person to person testing, which could be a probable reason behind low number of positive cases. Until recently, India had only 111 Covid-19 testing centers to handle a population of 1.35 billion people. The number of beds in government-run quarantine facilities across the country, meanwhile, is about 60,000. Faced with a looming surge of Covid-19 cases, the government recently urged private hospitals to begin admissions, and roped in 35 private laboratories across the country to conduct coronavirus tests. This came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on March 23, announced a 21-day national lockdown to contain the spread of the virus. Presumably aware of the plight of the public health care system, Modi also committed $2 billion to boost infrastructure through increased availability of testing facilities, isolation beds, ICU beds, ventilators, and other necessary tools.
According to the most recent government data, India spent only 1.28 percent of its GDP on health in 2017-18, compared to nearly 18 percent in the United States, and far lower than neighboring countries, including Indonesia (1.4 percent) and Sri Lanka (1.68 percent). Global health experts say that given the paltry expenditure, India does not have the infrastructure or financial capability to tackle a large public health disaster. Finally, it is not just government apathy that has made India so vulnerable to health shocks. India’s elites may have also played a part in demanding greater funding for big hospitals (tertiary care) rather than seeking more investments in preventive public health interventions. Moreover, the way this pandemic has trampled down super powers and economies like the US and the Europe on knees amplifies the fact that the virus cannot be shot down by a missile. Similarly, it has also busted the myth that only conscripts, mercenaries or enlisted men can hold the front lines since in this case we have doctors, nurses, utility workers and police standing in between the pandemic and the people. Hope the situation may also change the approach and orientation of governance worldwide by investing more in healthcare and other human resources rather than competing for military might. We must understand that nature is all powerful and we must look reality in the eye and see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
Pardeep Singh Bali is Research Scholar in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Punjabi University Patiala.
Pandemic and System of Power: A Feminist Perspective
by Sarah Kidwai
When an epidemic or pandemic affects society the entire mechanism of control from responsible governance, role of national policies, production of knowledge, patriarchy and culture all contribute in creating an environment that make women’s situation even vulnerable in an outbreak.
The Migration Crisis: Report from Rural Odisha
by Warsha Thakur
The struggle of a working class from source region to destination; report of the migration crisis from Rural Odisha
Stop Eviction In Kalahandi
Press Release
Memorandum to the Chief Minister of Odisha on Sagada Forest
Evictions in Kalahandi
A Government Waging War Against Its Own People
by Sandeep Pandey
The government is imitating decisions of the developed countries failing to realise that work from home, social (physical) distancing, wearing masks or using sanitisers every now and then is not possible for the vast majority of poor in India. Their lives will be devastated because of lockdown and government is not doing enough to alleviate the hardships faced by them. From what started out as a ‘people’s curfew,’ it has now started resembling a police state with all human rights suspended and people totally at the mercy of government. The government is unaccountable and people cannot dissent. There couldn’t have been better situation for an autocratic Prime Minister of a right wing government. It appears that Narendra Modi is fighting a war against his own people and there will be casualties of
various kinds at the end of it.
Pandemic Delays: Postponing the Assange Extradition Hearing
by Dr Binoy Kampmark
Julian Assange must have had time amidst cramped and hostile surrounds, paper work, pleas and applications, to ponder what circle of Dante’s Hell he finds himself in. Ailing but still battling, the WikiLeaks publisher, through his lawyers, made another vicarious appearance at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday to delay the next stage of extradition proceedings slated for May 18. He would have appeared via video link, but medical advice suggested it would be unsafe for him to do so at Belmarsh prison.
Journos Under Siege: A Case of Kashmir
by Bilal Ahmad Dar
Objective and unbiased journalism should be encouraged but in Kashmir it is considered as a crime. A true and
professional journalist is said to be the mouthpiece of people. But the irony of the fact is that this mouthpiece along with people is restricted and suppressed everywhere in Kashmir
COVID-19’s Economic Holocaust
Co-Written by Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD
For all the uncertainties the COVID-19 pandemic poses to the world, especially in the US, one thing seems evident. Our neoliberal capitalist civilization has proven itself to be unprepared for unexpected crises and catastrophes. For decades, the US has been falling behind other developed nations to infuse economic resiliency in society. Not only has the American medical system and federal health agencies been shown to be naked, we are also discovering we cannot rely on epistemological statistics and computer modeling alone to account for our flawed health policies.
It Can’t Happen Here? The Roots Run Deep!
by Philip A Farruggio
As with Germany in the late 1920s, and with Amerika just a few short years ago, frustrated and angry working stiffs got directed to go against their economic interests by propaganda masters. They blamed ‘ Big Government’ and supported the super rich who controlled government for their own selfish interests. We who ‘ Know better’ need to influence our fellow working stiffs about what we all not only need, but deserve! And it sure ain’t Fascism!
Sinclair Lewis wrote an important novel in 1935, It Can’t Happen Here. In the fictitious book, based on the threats at the time of fascism taking root in the USA, we see how this virus spread. As with Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America we see how Charles Lindbergh’s leadership in the America First movement of the 1930s planted the seed for what has NEVER subsided. That being simply the growth of a Proto Fascist mindset that resonates well today in 2020 Make Amerika Great Again ( for the super rich! ) Sadly, nothing ever real changes in the minds of some people… only the faces.
In David Talbot’s 2007 study of the Kennedy brothers during JFK’s administration, aptly entitled Brothers, we see the forces of Proto Fascism at work. JFK inherited the Joints Chiefs of Staff from the Eisenhower administration, with General Curtis LeMay and General Lemnitzer leading the way for a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. History now tells us what those in the ‘ Know’ knew since our U-2 flights over the Soviet Union in the mid to late 1950s: The Soviets were much weaker than us when it came to missile strength. The Joint Chiefs unanimously recommended such a pre-emptive attack, knowing full well that some of our cities would be severely damaged as we totally destroyed their entire country. JFK is said to have walked out of that meeting, saying to someone with him ” Those guys are really crazy!”
What was also going on during those less than three years of JFK’s presidency, was a far right wing movement to infiltrate our military. This revealed itself to the leadership in the field by many ‘ Born Again Commie Haters’ like General Lucius Clay, hero of WW2 and the 1948-49 Berlin Blockade. In October of 1961, as Talbot tells us, General Clay precipitated a nerve wracking confrontation with the Soviets at the Berlin Wall. Our tanks and their tanks stood facing each other like the ‘ Gunfight at the OK Corral’ of western lore. Right before the **** would hit the fan, JFK, through a back channel arrangement his brother Bob had with the Russians, got the other side to agree to a mutual withdrawal. Meanwhile, far right wing forces here at home, like the John Birch Society, had been calling Eisenhower, hero of WW2, a ” Dedicated , conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy”. Men like ‘ Off the reservation’ Major General Edwin Walker announced on many occasions that the JFK administration was stocked with ” No win Ivy Leaguers and confirmed Communists”. Throughout our domestic and foreign US military bases leaflets and films were offered to our personnel on a regular basis, ALL sounding the trumpet for a final war with the godless Soviets. When Arkansas Senator Fulbright took to the Senate floor to contradict far right wing forces like South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, the other side called for hearings when General Walker was relieved of his command in Europe. Things got testy, especially when Defense Sec. McNamara was called to testify. Dozens of white suburban housewives wearing Stop Communism tags swarmed him and joined 250 spectators in booing him.
Years before those aforementioned hearings, Senator Fulbright, in one of his speeches on the Senate floor, warned of a future ‘ Military Coup’ … Isn’t that what happened in November of ’63? Hadn’t the French right wing generals attempted something like that earlier in 1961 against DeGalle’s plans to grant Algeria their independence? Few students of our jaded political history recall what happened a year later, in 1962, when Vice President Lyndon Johnson visited Dallas with his wife. He was there to support the Democratic Party candidates for the upcoming midterm elections. Johnson and his wife were attacked , once again by white suburban women, calling him and his wife, and JFK ‘ Nigger Lovers and Commie Lovers’ . It is said that Johnson and his wife had to be ‘ spirited out ‘ of the hotel they were staying in, as if they were fugitives from a chain gang.
Now we are in the middle ( beginning? I pray not) of a terrible pandemic. It threatens our economy along with the health of millions, especially the elderly and infirmed. What needs to be understood is what history reveals when right wing movements gain momentum during tough times, as with Germany during their terrible economic depression in the 1920s and early 30s. Why? Because right wing movements always find scapegoats to satisfy the rage of the many. We are already seeing this administration, and those who believe in Trump’s convoluted logic, pushing to reopen our nation’s businesses. Yet, because of the utter incompetence and ‘ Pandemic denial ‘ by he and his administration, NOTHING EFFECTIVE was begun during January, February and parts of March. No stocking or manufacturing of masks, ventilators, hand sanitizers; NO sending of federal funds to strengthen our hospital systems and first providers; NO quarantine efforts and shutdowns in the early stages of this Pandemic USA . All of the above are reasons why this economy has NOT been reopened by now. Imagine if Trump acted as the Chinese did, and jumped all over the spread of this virus early on. He didn’t! So, his base, the ones demanding a totally OPEN economy, may very well march in lockstep as this Proto Fascist movement strengthens.
My fears, as a student of history, are REAL! We have a possible Army of citizens who may be easily influenced to join such a demagogue led movement. The anger and the frustration of many out of work and out of bread ( the kind you eat AND the kind you spend) people can be the very fodder used by the actual super rich who helped create such movements. As with Germany in the late 1920s, and with Amerika just a few short years ago, frustrated and angry working stiffs got directed to go against their economic interests by propaganda masters. They blamed ‘ Big Government’ and supported the super rich who controlled government for their own selfish interests. We who ‘ Know better’ need to influence our fellow working stiffs about what we all not only need, but deserve! And it sure ain’t Fascism!
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. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net
The ‘silent spring’ again: Where have all the people gone?
by Kesavan Rajasekharan Nayar
Traditional segmented approaches are incapable to take up this challenge because there is large ‘unknown’ component regarding the pandemic and it is only through an appropriate integrated vision and a methodological repertoire that this is possible. Unfortunately, this
possibility is lost because of the confidentiality factor surrounding the infection and due to politics taking over the pandemic!
PHM Condemns US Halt on Funding to WHO
People’s Health Movement
Most WHO Member States require the continued flow of technical advice and guidance and many low-income countries are dependent on WHO for supplies of medical products to combat COVID-19. We urge the global public health community to rally behind WHO as the most important directing and co-ordinating authority on international response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic, as on April 20, has infected more than 2.3 million individuals and led to over 160,000 deaths across the globe. These are indeed trying times for the entire global community.
The People’s Health Movement unequivocally denounces this move by the US Trump Administration to defund World Health Organisation (WHO) and calls for building global solidarity to address the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences and to support the WHO as the leading global health institution in this fight.
In such difficult times, the direct attack by the US Trump Administration against the WHO, the leading United Nations global health authority, is to be condemned. After weeks of threatening, on April 15, the Trump Administration formally announced halt of funding to WHO. This announcement happened while the pandemic is still accelerating and the world needs a global co-ordinating body to encourage co-operation and information sharing related to notification of cases and deaths, vaccine development and safe antibody tests.
President Trump’s decision to kill funding from the US for the WHO will cripple life-saving antiCOVID-19 work globally. Through attempting to deflect criticism of his own month’s-long dillydallying initial response to COVID-19, Trump has chosen an action destined to cost lives and provoke resentment and rage against the United States of America. As former U.S .President Jimmy Carter puts it: “I am distressed by the decision to withhold critically needed U.S. funding for the World Health Organization, especially during an international pandemic. WHO is the only international organization capable of leading the effort to control this virus” (https://wgxa.tv/news/connect-tocongress/jimmy-carter-speaks-out-on-president-trumps-action-to-withhold-funds-from-who)
PHM calls for strong global solidarity to address the pandemic and its consequences and for support to the WHO as the leading global health institution in this fight.
PHM calls for strong global solidarity to address the pandemic and its consequences and for support to the WHO as the leading global health institution in this fight.
We hope that democratic opinion within the USA and pressures from citizens and the scientific and public health community will pressure the Trump administration to reverse their decision to remove funding from the WHO at a time when it is needed most.
We also call on all other nations, especially those in the industrialised world and emerging economies to express solidarity with the WHO and to quickly increase their contributions and support to close the gap in funding that will arise because of the US government’s actions.
WHO performance on the COVID-19 Pandemic: With respect to the pandemic, the WHO issued an advisory on January 30 declaring the COVID-19 epidemic a “public health emergency of international concern”, which is the highest possible level of alert. It called on governments to pursue containment and testing efforts. It also provided advice about the high infectivity rate and the adverse potential this virus had. In line with international diplomacy protocols, it highlighted what China was doing right and what more it needed to be doing. At this stage it did not point out any flaws in the response from China.
WHO has also been instrumental in distribution of personal protective equipment, ventilators and other lifesaving medical supplies to various countries across the globe. Public health leaders have noted that WHO has responded more effectively to this pandemic than it did in the early stages of the Ebola crisis in Africa. WHO has initiated work on developing vaccines and clinical trials. It has also launched “Solidarity trial” – an international clinical trial to help find an effective treatment for COVID-19. It has also developed multilingual online course in 13 countries about COVID-19 with 1.2 million enrolments (http://openwho.org).
Anti-UN rhetoric and action under the Trump Administration The systematic weakening of WHO, particularly by the USA, is not new, nor is it sparked by the COVID-19 crisis. We note that the Trump Administration has been making unjustified adverse remarks about WHO and other UN agencies that it perceives does not support the US’s foreign policy. In February, the Trump administration reportedly requested for reduction of the US contribution to the WHO. The assessed US contribution for this year is $400 million, which for the US is a paltry amount. The US assessed contributions are currently about $200 million in arrears.
This is part of the reason why WHO is chronically under-funded. WHO’s budget for the two years 2020-21 is about $4.84 billion, which is close to the annual budget of a large US hospital and about $2 billion less than the annual budget of the US Centre for Disease Control – and yet it has a global mandate. It is also worth noting that responding to the coronavirus emergency appeal by the WHO, while Kuwait has donated $60 million, Japan $47.5 million, the European Commission $33 million and China and UK about $20 million each, the US has given less than $15 million.
Systematic Weakening of WHO: Old Tactics of US and neo-liberalism It must be noted that there has been a systematic weakening of the WHO as a global health authority through financial constrictions and political re-definitions of its role. Until the early 1980s most of WHO’s budget came from assessed contributions which are set amounts that member states are required to pay based on their income and population size. In 1983, with the rise of neo-liberalism and as expression of its opposition to both the Health for All Declaration and the List of Essential Medicines, the US voted for a freeze in assessed contributions to the WHO. It is also true that other countries contribution to the WHO has not grown in light of their increasing wealth. For example, China’s assessed contribution accounts for less than 1% of WHO funding because of an outdated apportionment.
As a consequence, over the years, the composition of the WHO budget has shifted to voluntary contributions much of which are tied to specific programmes, thereby reducing the flexibility in using these funds. In recent years over 2/3 of US funding to WHO has been tied to specific projects that bypass the organisation’s priority-setting processes. Many of these contributions are now from corporate philanthropies, most notably the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Voluntary contributions come as part of bilateral agreements: most of them promote technocratic vertical solutions, and are not devoted to strengthening public health and system-wide approaches but rather marginalise them. The dependence on such tied-donor contributions substantially compromised the independence and integrity of WHO as a global health authority and weakened its mandate to protect and promote global health.
The US also has a history of hard bargaining to dilute many key resolutions and treaties and then finally refusing to sign on. They have regularly tried to dilute provisions on sexual and reproductive health rights. They have been major promoters of a corporate presence in decision making bodies within WHO. The US has also supported new global health institutions linked to trans-national corporations that finance WHO for specific projects and weakened the global leadership of WHO. This has already weakened the voice and effectiveness of WHO on a wide number of issues. This is at a time when WHO is facing complex global challenges from the threats of infectious diseases, noncommunicable diseases, antimicrobial resistance, the underlying social and commercial determinants of these diseases and climate change.
PHM has been critical of the corporate infiltration of WHO through its WHO Watch initiative and through its publication Global Health Watch. Our criticism largely stems from the position WHO finds itself in because of the under-funding and the other ways the US encouraged its undermining.
We also note that the US Trump Administration has worked to undermine UN agencies more generally.
Way Forward The People’s Health Movement, its partner organisations and affiliates condemn the autocratic and arrogant behaviour of the US Trump administration against WHO at the very moment when WHO is needed the most. Our hope is that member states will move to strengthen the WHO, and press the US government to redraw its approach to the UN agency. We recognise that there are organisational weaknesses in WHO that need to be addressed in the longer term so that it stays free of corporate interests and is able to give free and frank advice to countries. Now is the time to increase financial support to WHO and equip and strengthen it to become a strong, democratic inter-governmental agency which retains its professional and political autonomy and which can effectively discharge its constitutional mandate.
Most WHO Member States require the continued flow of technical advice and guidance and many low-income countries are dependent on WHO for supplies of medical products to combat COVID-19. We urge the global public health community to rally behind WHO as the most important directing and co-ordinating authority on international response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Issued By: Steering Council, People’s Health Movement
Child detentions and repressive regimes
by Sheshu Babu
It has become almost common that activists, dissenters, journalists, etc are being severely assaulted or imprisoned and detained for months without trial. But even children are not being spared by authoritarian regimes.
They are being targeted by missiles or war weapons in many countries.
COVID19 and Issues of Basic Amenities in Dalit Hamlets of Odisha
by Manas Jena
https://countercurrents.org/2020/04/covid19-and-issues-of-basic-amenities-in-dalit-hamlets-of-odisha
This pandemic (COVID -19) situation is hitting the marginalized poor the worst because of their inherent vulnerable condition. The entire country is being converted to a police state with an absolute power exercised by police to mercilessly beat anyone on street
Canadian teacher writes to Trudeau, asking him to intervene for jailed Delhi university professor
by Gurpreet Singh
Annie Ohana, a well-known award winning social justice educator, has sent a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister urging him to stand up for an Indian scholar who is being incarcerated under inhuman
conditions.Wheelchair-bound GN Saibaba used to teach at Delhi University before being convicted in 2017 after being branded as a Maoist sympathizer. Suffering with 19 ailments, his health continues to deteriorate.
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