22 April 2020 — True Publica
By TruePublica Editor: There is a point when you read something and realise that all is lost. One Nation Conservatism is dead – they are no longer a centre-right political party but little more than a death cult. Their policies since arriving back into power after the Blair years has taken them back to a time which no longer has a place in any modern society – but here they are.
21 April 2020 — Dr Malcolm Kendrick
Unfortunately, it seems that COVID-19 has infected everyone involved in healthcare management and turned their brains into useless mush.
Lockdown has two main purposes. One, to limit the spread of the virus. Two, and most important, to protect the elderly and infirm from infection – as these are the people most likely to become very ill, end up in hospital, and often die. [In my view, if we had any sense, we would lockdown/protect the elderly, and let everyone else get on with their lives].
However, the hospitals themselves have another policy. Which is to discharge the elderly unwell patients with COVID directly back into the community, and care homes. Where they can spread the virus widely amongst the most vulnerable.
This, believe it or not, is NHS policy. Still.
22 April2020 — RT
A truck supporting Assange drives by the Ecuadorian embassy in London © Reuters / Peter Nicholls
Spanish security firm UC Global secretly obtained Julian Assange’s son’s dirty diapers and used “intimate photos” to blackmail a diplomat into continuing its surveillance contract on the Ecuadorian embassy, court documents show.
22 April 2020 — Political Concern
A Moseley resident drew attention to yesterday’s Guardian article which reported that high levels of air pollution may be “one of the most important contributors” to deaths from Covid-19, according to research conducted by a geoscientist Dr Yaron Ogen, at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany (Abstract and access to full text here).
(Ed): There are more cases of COVID-19 in London and Birmingham (pictured above), where high levels of air pollution have been recorded for many years.
21 April 2020 — Origin: Strategic Culture Foundation
Pepe Escobar
Hybrid War 2.0 on China, a bipartisan U.S. operation, is already reaching fever pitch. Its 24/7 full spectrum infowar arm blames China for everything coronavirus-related – doubling as a diversionist tactic against any informed criticism of woeful American unpreparedness.<
Hysteria predictably reigns. And this is just the beginning.
21 April 2020 — Off Guardian
Kit Knightly joins James Corbett to discuss the site’s ongoing coverage of the corona crisis. From experts questioning the panic to death figure over-estimates to pushback against the new normal, today we highlight the work of those who are speaking truth to power on the defining event of our age . . . and point out those who are cheering on the out-of-control police state.
21 April 2020 — Off Guardian
In this long-awaited follow-up to his interview in late March, Dr. John Ioannidis discusses the results of three preliminary studies, (including his latest, which shows a drastically reduced infection fatality rate); the worrisome effects of the lockdown; the Swedish approach; the Italian data; the ups and downs of testing; the feasibility of “contact tracing”, and much more.
21 April 2020 — The American Tribune
BY Kim Petersen
The neoliberal Council on Foreign Relations through its journal Foreign Affairs has amped up its criticisms of China. United States president Donald Trump and American officials have orchestrated a gambit to deflect unwanted attention from the miserable US response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the souring US economy. The Trump administration has directed its invective at China which elsewhere has been praised for its handling of the COVID-19 epidemic, getting back to business, and helping out other countries to fight the virus.
18 April 2020 — Grayzone
An internal investigation has found that top Labour Party officials sabotaged Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, including by trying to lose the 2017 UK election. The report also suggests that the same people who tried to undermine Corbyn were themselves the ones who were slow to respond to allegations of anti-Semitism — another weapon that was used against Corbyn’s leadership.
Guest: Asa Winstanley, journalist with The Electronic Intifada.
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19 April 2020 — Indian Punchline
By M.K. Bhadrakumar
Kerala Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan (C) during a press meet in connection with Covid 19, Thiruvananthapuram, March 23, 2020
The Times of India featured a tantalising commentary last week titled Kerala shows the way: Decades of investment in public health is helping the state control Covid-19. The title is self-explanatory. The commentary showered fulsome praise, rightly so, on Kerala’s success in controlling the coronavirus outbreak.
21 April 2020 — Oriental Review
Written by Binoy KAMPMARK
Politicians, as any political class, will nurse their favourite prejudice. And when there is a crisis, those prejudices will be fanned and praised to the heavens. For some politicians, who find the whole business of lockdowns and business restrictions all too much, someone has to pay for COVID-19.
20 April 2020 — Origin: Climate & Capitalism
Dutch manifesto
170 Dutch academics sign manifesto for sustainable, equal and diverse societies based on international solidarity
The following statement, signed by 170 academics from eight universities in the Netherlands, has been widely reported in the Dutch press, becoming a focus for discussion on how to avoid repeating past mistakes when in planning for the future.
17 April 2020 — Peoples Dispatch
Vijay Prashad, Director, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, talks about China’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, especially in the light of the accusations that are being leveled against the country. He talks about how the novel coronavirus was identified, the steps taken by the Chinese authorities and the active participation of the community in combating the disease.
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20 April 2020 — 21st Century Wire
Since March, 21WIRE has consistently said draconian lockdown measures being pushed by countries like the UK, France, US and Canada – were ill-informed and not at all necessary in order to ‘contain’ the coronavirus. Moreover, we have consistently stated across many media platforms that these were not science-based decisions either, but rather political decisions taken by government officials as part of a mass-panic, alongside a parallel roll-out of a broader authoritarian agenda. For this, our publication and its contributors were attacked and marginalised by other media outlets and pundits who insisted this was a ‘conspiracy theory’ and that we should accept the government’s rationale for unprecedented lockdown policies and the suspension of democracy and civil liberties. However, since then, a number of eminent experts have emerged who are also saying the same thing we were over the duration of this crisis.
20 April 2020 — True Publica
It was only one month ago that Big Brother Watch, the Civil liberties group warned that the Coronavirus Bill contained the “most draconian powers in peacetime Britain” and urged close scrutiny from Parliamentarians. It was ushered through and became an Act of Parliament without scrutiny or protest. If the COVID-19 crisis vanished tomorrow the Act still empowers police, immigration officers and public health officials to demand documentation; detain and isolate members of the public potentially indefinitely, including children; and forcibly take biological samples for testing. It permits prohibition of public events and gatherings without standard protections for strikes and industrial action that exist in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. And it weakens safeguards on the exercise of mass surveillance powers by quadrupling time review limits for urgent warrants.
20 April 2020 — Voltaire Network
by Thierry Meyssan
In the past, European political leaders yielded to the orders of their astrologers. Today, they refer to them identically to the statisticians of the Imperial College. In the past, the latter have provided them as much justification as they needed for their liberal hospital policy. Today, they predict millions of deaths without any scientific rigour. Thierry Meyssan reveals how these charlatans have taken control of the policies of the European Union, the United Kingdom and certain states of the United States.
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18 April 2020 — Moon of Alabama
To avoid self-examination of the failures that let the U.S. exceed the covid-19 casualty numbers of every other nation the powers that be decided to blame someone else.
20 April 2020 — Off Guardian
In Part 1 we looked at the reasons why questioning the coronavirus lockdown, despite the ever present allegation, does not demonstrate a callous disregard for human life. We are going to expand on why it doesn’t in this article.
20 April 2020 — Caitlin Johnson
Hysteria about China has been kicked into high gear by the political/media class who are responsible for manufacturing support for the cold war escalations which will be necessary to prevent the US from being surpassed on the world stage as a unipolar superpower.
19 April 2020 — Off Guardian
“The end of everything we call life is at hand and cannot be evaded”
H. G. Wells (1946)
The coronavirus doesn’t just make individual people ill – it threatens the whole of society too. Measures used to control the virus destroy people’s livelihoods, trample basic freedoms and, if prolonged, could eventually bring about wholesale societal collapse.
