THE CITY IN A TIME OF PLAGUE - ESSAY By PEPE ESCOBAR from Asia Times

History teaches us that epidemics are more like revelatory moments than social transformers

https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/the-city-in-a-time-of-plague/ APRIL 17, 202

The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies – this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city.

– Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

Predictably eyeing the Decline and Fall of the American Empire, a serious academic debate is raging around the working hypothesis of historian Kyle Harper, according to whom viruses and pandemics – especially the Justinian plague in the 6th century – led to the end of the Roman Empire.

Well, history actually teaches us that epidemics are more like revelatory moments than social transformers. 

Patrick Boucheron, a crack historian and a professor at the esteemed College de France, offers a very interesting perspective. Incidentally, before the onset of Covid-19, he was about to start a seminar on the Black Death medieval plague. 

Boucheron’s view of Boccaccio’s Decameron, written in 1350 and about young Florentine aristocrats who fled to the Tuscan countryside to tell stories, focuses on the plague’s character as a “horrible beginning” that tears apart social liaisons, provokes a funerary panic and has everyone wallowing in anomie.

Then he draws a historical parallel with Thucydides writing about the Athens plague in the summer of 430 BC. Pushing it to the limit, we may venture that Western literature actually starts with a plague – described in Book 1 of the Iliad by Homer.   

Thucydides’ description of the Great Plague – actually typhoid fever – is a literary tour de force as well. In our current setting, that’s more relevant than the “Thucydides trap” controversy – as it’s idle to compare the context in ancient Athens with the current US-China hybrid war. 

Both Socrates and Thucydides, incidentally, survived the plague. They were tough, and acquired immunity from their earlier exposure to typhoid. Pericles, the leading citizen of Athens, was not so lucky: he died at 66, a victim of the plague. The city in fear

Boucheron wrote an immensely interesting book, Conjurer la Peur (To Conjure Fear) telling the story of Siena a few years before the Black Death, in 1338. This is the Siena pictured by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the walls of the Palazzo Pubblico – one of most spectacular allegorical frescoes in history.

In his book, Boucheron writes about political fear before it is engulfed by biological fear. Nothing could be more contemporary. 

In Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Bad Government, the court of bad justice is governed by a devil holding a poisoned chalice (today that would be the “crowned poison” – or coronavirus). The devil’s eyes are crossed and one of his feet is over a goat’s horns. Floating above his head we find Avarice, Pride and Vainglory (match them with contemporary political “leaders”). War, Treason, and Fury sit to his left (the US Deep State?) and Discord, Fraud and Cruelty on his right (casino capitalist financialization?). Justice is bound, and her scales have fallen. Talk about an allegory of the “international community.”

Boucheron pays special attention to the city as depicted by Lorenzetti. That’s the city at war – as opposed to the harmonious city in the Allegory of Good Government. The crucial point is that this is a depopulated city – much like our cities in quarantine now. Only men at arms are circulating and, as Boucheron tells it: “We guess that behind the walls, people are dying.” So this image has not changed today – deserted streets; quite a few elderly people dying in silence in their homes. 

Boucheron then makes a startling connection with the frontispiece of Hobbes’sLeviathan, published in 1651: “Here again there is a city depopulated by an epidemic. We know because at the borders of the image we identify two silhouettes with birds’ beaks, which represent the doctors of the plague,” while the people in the city have been sucked upward, ballooning the figure of the Leviathan state monster who is very confident of the fear he inspires.  

Boucheron’s conclusion is that the state is always capable of obtaining an absolutely unprecedented resignation and obedience from the population. “What’s complicated is that even if what everything we say about the society of surveillance is scary and true, the state obtains this obedience in the name of its most undisputed function, which is to protect the population from creeping death. That’s what plenty of serious studies define as ‘biolegitimacy’.”

And I would add, today, a biolegitimacy boosted by widespread voluntary servitude.       

The Age of Haphophobia

Michel Foucault was arguably the premier modern cartographer of the Panopticon-derived surveillance society.

Then there’s Gilles Deleuze. In 1978, Foucault famously declared that, “perhaps, one day, this century will be called the Deleuzian century.”

Well, Deleuze is actually more 21st century than 20th. He went farther than anyone else studying societies of control – where control does not come from the center or from the top but flows through micro-vigilance, even activating the desire on everyone to be disciplined and monitored: once again, voluntary servitude.   

Judith Butler, talking about South Africa-based critical theorist Achille Mbembe’s extraordinary Necropolitics, noted how he “continues where Foucault left off, tracking the lethal afterlife of sovereign power as it subjects whole populations to what Fanon called ‘the zone of non-being’.”

So a great deal of the intellectual debate ahead of us, borrowing from Fanon, Foucault, Deleuze, Mbembe and others, will necessarily have to focus on biopolitics and the widespread state of exception – which, as Giorgio Agamben has demonstrated, referring to Planet Lockdown, is now completely normalized.

We cannot even begin to imagine the consequences of the anthropological rupture caused by Covid-19. Sociologists for their part are already discussing how “social distancing” is an abstraction, defined and lived in quite unequal terms. They are discussing the reasons why the powers that be chose a martial vocabulary (“lockdown”) instead of forms of mobilization guided by a collective project.  

And that will lead us to deeper studies of the Age of Haphophobia: our current condition of widespread fear of physical contact. Historians will be trying to analyze it in conjunction with how social phobias have evolved across centuries.      

There’s no question that Foucault’s exhaustive mapping should be understood as a historical analysis of different techniques used by the powers that be to manage the life and death of populations. Between the crucial years 1975 and 1976, when he published Discipline and Punish (featured in this essay’s epigraph) and the first volume of History of Sexuality, Foucault, based on the notion of “biopolitics,” described the transition from a “sovereign society” to a “disciplinary society.”

His main conclusion is that techniques of biopolitical government spread out way beyond the legal and punitive spheres, and now are all over the spectrum, even lodged inside our individual bodies.    

Covid-19 is presenting us with a huge biopolitical paradox. When the powers that be act like they are protecting us from a dangerous disease, they are imprinting their own immunity-based definition of the community. At the same time they have the power to decide to sacrifice part of the community (elderly people left to die; victims of the economic crisis) to the benefit of their own idea of sovereignty. 

The state of exception to which many parts of the world are subjected now represents the normalization of this unbearable paradox.   

House arrest

So how would Foucault see Covid-19? He would say that this epidemic radicalizes biopolitical techniques applied to a national territory, and inscribes them in a political anatomy applied to each individual body. That’s how an epidemic extends to the whole population political measures of “immunization” that previously only applied – violently – to those that were considered “aliens,” inside and outside the national, sovereign territory.

It’s irrelevant whether Sars-Covid-2 is organic; a bioweapon; or, CIA conspiracy theory-style, part of a world domination plan. What’s happening in real life is that the virus reproduces, materializes, extends and intensifies – for hundreds of millions of people – dominant forms of biopolitical and necropolitical management that were already in place. The virus is our mirror. We are what the epidemic says we are, and how we decide to face it.  

And under such extreme turbulence, as noted by philosopher Paul Preciado, we end up reaching a new necropolitical frontier – especially in the West.  

The new territory of the border politics the West has been testing for years over “The Other” – blacks, Muslims, the poor – now starts at home. It’s as if Lesbos, the key entrance island for refugees in the Eastern Mediterranean coming from Turkey, now started at the entrance of each Western apartment.

With pervasive social distancing in place, the new border is each and everyone’s skin. Migrants and refugees were previously considered viruses, and only merited confinement and immobilization. But now these policies apply to whole populations. Detention centers – perpetual waiting rooms that abolish human rights and citizenship – are now detention centers inside one’s own home.

No wonder the liberal West has been plunged into a state of shock and awe. 

Alle Kritiker von Verbotspolitik „vom Kreml finanziert“? Was bei Corona-Diskussion verheimlicht wird

© AFP 2020 / MUHAMMAD HAJ KADOUR

DEUTSCHLAND

11:23 04.04.2020(aktualisiert 11:38 04.04.2020) Zum Kurzlink

Von Liudmila Kotlyarova

Themen: 

Corona-Pandemie breitet sich weiter aus – alle Entwicklungen (267)

1202608

Abonnieren

Die harten Maßnahmen wegen der Corona-Krise gelten voraussichtlich bis zum 19. April. Wie es weitergeht, will im Moment kein nüchterner Experte vorhersagen - manche Polizisten rechnen mit einem Weiterso bis zum Ende Mai. Parallel häufen sich Zweifel an der Zweckmäßigkeit der Politik, es wird nach dem eigentlichen Teufel des Problems gesucht.

Zwar wollte der Ministerpräsident von Nordrhein-Westfalen, Armin Laschet, Ende März schon die Exit-Strategien aus den Ausgangsbeschränkungen ansprechen, die Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel blieb aber standhaft: zu früh. Im Hintergrund werden Hunderttausende auf Kurzarbeit umgestellt, große und kleine Firmen befürchten schon jetzt Pleite, sollte die staatliche Hilfe nicht rechtzeitig ankommen.

© SPUTNIK / TILO GRÄSER

„Eklatant verfassungswidrig“: Rechtsanwältin klagt gegen Corona-Maßnahmen

In der Medienwelt sind Virologen längst neue Influencer. Auf die einflussreichsten wie Christian Drosten von der Charite hört vor allem Merkel. Ende Februar meinte Drosten, es würden sich bis zu 70 Prozent der Deutschen infizieren. Sollte das Infektionsgeschehen in komprimierter, kurzer Zeit auftreten, so der 48-Jährige, wären die Behörden aufgefordert, alles dagegen zu tun. Rechnet man die durchschnittliche Sterberate der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) auf die dann nach Drosten 56 Millionen Infizierten in Deutschland um, heißt es, 1,9 Millionen würden alleine in Deutschland sterben. Auch musste ein Kollaps im Gesundheitswesen mit Blick auf Italien mit allen Mitteln verhindert werden. Gefragt ist Solidarität - und zwar nicht nur im Sinne der Vorsichtigkeit und gegenseitige Hilfe. Wer es wagt, die strenge Verbotspolitik in ihrer Wirksamkeit bei der Corona-Eindämmung sowie die Schädlichkeit für die Wirtschaft und die darauf angewiesenen Menschenleben zu hinterfragen, wird entweder millionenfach aufgerufen oder als „Verunsicherer“ angeprangert. 

So warf der FAZ-Autor Markus Wehner den russischen staatlich finanzierten Medien in einem Artikel das angebliche Ziel vor, durch „alternative Fakten“ Verunsicherung erzeugen und so „das Vertrauen in die westlichen Regierungen“ erschüttern zu wollen. Es ging unter anderem um den Sputnik-Artikel zu den wahrscheinlich fehlerhaften Daten, die als Grundlage weitreichender politischer Entscheidungen dienen würden. Ganz emotionalisiert nahm sich Wehner vor, neben den nüchternen Hinweisen die westlichen Regierungen in Schutz vor dem Kreml zu nehmen - auch wenn Moskau und ganz Russland jetzt selbst harte Ausgangsbeschränkungen einsetzen. Folgt man aber seiner Logik, dann wären alle Kritiker von Verbotspolitik „von Moskau gesteuert“. 

Bhakdi und Co. vs. „westliche Regierungen“

Auch in wissenschaftlichen Kreisen lässt sich die Spreu vom Weizen trennen. So sorgte der in den professionellen Kreisen weit zitierte, derzeit schon emeritierte Professor am Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Hygiene der Universität Mainz, Sucharit Bhakdi, mit einem Videointerview - und einem offenen Brief an Bundeskanzlerin Merkel für viel Wirbel.

So will Bhakdi von Merkel wissen, ob bei den Hochrechnungen zwischen symptomfreien Infizierten und tatsächlichen, erkrankten Patienten unterschieden wird. Sypmtomfreie und damit nicht wirklich „erkrankte“ Infizierte müssten nach Bhakdis Logik nicht in die angenommenen fünf Prozent aller Infizierten eingeschlossen werden, die dann ein Krankenhausbett benötigen und das Gesundheitssystem im Übermaß belasten würden. Auch bezweifelt Bhakdi, dass das COVID-19 Virus ein bedeutend höheres Gefahrenpotenzial hat als die bereits kursierenden Coronaviren. Die derzeitigen Maßnahmen findet Bhakdi „grotesk, überbordend und direkt gefährlich“, denn die Lebenserwartung älterer Menschen werde verkürzt und es gebe schon Engpässe bei der medizinischen Versorgung aller anderen Patienten - ganz zu schweigen von den wirtschaftlichen Folgen. Sein Fazit: Die Gesellschaft, die den bestehenden Maßnahmenplan unterstützt, begeht einen kollektiven Selbstmord. 

Bhakdi ist nicht alleine. Auch der Direktor des Bonner Instituts für Virologie, Hendrik Streeck, mahnte in einem „Handelsblatt“-Interview, weiter steigende Neuinfektionen sollten nicht zu Aktionismus oder Panik verleiten. Was im Moment unternommen werde, sei schon drastisch. In einem früheren FAZ-Interview versicherte Streeck, dass das neuartige Virus zwar ansteckender, aber nicht gefährlicher sei als die älteren Coronaviren. Auch wies er darauf hin, dass die Corona-Infizierten unter älteren Leuten auch dann in die Statistik aufgenommen werden, wenn sie z.B. am Herzversagen und nicht an einer Lungenentzündung sterben würden. „Die Frage ist aber, ob er nicht sowieso gestorben wäre, auch ohne Sars-2.“ Der deutsche Radiologe und Ehrenpräsident der Bundesärztekammer, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, weiter: Ein Lockdown sei eine politische Verzweiflungsmaßnahme. „Wer so etwas verhängt, muss auch sagen, wann und wie er es wieder aufhebt. <...> Italien hat einen Lockdown verhängt und hat einen gegenteiligen Effekt erzielt <...> Virusausbreitung innerhalb des Lockdowns überhaupt nicht verlangsamt.“ 

© REUTERS / AXEL SCHMIDT

Keine Infektion über Türklinken und zu viele Spekulationen – Virologe zu Corona-Krise

Weiter meinte der rennommierte Ostschweizer Infektiologe Pietro Vernazza vom Kantonsspital St. Gallen in einem Interview, er habe verlässliche Zahlen aus Italien bekommen, woraus deutlich werde, dass rund 85 Prozent aller Infektionen erfolgt seien, ohne dass jemand die Infektion bemerkt habe. 90 Prozent der verstorbenen Patienten seien nachweislich über 70 Jahre alt, 50 Prozent über 80 Jahre alt. Wenn man Schulen schließe, verhindere man, dass die Kinder schnell immun werden. Seine Nachfrage beim Bundesamt für Gesundheit habe gezeigt, dass die Entscheidung nicht auf wissenschaftlicher Basis erfolgt sei, sondern am Beispiel an anderen Ländern. „Mindestens sollten wir die wissenschaftlichen Fakten besser in die politischen Entscheidungen einbinden“, mahnt Vernazza.

Auch Michael T. Osterholm, US-amerikanischer Epidemiologe für Infektionskrankheiten und Direktor des Zentrums für Forschung und Politik im Bereich Infektionskrankheiten an der University of Minnesota, mahnt: Der Lockdown ohne absehbares Ende könnte nicht nur zu einer Depression, sondern zum völligen Zusammenbruch der Wirtschaft führen, bei dem viele Arbeitsplätze dauerhaft verloren gehen würden, lange bevor der Impfstoff da sei. Als Alternative schlägt er vor, Menschen mit einem geringen Risiko für schwere Krankheiten zu ermöglichen, weiter zu arbeiten, Unternehmen und Industrie zu bedienen und die Gesellschaft zu „verwalten“, während Menschen mit einem höheren Risiko besser in Schutz genommen und die Kapazitäten im Gesundheitswesen verstärkt werden könnten.

© AFP 2020 / THOMAS KIENZLE

„Viele machen es durch und wissen es gar nicht“: Corona-„Überlebende“ aus Freiburg im Gespräch

Jetzt liegt die durchschnittliche weltweite Sterberate bei Covid-2019 laut den Daten der privaten US-amerikanischen Johns Hopkins University bei 5,2 Prozent. Der Direktor der WHO, Tedros Ghebreyesus, Anfang März von 3,4 Prozent gesprochen. Auch das Robert-Koch-Institut (RKI) meinte: Sterberate ist bei Coronavirus höher als bei Grippe. Die Sterberate bei der Influenza variiert sich dabei laut der WHO saisonabhängig von 0,1 bis 0,2 Prozent. Ein Argument für die Relativierer? Auch das RKI geht davon aus, dass die Zahl der tatsächlichen Corona-Fälle etwa vier- bis elfmal höher als die registrierten ist. Irgendwie schrieb auch der Professor für Medizin an der Stanford University, Dr. John Ioannidis, in seinem Artikel für Stat News unter Verweis auf seine statistischen Berechnungen, die reale Sterberate bei Corona liege etwa für die US-Bevölkerung zwischen 0,05 und einem Prozent. Hätte man von dem neuen Virus nicht gewusst und auf das Virus nicht getestet, wäre die Anzahl der Todesfälle von einer „grippeähnlichen Krankheit“ in diesem Jahr nicht ungewöhnlich - wahrscheinlich nur etwas höher.

„Wir müssen in einem heruntergewirtschaften, maroden System...“

Wer hat Recht? Diejenigen, die die aktuelle Corona-Politik kritisieren, ohne die Gefahr durch das Virus grundsätzlich abzulehnen, oder die „Dramatiker“, die auf den Fall Italien immer wieder verweisen, Fotos von überfüllten Krankenhäusern posten und vor mehreren Millionen Toten warnen? Kann sich jemand als falscher Experte, Alarmist, Scharlatan herausstellen? Viele davon sind doch Fachleute mit einem langjährigen Ruf, den sie für einen kurzfristigen Hype kaum geopfert hätten. 

© AP PHOTO / GERO BRELOER

Corona-Verstoß per Anweisung – Skandal in Hamburger Klinik? – Exklusiv

In einem anonymen Brief an Sputnik beschwerte sich kürzlich eine Krankenschwester aus den Hamburger Asklepios Kliniken über Mangel an Schutzausrüstung, wodurch das Personal zusätzlich bedroht wird. In den sozialen Netzwerken tauchen in den letzten Tagen mehrere verzweifelte Posts auf, die das Problem mit dem Fachkräftemangel noch akuter machen. „Durch Sparmaßnahmen wurden wir auf ein Minimum reduziert, so dass uns eine adäquate Patientenversorgung in den meisten Fällen nicht möglich war“, schrieb ein Krankenpfleger in einem offenen Brief an Gesundheitsminister Jens Spahn, der sofort viral ging.

„Warnungen wurden überhört, Überlastungsanzeigen blieben unbeantwortet.  <...> Wir müssen in einem heruntergewirtschaften, maroden System alle verbleibenden Kräfte mobilisieren und werden gezwungen, Entscheidungen über Leben und Tod zu treffen, die wir vielfach nicht hätten fällen müssen.“ Seine Frage an Spahn ist: Wieviel mehr hätte man retten können, wenn die Arbeit nicht seit Jahrzehnten durch die Diktatur des Kapitals unmöglich gemacht worden wäre? 

Dazu schreibt unter anderem der russische Polittechnologe Waleri Prochorow, es gehe nicht darum, was die Virologen und Ärzte hervorheben würden, sondern worüber die Gesundheitsämter und alle Verwickelte lieber schweigen würden.

„Es besteht die Gefahr von Pandemien auf der Welt, die moderne Gesundheitssysteme mit rein medizinischen Maßnahmen nicht bewältigen können.“

Die Gesundheitsbürokraten, so Prochorow, würden den Menschen erklären, dass der Teufel im Detail stecke und Optimierung heiße. Statistikdaten, die die erforderliche Anzahl von Betten, Ärzten, Beatmungsgeräten und anderen notwendigen Geräten berechnen würden, seien „posthum“: sie würden also die Epidemien beschrieben, die die Menschheit bewältigt hat. Eine verlängerte Inkubationszeit einer neuen Virusinfektion um einige Tage setze alle Berechnungen vergangener Perioden zurück und schaffe eine andere Realität, in der eine Person später behandelt und ebenso später von den Gesunden isoliert werde, als es bei der Planung der antiepidemischen Kapazitäten im Gesundheitssystem der Stadt X vorhergesehen worden sei. „Der Zusammenbruch mehrerer kommunaler Gesundheitssysteme kann auf nationaler Ebene zu einer Katastrophe wie in Italien führen.“

In seiner nüchternen Expertise ist Prochorow nicht alleine. Der bekannte US-Forscher in den Bereichen Statistik, Zufall, Epistemologie und ehemalige Finanzmathematiker Nassim Nicholas Taleb schrieb kürzlich über die Corona-Epidemie, sie hätte so oder so passieren sollen.

„Die Unvermeidlichkeit der globalen Pandemie ist eine Folge der Struktur der modernen Welt, ihrer übermäßig erhöhten Konnektivität und ihrer übermäßigen Optimierung.“

Taleb weist einen darauf hin, dass Länder wie Singapur - China ist auch dabei - schon seit 2010 einen Aktionsplan für solch ein Szenario parat gehabt hätten. Eine Risikoanalyse unter dem Titel „Pan­de­mie durch Vi­rus Mo­di-SARS“ hatte auch die Bundesregierung schon 2012 zur Verfügung, entwickelt vom RKI und zahlreichen Bundesämtern. Es war jedoch ein Maximalszenario mit etwa etwa sechs Millionen Erkrankten in Menschen in Deutschland nach 300 Tagen und einer Sterberate von 10 Prozent - im Sinne der Epidemiologie also ein falsches. Aktuell entspricht die deutsche Sterberate mit 1.158 Gestorbenen nach den Angaben des Instituts etwa 1,3 Prozent. 

© AFP 2020 / TOBIAS SCHWARZ

Corona vs. Bertelsmann: Stiftung wegen Forderung nach Krankenhausschließungen erneut in Kritik

Apropos …

Eigentlich hatte auch die neoliberale US-Stiftung „The Rockefeller Foundation“ samt der Beratungsfirma „Global Business Network“ seit 2010 eben vier unterschiedliche „Szenarien für die Zukunft der Technologie und der internationalen Entwicklung“ im Blick. Eine davon ist der sogenannte „LOCK STEP“, eine Weltgemeinschaft mit dem höchsten Grad an „Antiglobalismus“ und dem Mindestmaß an globaler „Anti-Fragilität“. Ein günstiger Boden für Verschwörungstheoretiker jeder Art, jedoch wird einem bei der Lektüre sofort klar, dass die Autoren der Studie dieses Szenario lieber um jeden Preis verhindern würden, denn es wäre auch ein Szenario einer gespaltenen Welt, in der die Kontrolle durch die Regierung und die autoritäre Herrschaft verschärft, Innovationen und Bürgerrechte und -freiheiten begrenzt würden.https://de.sputniknews.com/deutschland/20200404326793892-verbotspolitik-coronavirus/https://de.sputniknews.com/deutschland/20200404326793892-verbotspolitik-coronavirus/

Capitalist-imperialist West stays home over corona – they grew a conscience?

8505 ViewsMarch 22, 2020 44 Comments

by Ramin Mazaheri, exclusive for the Saker Blog

In the UK an average of just 600 people die from influenza every year, a testament to the major socialist concept the incredibly rich island has tolerated – the National Health Service.

In the US, where the biggest socialist concept they have tolerated is Social Security – to prevent mass elder-class starvation – the lack of health care annually kills 11 times more people than in the UK (proportionally). “It’s fine,” they say in the US – the price of freedom. Freedom of expression above all.

However, all of a sudden everyone across the West cares about preventing mostly-preventable flu deaths. Really?

In fact, apparently the West cares more than anybody: South Korea quarantined some neighborhoods, China one major city, Iran encouraged a national quarantine, but the West wants two entire continents to stay at home.

What overreaction? The West just has a huge heart – haven’t their capitalist and Christian evangelists been saying that for four centuries?

In fact, how dare you possible micro-trigger a Westerner by suggesting an overblown macro-triggering? The vastly, vastly, VASTLY greater reaction of the West than of China, South Korea and Iran is entirely merited, and this cannot be questioned. Or so they keep shouting.

The problem in the West is that those in power during the corona crisis should not be in power.

Firstly, whereas in China it is as hard to get into the vanguard Communist Party as the Ivy League, in the West all one needs is rich friends or friends with clout. So of course the quality of the West’s public service response to corona could have been predicted to be comparatively inferior.

The fourth estate and unofficial branch of government, the media, is similarly compromised: I can’t read Chinese to verify if they are calming a panic instead of inflaming it, but I can read the dire warnings broadcast 24/7 by the Western MSM, whose ratings are surely through the roof. Very over-dramatic, indeed. Personally, I have encouraged anyone who will listen to heed my professional media opinion regarding this corona crisis: the less time you spend watching the Western MSM the saner and more stable you will be during this crisis. Your family will thank you.

In the West technocrats are in power: thus, in an epidemic we must all listen to doctors and statistical-modelling specialists. Both are quite well-paid jobs. Western technocratism means that the West absolutely cannot have policy even partially dictated by the needs or experiences of their legion of middle-aged, single-mother waitresses; or any of the 40% of Americans who don’t have $500 to cover an emergency; or any part of the Yellow Vest-supporting Europeans who have had their social safety net slashed by unending banker bailouts and austerity measures.

The interpretation of statistics, and the public policy such statistics should influence – these things surely cannot be influenced by ideology, can they? I agree though – better to listen to nerds than to not get a second medical opinion.

Let’s not act like they are Cuban: US doctors are perfectly at ease with you being homeless over unpaid medical bills, and they don’t want you forcing them to go work on the front lines to cover this flu crisis. Cynical? Well, I am a daily-hack journalist, but is it such a taboo thought to think when you see yet another doctor handing down a life-and-death proclamation with smug certainty, yet again? Doctors are never wrong… yet the third-largest cause of death in the US is malpractice.

Given this undoubted difference in terms of public policy servants and public policy explainers, why on earth should we assume that the West’s public servants are going to outshine Eastern ones? However, what can and cannot be achieved in these countries is also very different.

On a social level China, South Korea and Iran are Asian societies which are fundamentally more patriarchal and social, whereas Western societies are more matriarchal and individualist. This means that in the West many overworked single mothers are being inflamed into OCD-level sanitizings, while non-deadbeat divorced Dads are proving their all-conquering filial love by fist-fighting over toilet paper for Junior.

As stay at home orders – which vary from suggestions to promises of fines – proliferate across the West I will go out on a limb and say that many Westerners will go far further and treat the orders as if they were martial law. Yes, Westerners insist that they are more freedom-loving and unable to tie down than any Muslim nomad, but I recall a quite compliant response during the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent lockdown. American libertarianism is only for good times, it seems.

Contrarily, it is rather amusing that on the first day of spring – a day celebrated as Nowruz in Iran – some regions reported that holiday traffic was 98% as high as in 2019 despite official pleas to stay at home. That is very European of Iranians – nothing stops an Iranian’s vacation, too. Of course, their vacations are not to go and cheaply break anti-nudity laws in Tunisia but to visit relative after relative after relative. But the point is made: with warmth, happiness and in a group, all of the Islamic Republic of Iran simply must celebrate this pagan holiday. What a bunch of fundamentalist Muslims, indeed. As regards to the “Great McDonald’s Satan”: Nothing starts their vacations: worker instability and workaholism incredibly translates into half their workforce with paid vacations being too unwilling to use their paltry number of vacation days; half of all US workers overall work in “low-wage” jobs, meaning they can’t afford vacations period.

But the incredibly elevated conscience of the West is indicated by their incredibly more drastic response that that of the East’s: they are apparently willing to trash their already weak, corruption-rotted, unsuccessful austerity/QE economies to prevent flu deaths among the elderly with significant existing medical conditions.

Bottom line: the West is choosing to avoid flu deaths among the sick elderly now but may wind up with far more deaths due to the mass unemployment and economic chaos they view as the only solution to corona. But bad economics kills, too.

Whatever it takes… not to the save the Eurozone, but to end it?

But economics can’t be discussed in the West: TINA – there is no solution to “capitalism with American characteristics”. Those are “global values”.

Anyway, bad economic policies don’t kill – the market does. And the market cannot be stopped or regulated.

Sure, markets can crash, and ruin the 401k retirement plans (i.e. the US “pension system” – ugh! Terrible… but it makes NYC bankers and stockbrokers happy), of the elderly class, but the US can’t close or control the markets. Sorry Gramps! You survived corona but you’re 30% more busted.

Say goodbye to the Bernie Sanders campaign – in a crisis US (fake) leftists will fall in line for stability, pragmatism and personal safety, just like in 2008. The US is a dog-eat-dog capitalist-imperialist society and in a global crisis the US dog has to make sure they can keep eating the foreign dogs, after all. International solidarity is for socialist suckers; Western sanctions on corona medicine must remain to try and implode Iran, Cuba, etc.

But, as I have written about for years: the Eurozone remains the largest macro-economy and yet also the weakest link in the macro-economy. They have, few want to admit, already had a Lost Decade. Quantitative Easing and Zero Interest Rate Policies have only re-inflated the 1%er bubbles in the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) markets. It’s incredible: the Western economy is so kindly shutting down for weeks even though they are even more over-leveraged in 2020 than in the 2008 economic crisis, which was sparked by over-leveraging. Don’t the doctors, epidemiologists and helicopter moms know that?

Contrarily, China has had recent decades of spectacular growth, as has South Korea. So has Iran, from the end of the Iraq War until 2012, when the inhuman triple sanctions (EU, UN, US) were levied, and then successes were further delayed by the 2014 oil price collapse.

Incredibly crucially for the ambitions of the corona virus, those three nations have ideologies, histories and cultures which have given their governments far, far more control over their economies. Certainly, in a time of crisis they have more levers to pull to help their nations as well as the willingness to pull them (unlike, say US Republicans/Libertarians).

Some smart journalists have pointed out to Westerners that corona is showing what life is like under Western sanctions. Nations like Iran, Venezuela, China (sanctioned for over two decades post-1949) are quite used to such a life, but: welcome to the party – you appear quite awkward and nervous.

I understand your concern: the US is proudly dog-eat-dog, and the neoliberal, post-1989-inspired structure adopted by the European Union is the dog-eat-dog model the US wishes their Founding Fathers had been dumb enough to implement.

Corona is bad, certainly, but bad economics kills too. Are we trading fewer corona deaths now for even more regular flu deaths in 6 months, caused by all the people pushed into poverty by the Great Recession tipping into the Great Depression 2? This is a vital question, and not a heartless one at all.

We are all in this together, and that’s yet another affirmation of post-1917 socialist worldviews, but at the end of the corona crisis we can all only reap what we have nationally sown.

China eats dogs, and they will pick up the pieces of those whose sowings compounded the corona crisis; whose overreactions – provoked by a lack of economic stability, physical security and emotional trust in many social areas – threaten to pop Everything Bubble 2, which is a verifiable economic reality and not journalistic hyperbole. Russia and Iran will likely be forced to play custodian, too. This is the same century-old story that we have seen in fascist Germany, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, etc.

I hope wherever you are that you and your family are healthy, and that you have faith in the goodness and capability of your nation’s leaders. You’re going to need them, and me as well. (Joe Biden, really?)

Me, I’m going out. I’m a journalist, the most despised – and by a huge margin – of all the first-responders, LOL. However, watching many of my Mainstream Media colleagues during the corona crisis reminds me why this is the case.

If the West’s response does prove to have been an overreaction – if China’s shut down of Wuhan and a few smaller cities was not supposed to replicated on a multi-continental level, in large part because the West does not have the socialist-inspired policy tools to take such extreme preventative measures – then resentment towards mainstream journalists will, and should, only increase.

So that would be something good from corona. In fact, here will be a lot of positives from Corona, but many of them left-handed.

The new year just began; it’s the second day of spring; the world will not end in the next 30 days – I find it hard to be hysterical, negative and over-dramatic, personally. Enjoy being home alone, if that’s what you insist on.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’ and the upcoming ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’.
http://thesaker.is/capitalist-imperialist-west-stays-home-over-corona-they-grew-a-conscience/

LETTER FROM PRESIDENT MADURO - Coat of Arms - NICOLÁS MADURO MOROS PRESIDENT OF THE  BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA Caracas, 29th March 2020 To the Peoples of the World  In greeting you, with affection, I take the liberty of addressing you on the occasion of denouncing the severe events taking place against the peace and stability of Venezuela, at a time when the concern of the States and Governments should be focused on the protection of the life and health of their citizens, due to the acceleration of the COVID-19 pandemic. As it is publicly known, last March 26, the government of the United States announced a very serious action against a group of high officials of the Venezuelan State, including the Constitutional President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro. This action consisted in the presentation of a formal accusation before the American judicial system, which is not only by illegal in itself, by also seeks to support a false accusation of drug trafficking and terrorism, with the sole objective of simulating the alleged judicialization of the Venezuelan authorities. This American performance includes the unusual offer of an international reward to anyone who provides information about the President and the high Venezuelan officials, leading to a dangerous moment of tension in the continent. I therefore consider it necessary to make an account of the facts, which reveal the perverse plot behind the accusations of the Department of Justice. Just one day before, on March 25, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela denounced before national and international public opinion the development in Colombian territory of a operation aimed at attempting against the life of President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro Moros, his family members and high State officials; as well as attacking civil and military objectives in our country, accusing Mr. Clíver Alcalá, a retired general of the Venezuelan armed forces, of being the military chief of that operation. This denounce was made with all responsibility, after a control operation in the road to the north of Colombia, near the border with Venezuela, was announced on March 24, in which the police of that country captured a batch or war weapons in a civilian vehicle. The investigations revealed that it was a sophisticated arsenal aimed at a group of former Venezuelan and Colombian military and paramilitary personnel who were training in camps located in Colombian territory. On March 26, the aforementioned Clíver Alcalá, gave a statement to a Colombian media outlet -from his residence in the city of Barranquilla, Colombia- in which he confirmed his participation in the reported events, confessing to being the military leader of the operation and revealing that the weapons were purchased by order of Mr. Juan Guaidó, national deputy, who calls himself interim President of Venezuela and serves as Washington's operator in the country. He also confirmed that the weapons were intended to carry out a military operation to assassinate senior members of the Venezuelan State and Government and to produce a coup d'état in Venezuela. Mr. Alcalá clarified that the weapons were purchased through a contract signed by himself, Mr. Juan Guaidó, U.S. advisors and Mr. Juan José Rendón, political advisor to President Iván Duque, and carried out with the knowledge of Colombian government authorities. In the face of this confession, the unusual response of the United States government has been the publication of the accusations mentioned at the beginning of this letter, with the extravagant inclusion of the name of Mr. Alcalá, as if he were part of the Venezuelan aucthorities and not a mercenary hired by the United States to carry out a terrorist operation against the Venezuelan government. As a demonstration of this statement, I need no more proof than to mention the alleged capture of Mr. Alcalá by Colombian security forces and his immediate surrender to U.S. DEA authorities, in a curious act in which the prisoner, without handcuffs, was shaking hands with his captors, right in front of the stairs of the plane that would take him on a special VIP flight to the United States, which shows that in reality this whole set-up is about the rescue of someone they consider a U.S. agent. It must be stressed that the unsuccessful armed operation was originally designed to be executed at the end of this month, while all of Venezuela is fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Actually, this is precisely the main battle that concerns humanity today. A battle that our nation is successfully waging, having managed to stop the contagion curve, reinforcing health provisions and keeping the population in a massive quarantine, with a low number of positive cases and deaths. For all these reasons, the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela alerts our brothers and sisters of political organizations and social movements around the world about the reckless and criminal steps being taken by the administration of Donald Trump which, despite the frightening acceleration of the growth of COVID-19 affecting the American people, seems determined to deepen its policy of aggression against sovereign states in the region, and especially against the Venezuelan people. During the pandemic, the U.S. government, instead of focusing on policies of global cooperation in health and prevention, has increased unilateral coercive measures, has rejected the requests from the international community to lift or make flexible the illegal sanctions that prevent Venezuela from accessing medicines, medical equipment and food. At the same time, it has banned humanitarian flights from the United States to Venezuela to repatriate hundreds of Venezuelans trapped in the economic and health crisis in the northern country. By denouncing these serious facts, Venezuela ratifies its unwavering will to maintain a relationship of respect and cooperation with all nations, especially in this unprecedented circumstance that forces responsible governments to work together and put aside their differences, as is the case with the COVID-19 pandemic. Under such serious circumstances, I request your invaluable support in the face of this unusual and arbitrary persecution, executed through a new version of that rancid McCarthyism unleashed after World War II. At that time, they willingly labeled their adversaries as Communists in order to persecute them; today they do so by means of the whimsical categories of terrorists or drug traffickers, without having any evidence whatsoever. Condemning and neutralizing today these unjustifiable attacks against Venezuela will be very useful to prevent Washington from launching similar campaigns against other peoples and governments of the world tomorrow. We must all adhere to the principles of the United Nations Charter, to prevent excessive unilateralism from leading to international chaos. Brothers and sisters of the world, you can be absolutely sure that Venezuela will stand firm in its fight for peace and that, under any circumstances, it will prevail. No imperialist aggression, however ferocious it may be, will divert us from the sovereign and independent path that we have forged for 200 years, nor will it distance us from the sacred obligation to preserve the life and health of our people in the face of the frightening global pandemic of COVID-19. I take this opportunity to express my solidarity and that of the people of Venezuela to all the peoples who today also suffer serious consequences from the effects of the pandemic. If we are obliged to draw any lesson from all this difficult experience, it is precisely that only together we can move forward. The political and economic models that advocate selfishness and individualism have demonstrated their total failure to face this situation. Let us firmly advance towards a new World with justice and social equality, in which the happiness and fullness of the human being is the center of our actions. I appreciate the solidarity that you have permanently expressed towards my country and my people, denouncing the criminal blockade to which we and many other nations are subjected. I take this opportunity to reiterate my respect and affection, and to invite you to continue united, plowing a future of hope and dignity. - Seal of the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela -  Nicolás Maduro Moros  *** U.S. Peace Council • P.O. Box 3105, New Haven, CT 06515 • (203) 387-0370 • USPC@USPeaceCouncil.org  • https://uspeacecouncil.org • https://facebook.com/USPeaceCouncil/ Sent via Action Network, a free online toolset anyone can use to organize. Click here to sign up and get started building an email list and creating online actions today.  Action Network is an open platform that empowers individuals and groups to organize for progressive causes. We encourage responsible activism, and do not support using the platform to take unlawful or other improper action. We do not control or endorse the conduct of users and make no representations of any kind about them.  You can unsubscribe or update your email address or change your name and address by changing your subscription preferences here.