By Dr. John Campbell
EU left Italy ‘practically alone’ to fight coronavirus, so Rome looked for help elsewhere, incl Russia
The EU’s initial response to the massive outbreak of coronavirus in Italy was largely “inadequate,” and a lack of European solidarity opened the doors for Russia and China, former Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told RT.
The new epicenter of the dreaded pandemic, Italy, has been struggling to stop the spread of Covid-19 for weeks now. The disease has already killed more than six thousand people in the country, with over 60 thousand people infected.
EU tried to pin the blame on Italy
The EU clearly underestimated the virus, blaming the outbreak in Italy on its national healthcare system flaws, according to the two-time foreign minister and OSCE representative. As a result, Brussels, which preaches pan-European solidarity, failed to act when this solidarity was needed in the face of a crisis that eventually affected the entire bloc.
Frankly speaking, Brussels is not doing enough. At the very first moment, Italy was practically alone against the virus. Many said it was all because of the Italian habits, because Italians do not respect the rules. Suddenly, they realized all the other countries were equally affected.
The situation in other major EU states like Germany and France deteriorated rapidly, forcing them to deal with thousands of infected on their own soil.
“Everyone just focused on the situation at home before even thinking about helping others,” Andrea Giannotti, the executive director of the Italian Institute of Eurasian Studies, told RT.
The lack of solidarity was recently noted from outside of the bloc – Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic decried European solidarity as a myth, while praising Beijing for its assistance. His remarks came after Serbia received five million masks from China, which it could not get in Europe.
The EU is now trying “to do more” and somehow “make up” for its initial poor execution of a coordinated response, former Italian MP Dario Rivolta said.
Brussels has indeed ramped up its efforts, suspending the bloc’s strict Stability and Growth Pact regulating budgetary policy among others. Frattini particularly hailed this decision, which allows Rome to act freely in terms of budgetary spending, as “very important.” But this came only after Europe “realized its [measures] were inadequate to give a united response.”
Still, it is not enough, Rivolta told RT, adding that “for the moment,” there are no major changes. And while financial relief is necessary, there are other things to be considered, such as medical assistance.
“As for the medical aspects, the only thing that the EU did up to now was to put barriers between Italy and other countries.”
Huge support in terms of expertise
At one point, requests for help were sent out all over the world, according to Giannotti.
“Some Italian embassies were tasked with negotiating with local governments in order to find any opportunities to receive assistance from abroad, including help with equipment, which Italy lacks.” Russia and China were among those who responded.
In total, Moscow prepared nine cargo planes with emergency aid, delivering vital medical equipment and supplies, as well as bringing experienced specialists in infectious diseases and military doctors to Italy. Now they will be deployed to the most affected regions in the country’s north.
Frattini said the help was of the utmost importance: “What Russia has done is not comparable to what other countries have done, including China because China also sent something but not comparable with the support provided by Russia.”
The specialists have provided “very huge support in terms of expertise… in terms of virology.”
The assistance serves as a gesture of solidarity in times of European sanctions on Moscow and the counter-measures, Giannotti said. Sending help “despite [the fact] the situation in Russia itself may also worsen” means it is a clear message that Moscow is ready to talk and settle issues with Europe when there is a greater need for cooperation.
Speaking to RT, the Italian ambassador to Russia, Pasquale Terracciano, agreed that a joint approach is the best way to put an end to the pandemic.
Thanking Moscow for the contribution, he said: “It will be crucial to recover from this tragic situation, hopefully soon.”
Countries are starting to hoard food, threatening global trade
By Isis Almeida and Agnieszka de Sousa
It’s not just grocery shoppers who are hoarding pantry staples. Some governments are moving to secure domestic food supplies during the conoravirus pandemic.
Kazakhstan, one of the world’s biggest shippers of wheat flour, banned exports of that product along with others, including carrots, sugar and potatoes. Serbia has stopped the flow of its sunflower oil and other goods. Russia is leaving the door open to shipment bans and said it’s assessing the situation weekly.
To be perfectly clear, there have been just a handful of moves and no sure signs that much more is on the horizon. Still, what’s been happening has raised a question: Is this the start of a wave of food nationalism that will further disrupt supply chains and trade flows?
“We’re starting to see this happening already — and all we can see is that the lockdown is going to get worse,” said Tim Benton, research director in emerging risks at think tank Chatham House in London.
Though food supplies are ample, logistical hurdles are making it harder to get products where they need to be as the coronavirus unleashes unprecedented measures, panic buying and the threat of labor crunches.
Consumers across the globe are still loading their pantries — and the economic fallout from the virus is just starting. The specter of more trade restrictions is stirring memories of how protectionism can often end up causing more harm than good. That adage rings especially true now as the moves would be driven by anxiety and not made in response to crop failures or other supply problems.
Related video: Food supply is not where it’s needed
As it is, many governments have employed extreme measures, setting curfews and limits on crowds or even on people venturing out for anything but to acquire essentials. That could spill over to food policy, said Ann Berg, an independent consultant and veteran agricultural trader who started her career at Louis Dreyfus Co. in 1974.
“You could see wartime rationing, price controls and domestic stockpiling,” she said.
Some nations are adding to their strategic reserves. China, the biggest rice grower and consumer, pledged to buy more than ever before from its domestic harvest, even though the government already holds massive stockpiles of rice and wheat, enough for one year of consumption.
Key wheat importers including Algeria and Turkey have also issued new tenders, and Morocco said a suspension on wheat-import duties would last through mid-June.
As governments take nationalistic approaches, they risk disrupting an international system that has become increasingly interconnected in recent decades.
Kazakhstan had already stopped exports of other food staples, like buckwheat and onions, before the move this week to cut off wheat-flour shipments. That latest action was a much bigger step, with the potential to affect companies around the world that rely on the supplies to make bread.
For some commodities, a handful of countries, or even fewer, make up the bulk of exportable supplies. Disruptions to those shipments would have major global ramifications. Take, for example, Russia, which has emerged as the world’s top wheat exporter and a key supplier to North Africa.
“If governments are not working collectively and cooperatively to ensure there is a global supply, if they’re just putting their nations first, you can end up in a situation where things get worse,” said Benton of Chatham House.
He warned that frenzied shopping coupled with protectionist policies could eventually lead to higher food prices — a cycle that could end up perpetuating itself.
“If you’re panic buying on the market for next year’s harvest, then prices will go up, and as prices go up, policy makers will panic more,” he said.
And higher grocery bills can have major ramifications. Bread costs have a long history of kick-starting unrest and political instability. During the food price spikes of 2011 and 2008, there were food riots in more than 30 nations across Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
“Without the food supply, societies just totally break,” Benton said.
Unlike previous periods of rampant food inflation, global inventories of staple crops like corn, wheat, soybeans and rice are plentiful, said Dan Kowalski, vice president of research at CoBank, a $145 billion lender to the agriculture industry, adding he doesn’t expect “dramatic” gains for prices now.
While the spikes of the last decade were initially caused by climate problems for crops, policies exacerbated the consequences. In 2010, Russia experienced a record heat wave that damaged the wheat crop. The government responded by banning exports to make sure domestic consumers had enough.
The United Nations’ measure of global food prices reached a record high by February 2011.
“Given the problem that we are facing now, it’s not the moment to put these types of policies into place,” said Maximo Torero, chief economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. “On the contrary, it’s the moment to cooperate and coordinate.”
Read More on Food Issues in Virus Era:
| There’s Plenty of Food in the World, Just Not Where It’s Needed
Americans Drop Kale and Quinoa to Lock Down With Chips and Oreos Cargill Says China Offers Hope for Meat Markets Hit by Virus |
Of course, the few bans in place may not last, and signs of a return to normal could prevent countries from taking drastic measures. Once consumers start to see more products on shelves, they may stop hoarding, in turn allowing governments to back off. X5 Retail, Russia’s biggest grocer, said demand for staple foods is starting to stabilize. In the U.S., major stores like Walmart Inc. have cut store hours to allow workers to restock.
In the meantime, some food prices have already started going up because of the spike in buying.
Wheat futures in Chicago, the global benchmark, have climbed more than 6% in March as consumers buy up flour. U.S. wholesale beef has shot up to the highest since 2015, and egg prices are higher.
At the same time, the U.S. dollar is surging against a host of emerging-market currencies. That reduces purchasing power for countries that ship in commodities, which are usually priced in greenbacks.
n the end, whenever there’s a disruption for whatever reason, Berg said, “it’s the least-developed countries with weak currencies that get hurt the most.”
“I Don’t Care! I Don’t Care! I Don’t Care!” Pelosi Snaps at CNN’s Dana Bash For Asking About Trump’s Plans to Put America Back to Work (VIDEO)
By Cristina Laila – March 24, 2020
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi snapped at CNN’s Dana Bash Tuesday afternoon when the host brought up Trump’s recent remarks suggesting bringing Americans out of quarantine and back to work.
“I don’t have time to follow people’s twits…tweets, Twitters, whatever, tweets — so don’t expect me to comment on that,” Pelosi said.
“Well, even beyond Twitter, the President of the United States is signaling that he could open it up,” Bash said.
“What is your opinion on that?” Bash said pressing Pelosi.
“I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care!” Pelosi said as CNN’s Dana Bash brought up Trump’s plans to open America back up for business soon.
“It is not scientific based — he’s notion mongering,” Pelosi slurred.
Of course Pelosi doesn’t care about Americans going back to work. She wants America shut down while she holds the country hostage and tries to shove her Socialist wish list through Congress.
President Trump on Tuesday appeared on Fox News for a town hall to discuss his administration’s ongoing efforts to combat the Coronavirus.
Trump said he would likely open the country back up by Easter (April 12).
“I would love to have [the country] open by Easter,” Trump said. “It’s such an important day for other reasons.”
Los Angeles County Sheriff Closing All Gun Retailers, Says They Are ‘Not An Essential Function’
March 24, 2020
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has announced that they will be closing all gun retailers as they are “not an essential function.”
Sheriff Villanueva also added 1,300 more deputies to patrol the county and released 1,700 “nonviolent” inmates from county jails since Governor Gavin Newson issued a stay-at-home order in the state.
Speaking to Fox 11, Villanueva claimed to support the Second Amendment, but spewed anti-gun talking points while announcing the gun store shut down.
“We will be closing them, they are not an essential function,” Villanueva said. “I’m a supporter of the 2nd amendment, I’m a gun owner myself, but now you have the mixture of people that are not formerly gun owners and you have a lot more people at home and anytime you introduce a firearm in a home, from what I understand from CDC studies, it increases fourfold the chance that someone is gonna get shot.”
The station reports that he also freed 10% of the inmate population from county jails — nonviolent offenders with misdemeanor sentences that were up within 30 days.
“We’re gonna keep violent felony suspects who are a threat to the community in the jail no matter what,” Villanueva said. “Anybody who has an idea that somehow we’re not going to be hard on crooks out there on the streets, they’re tragically mistaken, there’s twice as many deputies on the street now so the odds of you getting caught are a lot higher.”
Though he has doubled the police patrol, he claims that the National Guard is not active in the county, despite photos posted to social media that show large amounts of military vehicles.
“If we start losing major portions of our sworn personnel, that impacts our ability to man jails or our patrol obligations, and were running out of people to do that, if were in that position typically our counterparts in LAPD they’ll be in the same boat, then we can use the National Guard to start assigning them to security operations,” Villanueva said.
On Monday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied an emergency request that would have blocked the governor’s order to close all gun retailers in the state in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The court ruled on Sunday evening that the gun shops could be closed down, letting the order go into effect on Monday.
The gun shop shut down was part of an order by Democrat Governor Tom Wolf that closed all businesses that are not considered to be “life sustaining.” Gun rights groups argued before the Supreme Court that this should include weapons retailers, but they were denied.
The order shut down the stores on Monday without any timeline for when they can reopen.
WATCH: COUPLE CASUALLY LOOTS CORONAVIRUS SUPPLIES FROM SAN FRANCISCO WALGREENS
‘I hope you overdose,’ man filming tells looters
By Adan Salazar – March 24, 2020
A man and a woman casually looted items from a local Walgreens pharmacy in San Francisco, as customers and workers helplessly looked on.
The couple was filmed looting last week at a Walgreens on Drumm Street, near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
“I hope the drugs are good,” one worker tells the pair, as they continue to fill reusable shopping bags with various items.
“Pieces of shit,” another man filming says, adding, “I hope you overdose.”
A similar incident was documented at another San Francisco-area Walgreens store earlier this month.
Thieves have taken to openly pilfering merchandise since the state’s passage of Proposition 47, which reduces theft of up to $950 in merchandise to a mere misdemeanor crime, but criminals appear more emboldened in the wake of coronavirus panic-buys.
Similarly, police in Philadelphia have announced they will no longer prosecute thefts or other nonviolent crimes ostensibly to keep coronavirus from spreading in jails.
“Instead, they’ll briefly detain the suspect to confirm identity and fill out arrest warrant paperwork, then release the suspect,” reports Reason.com. “The arrest warrant will be served at a later time when the coronavirus risk has faded.”
21 Million Chinese Cellphone Users Disappear in Three Months of Pandemic
By John Hayward – 3/24/2020
The opacity of the Chinese Communist government obliges responsible outside observers to look for clues to the truth of the coronavirus epidemic, instead of merely repeating official information without question.
The official count from China is 3,277 fatalities from 81,171 infections as of Tuesday, but the Epoch Times noted the troubling disappearance of some 21 million cell phone accounts in China over the past three months – an unprecedented decline that hints at more fatalities than Beijing is prepared to admit.
It should be stated at the outset that we should not be forced to read tea leaves to figure out what really happened in China, especially in the virus epicenter of Hubei province and the city of Wuhan, where Chinese officials are currently making claims of zero new infections that no one seriously believes. While more responsible governments issue troubling warnings of a second wave of infections, severe enough to prompt the re-imposition of quarantine procedures that were only recently lifted, China claims it has no second wave and all of its new coronavirus cases are imported.
With that in mind, the Epoch Times thought it was a bit odd for 21 million Chinese cell phones to abruptly disappear, given that cell phone usage has been increasing constantly in China for years, and phones have been touted as an important tool for containing the coronavirus epidemic:
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced on March 19 the number of phone users in each province in February. Compared with the previous announcement, which was released on Dec. 18, 2019, for November 2019 data, both cellphone and landline users dropped dramatically. In the same period the year before, the number of users increased.
The number of cellphone users decreased from 1.600957 billion to 1.579927 billion, a drop of 21.03 million. The number of landline users decreased from 190.83 million to 189.99 million, a drop of 840,000.
In the previous February, the number increased. According to MIIT, the number of cellphone users increased in February 2019 from 1.5591 billion to 1.5835 billion, which is 24.37 million more. The number of landline users increased from 183.477 million to 190.118 million, which is 6.641 million more.
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s population at the end of 2019 was 4.67 million larger than in 2018, reaching 1.40005 billion.
The article went on to postulate that some of the landlines might have been shut down as a consequence of the coronavirus quarantines, particularly lines used by shuttered business operations, but the sheer magnitude of the cell phone user decline makes it more difficult to explain. China Mobile, the nation’s largest carrier, reported gaining 3.7 million new accounts in December but then losing over 8 million in January and February, months in which it posted gains of 3.5 million users the previous year.
The Epoch Times considered several explanations for the loss of users, such as migrant workers who kept different cell phones for their home and work cities – necessary due to some of China’s regulations on phone service – abandoning the work phone because it was not needed during the quarantine period, or people generally canceling their phone service because they wanted to save money during the hard months.
On the other hand, the government is currently requiring citizens to use their cell phones to generate “health codes” so their movements can be tracked and permission to travel can be restricted to healthy individuals, so as U.S.-based commentator Tang Jiangyuan put it, it is effectively “impossible for a person to cancel his cellphone.”
“Dealing with the government for pensions and social security, buying train tickets, shopping … no matter what people want to do, they are required to use cell phones,” Tang noted.
The New York Times explained just how heavily Chinese authorities are leaning on those cell phones to monitor their population, and not just for coronavirus infections:
The Times’s analysis found that as soon as a user grants the software access to personal data, a piece of the program labeled “reportInfoAndLocationToPolice” sends the person’s location, city name and an identifying code number to a server. The software does not make clear to users its connection to the police. But according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency and an official police social media account, law enforcement authorities were a crucial partner in the system’s development.
While Chinese internet companies often share data with the government, the process is rarely so direct. In the United States, it would be akin to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using apps from Amazon and Facebook to track the coronavirus, then quietly sharing user information with the local sheriff’s office.
The system, which relies on a unit of the immense Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, assigns users a green, yellow, or red “health code” in the style of a traffic light. Predictably, Chinese citizens find the opaque system cryptic and frightening, since the government has not explained exactly how it works.
“In some cities, residents now have to register their phone numbers with an app to take public transportation,” the Times added.
At the beginning of March, the so-called Alipay Health Code system had been launched in the city of Hangzhou, expanded to 200 other cities, and was on its way to a complete nationwide rollout. The rollout ran into some hitches over the following weeks, from technical glitches to confusion caused by local governments adding their own health codes to the already intimidating system.
A correspondent writing for Bloomberg News on March 18 reported using the system and said it was in the process of being “rolled out nationwide at railway stations, restaurants, pharmacies, and more.” Other reports in China have noted how cell phones are ubiquitous there and are employed for everything from accessing public and commercial resources to telecommuting to school during the coronavirus lockdown.
With this in mind, it might not be completely impossible to get by in Chinese cities without a cell phone at the moment, but it seems unlikely that a huge number of citizens would choose this moment to get rid of their phones.
“Lacking data, the real death toll in China is a mystery. The cancellation of 21 million cellphones provides a data point that suggests the real number may be far higher than the official number,” the Epoch Times concluded.
CORONAVIRUS – Tuesday 24 March, a vital message
By Dr. John Campbell – 3/24/2020
For American audiences the thing to remember might be: “Would you rather be 6 feet apart or 6 feet under?”
Up to 640,000 people could be infected with coronavirus in Italy – civil protection chief
The number of Covid-19 cases in Italy is probably ten times higher than official numbers, according to Italy’s civil protection chief Angelo Borrelli, who said that as many as 640,000 people could be infected in the country.
“It is credible to estimate that there are 10 positive cases for every one officially reported,” Borrelli told La Repubblica newspaper on Monday.
The latest figures show almost 64,000 people have been infected and 6,077 have died from the infection in barely a month, making Italy the worst-affected country in the world, with close to double the number of fatalities in China, where the virus emerged last year.
Medical experts confirm that Italy has focused its testing only on people showing severe symptoms in areas with high epidemic intensity like Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto in the north of the country, thus it is difficult to say the real numbers.
“This causes an increase in the fatality rate because it is based on the most severe cases and not on the totality of those infected,” says Massimo Galli, head of the infectious disease unit at Sacco Hospital in Milan.
Italy reported 602 new deaths from the coronavirus on Monday. The number of fatalities dropped for a second day in a row, after reaching an all-time high of 793 on Saturday.
TUCKER: DEMS PUTTING “WOKENESS ABOVE ALL” BY BLOCKING CORONAVIRUS RELIEF
Democratic legislation “uses the words diverse or diversity more than 60 times”
MARCH 24, 2020
Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson slammed Democrats for holding up the coronavirus relief legislation, urging that they are “indulging their creepy ideological obsessions” by inserting stuff that has absolutely “nothing to do with fighting the pandemic.”
Carlson highlighted several parts of the 1,400 page House Democratic bill, which is stuffed with pork, and noted that most of it is about being ‘woke’ rather than fighting the killer virus.
“The bill would require every corporation that receives coronavirus aid to have officers and a budget dedicated to diversity and inclusion initiatives for a minimum of five years after they get the money,” Carlson noted.
“Because that is going to keep America healthy and prosperous, just like it has,” Carlson sarcastically emphasised.
“Companies would also have to produce elaborate racial reports for the government listing the skin color and the sex of their officers and boards of directors. They have to prove they give enough money to firms owned by women and nonwhites, and of course how much they spend on diversity initiatives,” he continued, pointing to the relevant sections of the bill.
Carlson noted that the bill “uses the words diverse or diversity more than 60 times.”
“What does that have to do with the pandemic that might kill you?” he asserted, adding “Not one thing. Just more ugly race politics, the kind they specialize in.”
“This is insanity, it’s dangerous insanity,” he proclaimed, adding “Who cares what color your scientists are?”
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