via US and Israel team up to thwart war crimes probes | The Electronic Intifada
Category: Uncategorized
While it is not made clear if US taxpayer funds will be going to institutions like IIBR, it’s safe to say that any vaccine developed in Israel is going to provoke well-deserved suspicion. The distinction between private companies and the state are virtually non-existent in Israel, and biotech firms like Dyadic do not hide their relationship to IIBR.
There is no sign that the IIBR, a military outfit founded specifically with the intent of indiscriminately murdering non-Jews with germs, poisons, and viruses, has changed its original Zionist mission. Any Israeli vaccination should be treated as suspiciously as an Arab village’s well within Ben-Gurion’s reach.
Herein lies the sobering reassurance of such stories. They remind us that worlds, like people, die all the time, only to be replaced by new worlds. Cities fall and rise again, as do civilizations. Even dystopian places like Idi Amin’s Uganda or the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodian killing fields eventually burn out. The handmaid lives to tell her tale and Gilead, too, crumbles in the end.
Athens survived the plague, though its democracy was compromised by war and disease. America, too, will live on. But it will have lost some further measure of its greatness thanks in no small part to the man who, however cynically, wanted to make it great again.
CHINA GATE The GOP & Trump’s election strategy 2020 (ODT)
Hello ‘Chinagate’: Why blaming Beijing is all the rage this US election cycle — RT Op-ed
“When you have millions of public voices as we have today because of digital connectivity, then attention becomes the most valuable thing you can garner,” said Martin Gurri, a former CIA media analyst and author of “The Revolt of the Public.” “It’s even more important than money because, in the end, if you can keep getting attention, you’ll probably wind up not just with money but with power as well.”
Whilst Australia has halted declining research funding, Federal funding policy has made it far more difficult for younger scientists to gain experience and stable employment. This is the fourth story in our series exploring intergenerational inequity. Lachlan Gray reports.
I recall back in 2014, during my second year of university, I was told by my lecturer to get out of Australia if I wanted any sort of career in science. At that time, and indeed now, that sentiment has continued to be relevant. Since the election of Tony Abbott in 2013, Australia has witnessed a dramatic decline in meaningful scientific funding from each successive Coalition government.
via Boomers vs Millennials: Federal funding leaves young scientists under pressure
Yes, it’s just a few weeks ago that Josh and Scott were telling us that Labor handn’t delivered a surplus since last century, but if you want to go back through history, it’s worth remembering that the only Liberal Treasurer to deliver a surplus in the last forty years is Peter Costello, who did it during the mining boom. Let’s not even point out his selling off of assets like our gold reserves for bargain prices.
I’ll just leave you with one final thought as we approach Anzac Day: Conservatives seem to have an obsession with everyone remembering what happened over a century ago , while demanding we all forget what happened last week!
IN CONTRAST to the last severe worldwide economic recession, Australia is poorly placed to deal with the looming downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. That is the conclusion of two reviews which assess the Coalition’s economic credentials negatively.
Trump needs China in so many ways that GOP doesn’t (ODT)
America’s COVID Experimental Laboratories ICE and Prisons keep them there and let’s see what happens (ODT
How long before News Corp takes up this line on COVID as well? (ODT)
We may defeat the Covid-19 virus in the months ahead, but it will take much longer to defeat the disease that is Islamophobia.
India, where the spread of the virus has been dubbed a “corona jihad” by supporters of the far-right BJP government; they claim the pandemic is a conspiracy by Muslims to infect and poison Hindus
“Muslims have now seen their businesses across India boycotted, volunteers distributing rations called ‘coronavirus terrorists’, and others accused of spitting in food and infecting water supplies with the virus.
Did members of the Tablighi Jamaat behave recklessly? Yes. Do all of India’s 200 million Muslims bear responsibility for their behavior? No. “Virtually overnight,” wrote investigative journalist Rana Ayyub in the Washington Post, “Muslims became the sole culprits responsible for the spread of the coronavirus in India.”Again, as in India, it isn’t only far-right figures using the pandemic to fan the flames of anti-Muslim bigotry but also mainstream media outlets.
Just another Corporation
Australia’s universities face $5 billion in losses and are crying poor. Their highly paid bosses can make more money in a week than the casual staff, many of whom they have consigned to the dole queue, make in a year. Michael Sainsbury runs the ruler over the numbers and asks why those universities with high reliance on international students have shown such poor risk management.
The COVID-19 virus has exposed the emerging contradiction at the heart of Australia’s public university system; that it is both a network of learning institutions and a string of highly competitive, profitable and often rapacious businesses.
Hailed in recent decades by politicians of all stripes as Australia’s “third largest export industry” after iron ore and coal (gas also bested it last year), universities are now crying poor. Yet, with honourable exceptions, there has been a near-industry wide failure of risk management.
Australia’s now-corporatised universities, are warning of combined losses of between $3 billion and $4.6 billion this year, according to their peak body Universities Australia.
via Overpaid university bosses cry poor as their foreign-student riches evaporate – Michael West
Many Republicans believe economic relief for those without jobs encourages slacking off. But it is corporations that are bailed out again and again
via CEOs, not the unemployed, are America’s real ‘moral hazard’ | Robert Reich | Opinion | The Guardian
Yes Monty Python did turn “our house was so small we watched rat tace live” into a joke. Yes it did entertain us, but…..(ODT)
His own process of radicalization provides the starting point for this part of the argument. “I saw people buying new phones every year and keeping the old ones in a drawer, while a few miles away, day laborers picked tomatoes, earning 45 cents for every 30-pound bucket. I saw reports of Americans being charged $5,000 by hospitals for an icepack and a bandage, or paying $1,200 a month in rent for a bunk bed.”
In conclusion, it is interesting to note that both Joyce and Christensen are still in our parliament and were returned with increased majorities at the last election : what does that say about us as a nation !
Yes, it appears that the airline negotiators appear to have walked out of their latest meeting with politicians toting a taxpayer subsidy of roughly $1,200 per seat per flight. And yes, this does seem rather a lot of money, given that it is on top of what the airlines are already charging their customers, say the routine $190 a ticket from Sydney to Melbourne.
Nevertheless, it would be fractious and irresponsible to presume that just because Deputy PM Michael McCormack started work at age 17 at the Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser and stayed there for 20 years … and just because Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas for 12 years, studied mathematical modelling, statistics and numerical algorithms at Trinity College Dublin – and then worked at Aer Lingus in IT and revenue planning – that McCormack and his advisers walked out of the negotiation nude.
The numbers however do appear to corroborate that view.
via Qantas first, daylight second, taxpayers a distant third – Michael West
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trumpism is a form of fascism, of course, but at its core is a whiny rebellion against the achievements of human and civil rights since the 1960s. Do the new norms after the Civil Rights Movement stop people from saying in public that African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians and women are inferior? Then by God, Trump and Bob Mercer and Breitbart and Fox would go out of their way to put all those groups down.
Anti-lockdown protests in the US
Americans are protesting on the streets – many standing shoulder-to-shoulder and without face masks – against the coronavirus shutdowns.
In the US, the crisis has cost at least 22 million Americans their jobs, pushing the unemployment rate toward levels not seen since the Great Depression.
Many Americans, especially in rural areas and other parts of the country that have not seen major outbreaks, have urged governors to reopen their economies.
However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of deaths in the U.S. during that outbreak was 12,469. The CDC also estimates that 75,000 people died from the swine flu worldwide.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Trump administration’s top infectious disease expert, has warned people against comparing COVID-19 to H1N1, telling Fox News in early March that the swine flu was “less lethal than the regular seasonal flu.”
via Trump Won’t Stop Undercutting His Medical Professionals In His Twitter Rants | HuffPost Australia
So be it if they are disproportionately Black (ODT)
Democratic Socialism practices trust in Individuals (ODT)
What the Swedish experiment demonstrates, is that there’s a way to navigate these unprecedented public health challenges without recklessly imposing police state policies and without doing irreparable harm to the economy. And, yes, the results of this experiment are not yet known, but what we do know is that most nations cannot simply print-up trillions of dollars to counter the knock-on effects of bringing the economy to a screeching halt. These countries must dip into their reserves or take out loans from the IMF in order to recover from the lack of production and activity. That means they’re going to face years of slow growth and high unemployment to dig out from the mess their leaders created for them.
via Sweden Is Right. The economy should be left open, by Mike Whitney – The Unz Review
On Wednesday, a band of 20 Israeli squatters diagnosed with Covid-19, who had been placed in quarantine in their squatter-settlement on Palestinian land in the West Bank’s Ghor Valley, ghoulishly broke out and attacked a nearby Palestinian hamlet. They are members of the violent “Hilltop Youth” extremist group.
The Israeli terrorists, operating in Palestinian territory, burned cars, stoned civilians, and attacked individuals. They beat a young Palestinian woman so badly that she had to be rushed to the emergency room in an Israeli hospital.
Since she has now likely been infected, this injury may be a death sentence, since comorbidity conditions severe enough to require hospitalization would worsen her chance of surviving when she contracts the virus and it attacks her lungs.
Nature works in mysterious ways. COVID-19 is its way now. It could be COVID-## in the future as it was H1N1 and H5N1 in the past. Enough with your conspiracies, please. We are doomed now because of our own actions and current deficient immune system.
Changing our ways, our own thoughts, our practices and looking after our health and each other is the way we can ensure that Nature Stands With Us and Not Against Us.
via Paying the price – » The Australian Independent Media Network
via 
These funds already invest some money in the corporations Morrison is bailing out like Virgin. Now Morrison has turned into a dodgy financial advisor. It sounds as if he’s demanding to invest, no give money to businesses that were already on the brink before COVID-19. Virgin for one.
Virgin wasn’t asking for a loan as much as a buyout. saying if they don’t repay in two years the government can have them. Morrison seems to be handballing companies like Virgin to the pension funds for an apparent commission of making the LNP look good but it simply makes him look dodgy by calling them weak.(ODT)
Australia’s Morrison Wants Pensions to Fund Company Bailouts – Bloomberg
On her Fox Business show, anchor Maria Bartiromo complained that the PPP provision “doesn’t make any sense to me” because the loan goes “right out the window to its employees, who are at home.”
On America’s Newsroom, Bartiromo complained that there are restaurant owners who feel that the PPP loans aren’t going to “do anything for me once things open again because I have no revenue. Yes, maybe I save those people from being out of a job because I gave my employees the money, but for the viability of my business, that’s questionable.”
On Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Fox Business host Charles Payne about the “75/25” regulation. Payne said that he “reached out to the administration” to discuss the provision, but “they are saying they are not going to change that.”
Fox & Friends hosted the owner of a Crunch gym franchise, who complained that the bill isn’t suitable for health clubs. Kilmeade told him that Congress “can’t tell you how to run your business, you have to tell them what it takes to run your business.” Kilmeade also claimed that “unemployment is so attractive now, a lot of [employees] don’t want their jobs back.”
On Fox & Friends, Kilmeade told Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia that “these restaurant owners can’t live with 75% [of the loan] going to labor” because “many of these people don’t want their part-time jobs back.”
Kilmeade also made this argument on the April 9 edition of Fox & Friends, saying that if the goal is to help small businesses, “don’t make them take 75% of that grant money and put it towards employees, many of which don’t want those jobs back because they’re better off on unemployment.”
” I have a feeling” Trump (ODT)
via Trump Vows to Quickly Reopen Economy, Ignoring Public Health Experts
In the meantime, like so much else about the administration’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, the revival effort for restaurants looks like a typical Trump Administration move: It highlights corporations and institutions that cater to the wealthy, or those that have made billions by selling cheap, unhealthy food to the rest of us.
via Guess Who Trump Chose for His Committee on Reviving Restaurants After COVID-19? – Mother Jones
Roughly 56.6 million students will attend elementary, middle, and high schools across the United States (source).
So he wants roughly 1,698,000 students, teachers and staff to be wiped out all in the name of getting Trump re-elected?
via Dr. Oz Wants Schools To Reopen Because Only 2 To 3% Of Kids Will Die – UPDATED | Crooks and Liars
- Murdoch Whitehouse- SACK THEM
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On her Fox Business show, anchor Maria Bartiromo complained that the PPP provision “doesn’t make any sense to me” because the loan goes “right out the window to its employees, who are at home.”
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On America’s Newsroom, Bartiromo complained that there are restaurant owners who feel that the PPP loans aren’t going to “do anything for me once things open again because I have no revenue. Yes, maybe I save those people from being out of a job because I gave my employees the money, but for the viability of my business, that’s questionable.”
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On Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Fox Business host Charles Payne about the “75/25” regulation. Payne said that he “reached out to the administration” to discuss the provision, but “they are saying they are not going to change that.”
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Fox & Friends hosted the owner of a Crunch gym franchise, who complained that the bill isn’t suitable for health clubs. Kilmeade told him that Congress “can’t tell you how to run your business, you have to tell them what it takes to run your business.” Kilmeade also claimed that “unemployment is so attractive now, a lot of [employees] don’t want their jobs back.”
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On Fox & Friends, Kilmeade told Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia that “these restaurant owners can’t live with 75% [of the loan] going to labor” because “many of these people don’t want their part-time jobs back.”
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Kilmeade also made this argument on the April 9 edition of Fox & Friends, saying that if the goal is to help small businesses, “don’t make them take 75% of that grant money and put it towards employees, many of which don’t want those jobs back because they’re better off on unemployment.”
The answer to the question is “YES.” The large bailed-out creditors will end up with the property of the non-bailed-out debtors who are being pushed deeper into debt with “bail-out loans” and fees and penalties for missed debt payments. Write-offs for the One Percent, and more indebtedness for everyone else.
via Are We Brewing a New Feudalism?, by Paul Craig Roberts – The Unz Review
Venezuela is battling COVID-19 within its own borders, as we are doing here at home. The country is also experiencing a deep economic crisis and facing severe shortages of medical supplies, a situation that has been compounded by U.S. unilateral economic sanctions. President Trump has no business deploying U.S. military assets against Venezuela, a country that in no shape or form represents a threat to the security of the United States, especially not now when a pandemic is raging around the world and in our own country.
via Threatening Military Intervention in Venezuela During a Pandemic? | The Smirking Chimp
We don’t need people with small minds who long for the days of coal, copper and austerity. We need people with imagination about the opportunities of where we are headed and the foresight to start preparing now.
via We need imagination, not hibernation – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Cutting government services to pay off government debt post the current pandemic is not a necessity but rather a political and ideological choice. History has shown that if we focus on full employment and the real economy, the budget will take care of itself. Economist Warwick Smith reports.
via History shows future generations don’t need to suffer from government debt – Michael West
AOC the rising star in NY politics has now got to face Wall St she’s too good (ODT)
via Wall Street Titans Fund Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Challenger
olddogthoughts 
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