China, Orban and Trump demonised as US set to be latest victim of deadly liberty-killing 2020 virus. European Union looks on in Do-Little ongoing SNAFU apathy.
Follow this link if you feel the need to prove veracity (very important in Covid19Crash2 Wars) and you will see that, only six days ago, I made a list of the following developments to look out for:
‘Look next for any signs of scything down thousands of blogs and news collectives on the grounds of “spreading fake and alarming news”.
Expect the Gilets Jaunes movement to be banned soon.
Yesterday, despite losing a last-minute court bid to delay the the Democratic primary in Ohio, the Republican state governor ordered polling stations to close due to the “health emergency”.
Keep an eye out for any plans to cancel this year’s US Presidential election entirely’.
So far, the Gilets Jaunes have been effectively removed from the French scene by withdrawing the Right to Assembly.
My own blogsite host is (perhaps under pressure) making concerted attempts to render posting difficult, and saving of uploads almost impossible.
Meanwhile – and don’t fall over in the light of this news – even The Washington Post is now concerned about creeping autocracy. However, the paper’s view of it is not what one might call ‘balanced’
‘Some leaders appear to be exploiting the pandemic for their own political ends….Arab monarchies and autocracies have invoked public health imperatives to secure themselves a reprieve from mass protests. A widely criticized interim regime in Bolivia has postponed planned elections due in May as part of a slate of emergency measures….authorities cited the risk of spreading coronavirus as grounds to disperse anti-government demonstrations and bar large public gatherings….”
Note the absence of US allies in that extract. And it doesn’t take long for the Washpost to reveal its true agenda:
‘Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, is also exercising new coronavirus-enabled powers. After spending days linking the contagion to illegal migration, Orban and his nationalist government extended an emergency law with new provisions that could potentially be used to criminalize critical press…..Critics warned that this was just the latest subversion in Orban’s decade-long takeover of the country’s democratic system.’
The preceding para of unadulterated fiction represents the worst kind of crypto-Soviet invention some of us oldies got used to seeing in the 1950s: some contagion is undoubtedly linked to migration, and Orban – far from subverting anything – has won three elections in a row. He lost the one before that, and left the podium forthwith; the one before that, he also won.
But the paper isn’t done yet:
“President Trump’s Department of Justice is reportedly seeking expanded emergency powers, including provisions for judges to have the power to detain people indefinitely”.
No it isn’t looking to give judges detention power: the accusation has been strongly denied by bipartisan sources.
In siding with the Soros-Verhofstadt axis of mendacity, the Post has once again defaecated upon its glorious past of unseating Nixon, the author of fiat currency. It is become a latter-day Izvestia of State Correctness.
Americans in general (as opposed to generals in America) need to think a little harder about just how fragile their own freedoms are. They probably aren’t aware that, following the 9/11 attacks twenty years ago, the US military were immediately on the ball when it comes to “Special Homeland Circumstances”.
Although nobody wants to admit it, all US military leave was cancelled last Wednesday, and the Pentagon has been lobbying hard in Washington to give it the great bulk of responsibility for keeping order – the rationale being that the National Guard at State level are dispersed and unquarantined, so “less available to be relied upon”.
A senior military planner working on coronavirus but ‘not authorised to speak on sensitive planning matters’ leaked the news over the weekend that active Pentagon and Northern Command miltary leaders are pushing ahead with plans for far-reaching military control powers installed in the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack.
‘Martial law involves use of the military to exercise police powers; restore and maintain order; ensure essential mechanics of distribution, transportation and communication; and conduct necessary relief measures,’ says a US Army manual from 2019.
The “rules”, however, are contradictory on the question of who can order martial law….and vague on the circumstances required.
Federal military commanders cannot take charge of any function of civil government unless “necessary” under conditions of “extreme emergency”. As the media and politicians have been telling us that COVID19 is both of those things, martial law would be extremely easy to rationalise if, say, older politicians start dropping like flies.
The contingency plan called CONPLAN 3502 was finalised in 2007; its areas of remit are virtually infinite: ‘riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, group acts of violence, and disorders prejudicial to public law and order’.
But what makes CONPLAN 3502 uniqely disturbing is that it introduced three exceptions to the existing need for an Act of Congress to approve full-on Martial Law: the use of the military in the war on drugs; in “extraordinary circumstances” involving weapons of mass destruction; and a third, in the Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act.
Over the last few days, hawks around President Trump have been stepping up their demonisation of China as the “culprit” behind COVID19. That’s tantamount to calling the virus a weapon that originated in the Wuhan lab….although medical sources continue to flatly deny that as a likelihood.
We have been warned.
On the other side of the propaganda war, it is certainly true that Russia’s Vladimir Putin has told his People, “You can obey the emergency measures for a few weeks and the curfew for a few hours, or you can go to prison for five years. The choice is yours”. Harsh and, I’d say, not entirely fair in the context of just 410 active Covid cases.
The same criticism can be levelled at India. Modi has wasted no time invoking an ancient colonial Act, described by both legal and medical ethics opinion-leaders there as ‘anachronistic from a public health perspective. So once the pandemic comes under control, the Act will need to be repealed as quickly as possible, and replaced by a more comprehensive, modern and ethically robust law dealing with public health’.
With Narendra Modi in power, it would be foolish to hold your breath waiting for that one. With just seven deaths to date in a population of 1.8 billion, his central government has urged the state governments to enforce lockdowns in 75 districts, and given them “virtually open-ended” powers to take legal action against those who violate the prohibitory orders.
Both the Russian and Indian cases (while still in very early stages) raise additional questions.
The Russian Federation (RF) is home to 144.5 million people, just three of whom have died from Covid19. But there has been a huge spike in pneumonia deaths. Unlike some places where complex pathologies in people over 75 have caused over-reporting of the virus, the Russians seem to be under-reporting pneumonia deaths clearly (at least) exacerbated by the virus. Yet another reason to be wary of statistics with only a short series…..and of course, the RF has form in fibbing about such things.
India’s avoidance of Coronavirus – given its proximity to China and truly appalling health infrastructure – is more difficult to explain. There have been 415 reported cases there, and the Health Ministry says that only seven have died: 415 out of 1.8 billion is a staggeringly low number; and seven deaths is, equally, far less than one might expect.
However, these are the averaged temperatures across India in recent days:
As you’d imagine, they are far higher than those of the West….and over much of Southern India, this will have been true since roughly last November.
It is a fact that the Corona strain of virus is more easily killed and far less likely to spread in hot temperatures; it looks like – at least in seasonality terms – COVID19 might be similar to its predecessors.
But that’s enough about governments getting involved while abusing powers. Time to examine one geopolitical construct with a long history of power abuse, but not much of a reputation for actually doing anything to help anyone.
I could only be talking about the European Union.
A common vulgarity in my youth was the description of those who talk but rarely walk as being “full of piss and wind”. The Reichstag during the German Weimar Republic was perhaps the best example ever of that syndrome in modern history, but the EU is worse because it pisses on liberty – and all its wind is foul. Rather like Victor Mature and acting, in governance it has a genius for doing nothing and yet being immeasurably bad.
It did nothing for Greece except give all the People’s money to bond-holding psychos and injudicious bank lenders. It is today doing nothing to stop violent young migrants illegally invading that country. Once Trichet had given far too much ECB and associated money to ClubMed, the EU imposed idiotic austerity upon the infrastructure of the countries involved. At the outbreak of the virus in Italy, the EU finally stepped in….to fine them €7.5 million for giving a subsidy to its tourist sector. Ironically, Brussels has now been forced to accept Chinese aid to Italy to fight against the pandemic… while the Unelected State of the US continues to find China guilty of crimes against humanity, lacking only the COVID19 evidence to convict.
But none of this stops cheap fart-bubble virtue signalling emerging from the Sprout anus.
The Commission’s site devoted to COVID19 action offers this welcome respite as I type at my keyboard:
Ten days ago, even the EU Adoration Society former known as The Guardian ran a critical piece reaffirming the World Health Association’s media appeal to Brussels “not to let this fire burn”. That such a reminder might be necessary tells you everything you need to know about the European Federalists.
90% of what these derisory bureaucrats have done to date is to give birth to the European Commission Action and Response team….up to but not entirely including action and response, as such. It’s a re-run of the ClubMed bond spikes crisis of 2011.
In fact, what all the Doomwatch drivel in relation to COVID19 has taught us – perhaps more than any other single piece of cultural homework – is just how quickly EU members have given out a message along the lines of, “Screw the women and children….it’s every man for himself”.
The volte face on open borders has been a sight to behold up there with Moses reversing his Red Sea parting. Five days ago, the EU closed all its external borders to non-EU residents. Jumping in early (best to get those German towels on the beach by dawn) seven days ago Angela Merkel had already closed her borders to all but the privileged few. And yet…..German EC President Ursula von der Leyen warned on the same day that imposing border controls threatened supply chains, and increased the risks of shortages. It wasn’t so much synchronised swimming as uncoordinated drowning.
This official press release sums up the anarchic headless chicken we see running around in ever-decreasing circles:
‘Each member state has made its own decisions on closing its own borders and to whom it will close borders to. This has caused a bit of chaos within the EU’.
Just loving that ‘a bit of’. What a shower they are.
Wir fahren ganz gut vorwärts in Richtung des vierten Reiches….und so weiter.
The Slog 