Showing posts from: April 2020

Declaring War on an Internal Enemy Hiding in Plain Sight: The ❛Deep State❜

Posted by funambulator@live.com on April 30, 2020

Tags: ‘JFK’ (1991 film), "Fake news", “Soft power”, Allen & Foster Dulles, Alt-Right, Barack H Obama, Breitbart, CIA, Conspiracy theories, Coronavirus crisis, Deep State, Donald J Trump, Dwight D Eisenhower, Fox & Friends, Franklin D Roosevelt, Homeland Security (US), John F Kennedy, Kennedy assassination saga, Lee Harvey Oswald, Military-Industrial Complex, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, National security, New York Times, Oliver Stone, Pentagon, President Erdogân, QAnon theory, Rush Limbaugh, State Department (US), Steve Bannon, Turkey, USA, Washington DC, Washington Post, White House, Young Turks movement

In the fiercely combative arena of Washington DC politics, one term that gets bandied about a lot—before and continuing through the time of pandemic—is the notion of the existence of a “Deep State”. Whenever the expression gets publicly uttered, it’s purpose is to serve as the answer to some or other momentous development or outcome. Left there hanging in the air, vague, nebulous, mysterious and unelaborated but always unambiguously pejorative – the innuendo of conspiracy.

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Alternately called “a state within a state”, the “shadow government” or “the permanent state”, the Deep State connotes images of shadowy individuals talking in soto voco, practicing the political dark arts.

So, what actually is a deep state? In get to the essence of this concept let’s survey a cross-selection of responses to the question:

⌱ a type of governance made up of networks of power operating independently of the state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals [Wikipedia]

⌱ a conspiracy theory which suggests that collusion and cronyism exists within the US political system and constitute a hidden government within the legitimately elected government [Wikipedia]

⌱ a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy [Oxford English Dictionary].

⌱ the idea that a cabal of unelected security officials across a number of government bodies maintain influence over elected politicians [Will Worley, The Independent (UK)]

⌱ (“the seed for many tantalising conspiracy theories”…the existence of a premeditated effort by certain federal government employees or other persons to secretly manipulate or control the government without regard for the policies of Congress or the President [Robert Longley]

⌱ an underworld of unaccountable authority [Peter Dale Scott]

⌱ belief in an informal or parallel government that exists to countermand legitimate, usually more democratic, institutions (whose usage includes) a catch-all term applied to any number of extraordinary, usually violent, episodes, eg, JFK assassination, 9/11, etc. [Ryan Gingeras]

⌱ a massive informal government comprising untold thousands of bureaucrats, technocrats and plutocrats committed to driving president-elect Trump from power [Breitbart]

⌱ (how it functions) when elected governments threaten the deep state’s domestic or international interests, actors aligned to this coalition (the military, the clandestine service, the mafia and far-right activists) employ any means to reverse the state’s political course…these coalitions within the government work to ‘veto’ or ‘fine tune’ policies related to national security [Ola Tunander]

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The topicality of the Deep State as a conspiracy theory and as a form of politics in practice, as I indicated at the start, resides within, indeed permeates, the present US political realm, but the political phenomena itself did not start in the US. Let’s first look at the modern origins of the deep state – in early 20th century Turkey.

Turkey: volatile zero-sum-game The notion of an unofficial para-authority, a deep state within the nation’s polity, has probably existed since the time of antiquity, but as a normative concept it can be traced back to the rise of the Young Turks movement in Turkey (revolution of 1908). In the struggle for power in the vacuum created by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks, and Kemal Ataturk who would become the ‘architect’ of the modern Turkish Republic, used criminal elements to eliminate political opponents. Ataturk’s group, through a violent, intra-government resistance to the ruling clique in Turkey, destabilised and undermined it (from within), eventually establishing control over state and society for itself. Turks called this secret network, derin devlet (literally the “deep state”). Since then, the phenomena has been replicated elsewhere, eg, Soviet Union/Russia, Egypt, Pakistan❈, with the tradition maintained in Turkey up to the (present) Erdogân era, eg, the failed military coup in 2016 seeking to overthrow the Erdogân autocracy [‘Turkey’s “Deep-State” and the Ergenekon Conundrum’, (H Akin Ünver), Middle East Institute, 01-Apr-2009, www.mei.edu].

↴ Erdogân state (Source: www.time.com)

Deep state sans conspiracy Drawing together the different threads of responses, a deep state exists when a network of different groups covertly coalesce, forming a power base independent of and parallel to the legitimate government, with the purpose of pursuing its own objectives. In practice it tends to exercise soft power (rather than the more violent type seen in Turkey) by undermining and discrediting the legitimate government, with the aim of subverting its operation and bringing it down. The collusive elements of the network or cabal is typically drawn from the state’s security services, the bureaucracy, the military, the media, the private sector, even from organised crime.

The deep state in America It was general–turned–GOP president Dwight D Eisenhower who first alerted America to the dangers of a deep state emerging…at his farewell address in 1961 he said: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”. A couple of years later the assassination of Eisenhower’s successor John F Kennedy provided conspiracy theory obsessives with endless material for imaginative speculation. Inevitably some of that speculation has joined the dots between the never-satisfactorily explained Kennedy murder and the Deep State. A perusal of the web turns up numerous posts with titles like ‘JFK was Murdered by the Deep State’ and ‘JFK Was Assassinated by LBJ, Establishment, Deep State’…fairly self-explanatory but these generally fact-thin ‘revelations’ detail a deep state hit squad of assassins and conspirators which includes Lyndon B Johnson and a coterie of southern Democrat politicians, the American mafia, Texas oil tycoons, Fidel Castro, the CIA, the KGB and a host of other nominated suspects⊠. And of course popular movies like Oliver Stone’s 1991 JFK was a further shot-in-the-arm for political conspiracy buffs and the perpetuation of the Deep State/JFK thesis (portraying “a cabal of shadowy officials as the puppet masters behind Kennedy’s assassination”)◘. As Professor Paul Musgrove remarked, “the deep state is catnip for conspiracy theorists” [‘How a Conspiracy Theory Went From Political Fringe to Mainstream’, (Tom Porter), Newsweek, 08-Feb-2017, www.newsweek.com].

Deep State rhetoric: How to vilify your opponents and turn back criticism, it’s all a conspiracy by the enemy! The term finally acquires staying power and everyday currency in the US political lexicon with Donald Trump’s transition to the presidency in 2016/2017. Trump, a self-acknowledged outlier of Washington politics, came to office promising to “drain the swamp in DC”, his avowed aim, to ditch the old, distrusted model of federal government. With Trump doing things very much his own (peculiarly idiosyncratic) way in the White House, this caused waves, there was a “natural pushback” from a bureaucracy accustomed to a very different approach under Obama. This is a normal part of the process of regime change in parliamentary democracies universally – a residual if usually temporary feature of the culture of resistance to government change. [‘President Trump’s Allies Keep Talking About the “Deep State”. What’s That?’, (Alana Abramson), Time, 08-March-2017, www.time.com].

The practice of leaking information From within the president’s fold, warnings of “covert resistance” from within to the president, emerged. Talk of a “Deep State” was heard from the far-right✪, Trump strategist Steve Bannon among the voices. The complaint was that elements within the bureaucracy, the State Department, Pentagon, wherever, were leaking damaging information to a media hostile to Trump (eg, New York Times, Washington Post), to which Trump’s “knee-jerk” reaction was to label it as “fake news”⍤. Two points need to be made about the leaking of information from democratic governments: as Abramson has noted, this is “not a new dynamic” or unique to the US, career civil servants—who are extra-political—have always leaked information to the press. The (legitimate) government from time to time itself will leak favourably information to the media (Abramson).

Watching the president The second point is that the various federal government agencies, being non-partisan, see a component of their role to act as a check on wayward and irresponsible behaviour by an incumbent chief executive that would be harmful to the nation. Previous directors of the CIA have stated that the military would refuse to follow orders given by Trump which are unlawful [‘US Military to Disobey Trump’s ‘Illegal’ Nuclear Strike Order’, Sputnik News, 15-Nov-2017, www.sputniknews.com]. In such a scenario, the “permanent national security apparatus” has a right to act, as “a check on the civilian government” (Musgrave).

Another Deep State linkage with the coronavirus for conspiracy fans? The “Covert-19” pandemic? ↴

Using the Deep State catch-phrase to your own advantage Opposition to Trump, to his style of presidency and approach to government, in the form of hostility from almost the entirety of the mainstream US media, the leaking of information from within the ‘citadel’ such as the charge that Russian interference in the 2016 elections assisted a Trump victory, have provided the ammunition for the Trump’s enablers and supporters to construct a narrative of a deep state, a ‘conspiracy’ of anyone seeking to subvert the presidency, including foreign powers (like China) and many bureaucrats they see as loyal to the former president (Obama).

Trump has turned internal criticism of himself into an excuse to fire officials, creating scapegoats for the shortcomings of the administration he heads. Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Michael Atkinson, sacked after alerting Congress of Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine’s leader into investigating the president’s domestic political opponents, remarked pointedly that he was dismissed, not for failing to do his job but for doing it properly [‘Trump’s safari into the wilderness of the deep state’, (Jacob Heilbrunn), Spectator (America), 08-Apr-2020, http://spectator.us]. Numerous other subalterns from the White House staff, Pentagon, Homeland Security, FBI, Treasury, Attorney General, etc have suffered the same fate after earning Trump’s ire. As Professor Timur Kuran, an economist who has studied the deep state concept in both Turkey and the US, said: in many authoritarian regimes, dictators often blame their failures on a “deep state enemy” within the legitimate state [‘Deep State: Inside Donald Trump’s Paranoid Conspiracy Theory’, (Michael Hanford), Rolling Stone, 09-Mar-2017, www.rollingstone.com].

Connecting coronavirus to the Deep State conspiracy In the turmoil of the COVID-19 crisis in America, it didn’t take long for a number of Trump’s cronies and followers to play the pandemic conspiracy card. TV commentator Rush Limbaugh has labelled the coronavirus a deep state hoax⍝ (calling health experts fighting the virus outbreak functionaries of the deep state). The right-wing “shock jock” has said the crisis was being used by as a political weapon to destabilise and undo the Trump presidency [‘Rush Limbaugh: coronavirus a “common cold” being “weaponised’ against Trump’, (Martin Pengelly), The Guardian, 26-Feb-2020, www.theguardian.com]⦿. Other “true-believers” of the DS conspiracy myth see the coronavirus crisis as a plot to destabilise global markets and cripple the US economy, or alternately a Deep State plan to suppress dissent and impose “mandated medicine” on to the unsuspecting masses [‘Right-wing conspiracy theorists see coronavirus as a plot against Trump’, (Mikael Thalen), The Daily Dot, 26-Feb-2020, www.dailydot.com; ‘Scientist with 4 Degrees from MIT Warns ‘Deep State’ Using Coronavirus Fear-Mongering To Suppress Dissent’, (Carmine Sabina), The Western Journal, 17-Mar-2020, www.westernjournal.com].

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❈ there have been numerous other Deep State scenarios internationally, a classic one in recent history was the 1973 Chilean coup where foreign elements, the American CIA and IT&T, combined with a right wing military clique in Chile to overthrow the democratically-elected Allende government

⊠ many of the conspiracy hypothesisers who accept that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, depict the gunman as having been an agent of the Deep State

◘ with hindsight we can see earlier instances of the (unnamed) deep state in American politics, beavering away to undermine a US president – in the Thirties and early Forties the Dulles brothers, Foster and Allen, exploited their key diplomatic roles in arms of the Roosevelt administration to covertly pursue their own agendas which were at variance with FDR’s policies, David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (2015)

✪ one of the wildest is the QAnon Deep State conspiracy which alleges that a “cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles” have joined up with Hollywood liberals and Democrat politicians to try to overthrow the Trump regime

⍤ sometimes hitting back with his own brand of fake news, such as his unsubstantiated tweet claim that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower before the election

⍝ a view with popular backing among sections of the Alt-Right, patriot-militia groups in the US

⦿ Limbaugh last month, looking to cloak the ‘conspiracy’ in an even more sinister light, suggested to his viewers that there were eighteen earlier strains of the disease which he has likened to the common cold, therefore COVID-19 was nothing to be concerned about, he reasoned. Limbaugh’s woeful ignorance—the 19 in the disease’s name refers to the year it was first identified, 2019—earned him much scorn and derision from liberal America (although amazingly it didn’t deter a Trump lackey from repeating the gross misinformation in a “Fox & Friends” rant against WHO) , ‘Coronavirus skeptic Rush Limbaugh thinks COVID-19 means there were 18 other COVIDS’, (Brian Niemietz), Daily News, 12-Mar-2020, www.nydailynews.com

The National Health Emergency ‘Tyranny’: The Lockdown Through Libertarian Eyes

Posted by Sloane Snodgrasse on April 27, 2020

Tags: “Rust-belt” states of the Midwest, American Tea Party, Betsy DeVos, Civil disobedience and tyranny, Coronavirus, Disease mortality V economic devastation, Donald J Trump, Federal V states’ rights, First Amendment, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Gov. Kristi Noem, Gov. Ron DeSantis, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Libertarianism, Michigan state, National epidemic, Operation Gridlock, Red states V Blue states, The ‘Republican’ South, Vietnam War

The majority of countries where coronavirus infection rates have experienced an upward curve have resorted to locking down the community to varying degrees. In the USA, more than elsewhere, this has tested the faith of those of a libertarian disposition. In recent weeks we have seen the mega-massive jolt to the economy and enforced closures of businesses resulting in millions of workers finding themselves in the dole queues. Many libertarians, albeit with reluctance, accept the inevitability of the present state intervention as the only means available of providing the fiscal stimulus to keep people and businesses afloat.

Its when it comes to the matter of mandatory quarantine as a counter-virus measure, then the issue becomes more thorny for libertarians. The classic libertarian position would see voluntary self-isolation as the ideal solution in an ideal (ie, libertarian) world… compulsory quarantine is the last resort to them. Some of a libertarian mind would reject it outright – on ideological grounds, while also claiming it to be an ineffective measure as a social curative. Others accept it as a legitimate move given the uniqueness of the Covid-19 crisis situation, but with a very clear rider that the measures taken need to be temporary only. As shown below, this aspect of libertarianism is a “hot-button” issue currently for many in the US with skin in the game [‘What libertarians would do in response to coronavirus’, (Bonnie Kristian), The Week, 13-Mar-2020, www.theweek.com].

77219ACF-02F8-44A2-BD57-C9B96FAF1226 — *Gadsden flag: associated with libertarianism & the American Tea Party*

Social distancing as an imposed, mandated practice during the pandemic, fails the libertarian test. The pure libertarian much prefers to see voluntary compliance by the individual, in the expectation (or hope) that most people will ultimately do the right thing [‘Libertarianism and the Coronavirus Pandemic’, (Andy Craig), Cato Institute, 25-Mar-2020, www.cato.com]. Accordingly, a small minority of US states (five?) have not enforced the distancing and stay-at-home edicts, their leaders pledging to hold fast to the “sacred liberties” of their citizenries. But most everywhere else the pandemic has hit, certainly in urban areas, the civil authorities have gone for some form of lockdown.

Escape from Lockdown 13 For the average “Joe and Joanna Citizen” in Main Street, Anywheresville, being locked down inside four walls indefinitely is one of the hardest things to cop. For most people “cabin fever” will inevitably set in…confined at home, unable to congregate and socialise in cafes, eateries and bars with friends and colleagues or do road trips. In First World societies such as the US, Western Europe or the Commonwealth of Nations, freedom of movement is such an inherently natural expectation, once deprived, resistance to these rigid controls can reach a tipping point which easily spills over into increasingly bold attempts to subvert or defy the government’s edicts. Recently we have witnessed this perhaps at its apogee in the Midwest and Southern states of the US. Protest groups, the new scofflaws of Trumpian America, have mushroomed in particular in “rust-belt” states such as Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia✷.

6AAAB648-00F5-4BC3-B466-97729CE4274D — Pro–Trump demonstrators trying to intimidate Democrat Gov. Whitmer (photo: AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

As the lockdowns extend from weeks into months bunches of pro-Republican conservatives∎ have more and more blatantly violated the stay-at-home orders of mostly Democratic governors (in contrast serving GOP governors like South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, continue to play the libertarian card, steadfastly refusing to implement a stay-at-home order regardless of virus outbreaks within the state). For the protesters, egged on by the schizophrenic tweets❂ of President Trump, a call to “Liberate Michigan” (Virginia, etc) and amplified by the Fox press, one prime target of their vitriol has been Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer who has mandated a strict ”stay home, stay safe” executive order to counteract the virus. This month organised gatherings of protesters have assembled outside the Capitol building and the governor’s home, flaunting the restrictions and demonstrating their displeasure at Whitmer’s policies. Some of the dissenters have been armed with AR-15s and AK-47s, very few wearing face masks but brandishing Confederate and Gadsden flags and even Nazi emblems (loosely equating the state “governor/tyrant” with Nazis). Some protesters have held up signs such as “The cure is worse than the virus” (which, if you have watched the president’s coronavirus press briefings ‘sideshow’, has a faintly familiar ring to it).

(Photo: REUTERS/Alyson McClaran)

This orchestrated “Operation Gridlock”, in Michigan and elsewhere, is organised by a conservative patriot/militia group with connexions to Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos. One of its objectives (successful) was to grind city centre traffic down to a standstill, including the blocking of ambulances conveying patients. Protesters in various states have also tried to intimidate health workers engaged in the frontline of the fight against the pandemic. So far Whitmer has remained resolute in maintaining a strict state lockdown, pointing to the gravity of the state’s health predicament (Michigan has had 37,778 confirmed cases and 3,315 deaths due to coronavirus, as at 27-April-2020) [‘Conservative group linked to DeVos family organises protest of coronavirus restrictions in Michigan’, (Igor Derbyshire), Salon, 16-Apr-2020, www.salon.com; ‘Trump Supporters Are Staging Armed Protests to Stick it to Coronavirus’, (Caleb Ecarma), Vanity Fair, 16-Apr-2020, www.vanityfair.com].

🔻 Gov. Whitmer (Photo: U.S. News & World)

What’s motivating the scofflaw behaviour? Researchers at the University of Maryland have concluded that “quarantine fatigue” has set in. Increasing numbers of fed-up or plain bored Americans are venturing outside of “the box” in defiance of state stay-at-home orders. Many of these are exercising, or as the weather gets warmer, going to the beach (most of the escapees are doing these things without bothering to practice safe distancing)⌖ [‘Quarantine fatigue is setting in: Smartphone data shows thousands are fed up after weeks under lockdown’, (Ralph R Ortega), Daily Mail, 27-Apr-2020, www.dailymail.com].

The inalienable right to be ‘selective’ The gatherings of those discontented with the status quo in America have exercised their right to protest against their state’s political leaders. Interestingly, their decision to protest on this occasion, as has been noted, does not signify their endorsement of the right to protest per se – a perfectly admirable and consistent libertarian trait. Previously when sectors of the Left in America took to protesting issues such as climate change and police brutality, these Right-wing elements were vigorously supporting the conservative politicians’ endeavours to bring in legislation to outlaw protests [’The hypocrisy of the anti-lockdown protests’, (Anthony L Fisher), Business Insider Australia, 22-Apr-2020, www.businessinsider.com.au].

🔺The ‘tyranny’ avengers (Photo: Nikolaus Kama/AFP via Getty Images)

These insurrectionists and those who facilitate and encourage them, argue that they are motivated, nay compelled, by the (temporary) loss of their basic liberties… evoking the First Amendment and the Founding Fathers, they portray Whitmer and other governors as tyrants, preventing their right to come and go as they wish, to work and leisure untrammelled. Thus, it comes back to that same nub at the core of libertarian values, the right to do as one pleases — (with the rider)…so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. This added qualifier is fundamental to the credo of libertarian theory.

“Inviolable freedom”…so long as it doesn’t harm harm anyone else The casualty toll of the Covid-19 health crisis in the US—the worse in the world by far—is rapidly overtaking that of the total of American lives lost in the ten-years of the Vietnam War. Disproportionally, the pandemic everywhere is killing the older and the most vulnerable, people with co-morbidities. Coronavirus, the epidemiologists have shown us, is transmitted from a human host to a human recipient, the more people interacting with each other, the more likelihood of transmission, the greater the incidence of morbidity and mortality from the virus, simple as that!

An unavoidable trade-off The temporary suspension of liberties is the price to pay to preserve lives. Yes, the measures are inconveniences and hardships on individuals, but they’ve been imposed on the population for a health safety reason – the greater good of the community and the health of all. Yes, the libertarians have some grounds to quibble, a few of the measures taken have been over-the-top and seem disproportionate. Even Gov. Whitmer, a rising Democrat star on the national political scene, has at times pulled the wrong rein (eg, barring people from purchasing garden equipment and baby restrainers for cars seems to be over-zealous) [‘Quarantine Protesters Are No Heroes of Civil Disobedience’, (Jonah Goldberg), National Review, 22-Apr-2020, www.nationalreview.com].

🔺 Colorado protesters visualising a totalitarian pivot by their governor? (Photo: AP)

FN: Heat in the kitchen Democrat governors in “swing states” like Gov. Whitmer—caught in a pincer of intimidatory Scofflaw defiance, demands from business to re-open and constant sniping from a divisive chief executive at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave—are not the only ones feeling the mounting pressure of the moment. Florida’s GOP governor, Ron DeSantis, has copped plenty of flak himself. He was very late in issuing stay-at-home orders, having rejected calls to close Florida’s crowded beaches, citing the libertarian manta of free choice. When the lockdown finally came, church services got a “go free” card from the restrictions. Consequently, the state’s coronavirus ‘scorecard’ is now 32,138 confirmed cases and 1,088 deaths (27-April-2020). The current virus “hot spots” in Florida don’t augur well for a lifting of it’s restrictions any time soon. On top of this gloomy prognosis, Florida, being a ‘bellwether’ state, Trump will be expecting DeSantis to deliver it to the Republicans in the November elections [‘Anti-quarantine protests, Trump pressure on governors on political tightrope over coronavirus’, (Deidre Shesgreen & Maureen Groppe), USA Today, 23-Apr-2020, www.amp.usatoday.com].

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✷ the protests have by no means been confined to these states – such happenings have been increasingly the done thing from Pennsylvania to Nebraska to California. Nor have lockdown protests been confined to America, ‘Berlin police anti-lockdown protestors accusing Angela Merkel of “banning life”’, SBS News, 25-Apr-2020, www.sbsnews.com.au ∎ the same kind of pro-Trump people that Hillary Clinton (unwisely) labelled a “basket of deplorables” in the 2016 presidential campaign ❂ ”schizophrenic” because at the same time the president at his daily podium is officially asking Americans to adhere to the prescribed Covid-19 safety measures ⌖ there’s obviously other underlying factors in the tendency towards civil disobedience in Midwestern states and perhaps more so in the South – greater religiosity (and associated with that) scepticism towards scientific evidence and government experts, and even the “Siamese twins” attachment of many Americans to car culture (especially in suburbia and rural regions), ‘The American South has resisted social distancing measures — and we’re all going to pay the price’, Raw Story, 03-Apr-2020, www.rawstory.com

Behind the 24–Hour Cycle Coronavirus Counts, How well do the Numbers Stack up?

Posted by funambulator@live.com on April 24, 2020

Tags: Africa, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, China, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Global health statistics, Harvard University, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Russia, South-East Asia, Soviet Union, WHO, World oil price 2020

Every day we are reminded of the global reach of the novel coronavirus crisis. We know it’s a pandemic because WHO and other health agencies publish data showing that 211 countries and territories have been affected by the disease. The international media coverage tends to focus largely on the unenviable “big five” chart-toppers who have been most affected – the US, Italy, Spain, France and the UK. A number of sites publish constantly updated lists of the growing toll of Covid-19 casualties, a sort of sombre “score card” listing all the countries who have recorded instances of the disease.

Confirmed Coronavirus Cases: Globally tracked, country-by-country – as @ 23-Apr-2020

Country	Total cases	Total deaths	Region
USA	850,000	47,700	Americas
Italy	188,000	25,500	Western Europe
Spain	208,500	21,750	Western Europe
France	160,000	21,500	Western Europe
UK	134,000	18,300	Western Europe

Sources: WHO http://covid19.who.int/;
http://worldometers.info/

When we scroll through the world tables of where the pandemic has landed, it’s instructive to look at the comparative totals by continent – Europe has a bit over 1.28 million confirmed cases recorded, and the Americas, 995,510 (predominantly from the US), compare these to South-East Asia, a bit more than 38,572 and Africa, a mere 18,234 cases✺✺.

(Source: www.vietnamcredit.com.vn)

From a statistical standpoint we might wonder if the published data gives a true impression of the extent of of the pandemic? It needs to be kept in mind that the numbers we have are those that have been reported to the World Health Organisation. Population differences aside, it is clear that the low numbers in South-East Asia and Africa (examples: Cambodia 122 cases, zero fatalities✺✺, Myanmar 139 cases, five fatalities✺✺, Ghana 1,279 cases, 10 fatalities✺✺, Ethiopia 117 cases, three fatalities✺✺) mask the full impact of the catastrophe. They are a product of limited testing by countries in these regions … widespread poverty, surplus populations, lack of resources and infrastructure mitigate against the capacity to take corrective, safety monitoring measures.

(Photo: www.theborneopost.com)

Limited testing capacity and weak surveillance The small numbers of recorded cases and handful of reported deaths in Africa and S.E. Asia (the Caribbean is another such case in point) can engender a false security and justify a lack of action by such already economically and health-challenged countries, thus the risk of infections spreading is magnified. In the early phases of the outbreak some S.E. Asian states were slow to acknowledge the risks…even as late as mid-March, Myanmar’s government was still attributing it’s low number of cases to the superior “lifestyle and diet” of the locals. The fight against Covid-19 by Third World countries is further retarded by a failure to test widely and in the numbers necessitated by the crisis. It shouldn’t be overlooked that some of these countries have quite repressive regimes that don’t rank the goal of a universal healthcare system as their highest priority [‘Experts Doubt Low Coronavirus Counts of Some Southeast Asian Countries’, (Zsombor Peter), VOA, 29-Mar-2020, www.voanews.com].

(Photo: www.upnews.info.com)

For the bulk of African countries the story is similar. A by-product of their lack of development is that their health systems are fragile before the onset of coronavirus hits them. Awareness of the inability to cope with a full-blown health crisis, had led some leaders to advocate so-called “miracle cures” for the virus (eg, Madagascar’s president’s championing of untested traditional plant remedies). Nigeria (Africa’s largest nation by population) shows only 981 confirmed cases and 31 deaths✺✺ to date but is looking as vulnerable as anyone in Africa. Oil exports are the hub of Nigeria’s economy and the fall of the world’s crude oil price to a record low will hamstrung the country’s efforts to contain any future eruptions of the disease [‘Coronavirus: How drop in oil price affects Nigeria’s economy’, (Michael Eboh), Vanguard, 17-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com]. The outbreak of pandemic hotspots in Nigeria could be devastating, especially in the north, given the country’s population of nearly 200 million people and it’s inadequate healthcare capacity⋉.

(Photo: www.newswirenow.com)

Too good to be … Some countries have reported being lightly or relatively lightly touched by the onslaught of the coronavirus, these results have surprised outside observers. One such country that raises eyebrows in this respect is Russia. The republic has 146 million people and shares long borders with China⤱, yet it fesses up to having had only 68,622 cases✺✺ (well under half of that of the UK) and suffered only a comparatively low 615 deaths✺✺ from the epidemic (most of those since the start of April). If you cast aside the anomalies, on paper it’s an excellent result! But whether Soviet or post-Soviet, there’s always an air of suspicious doubt about Russian information. The Russian Bear has had form in the past with cover-ups…a prime example—the Soviet Union throwing a tarpaulin over the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the 1980s —indicative of a less than honest response to major disasters [‘The Very Low Number of Russia’s Reported COVID-19 Cases Raises Questions of a Cover-Up’, (Rick Moran), PJ Media, 22-Mar-2020, www.pjmedia.com].

Image: www.asianews.it

Russia, if it so erred, is not “Robinson Crusoe” in deliberately underreporting the pandemic’s effect. China for nearly three months from the initial outbreak didn’t include asymptomatic patients in the official stats, and only rectified this oversight on April Fools Day [‘China acknowledges underreporting coronavirus cases in official count’, (Mark Moore), New York Post, 01-Apr-2001, www.nypost.com]. For six weeks after WHO declared a global health emergency Indonesia did not report a single Covid-19 case (unlike most of it’s S.E. Asian neighbours). Considering the republic’s population size (more than 270 million) and it’s close links with China, this aroused widespread suspicion of underreporting and criticism in a Harvard University study which seemed to belatedly jolt Indonesia into disclosure. The first notification by Djakarta of coronavirus cases occurred on 2nd March, and from then on Indonesia’s curve has been on an upward trajectory – currently 8,211 cases, 689 deaths✺✺ [‘Why are there no reported cases of coronavirus in Indonesia?’, (Randy Mulyanto & Febriana Firdaus), Aljazeera, 18-Feb-2020, www.aljazeera.com].

Doubting a hermetically-sealed “Hermit Kingdom” North-East Asia’s renegade, secretive state, North Korea, can be added to the list of countries purporting to be Covid-19–free. Pyongyang‘s official line has been met with disbelief from several external sources such as South Korea and Radio Free Europe which asserts that disclosures from within North Korean military circles confirm the occurrence of coronavirus cases in the border areas [‘What Is the Coronavirus Doing to North Korea’, (Nicholas Eberstadt), New York Times, 22-Apr-2020, www.nytimes.com]

Addendum: (Coronavirus as @ 0130 hrs EAT time, 25-April-2020) USA 890,200 cases | 50,403 deaths Italy 189,973 cases | 25,549 deaths Spain 219,764 cases | 22,524 deaths France 158,183 cases | 21,856 deaths UK 143,464 cases | 19,506 deaths

໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱

✺✺ figures as @ 0130 hrs EAT time, 25-Apr-2020

⋉ just over the last week the African continent experienced a sudden surge in infections, ‘Africa’s 43% jump in virus cases in 1 week worries experts’, (Gerard Zim Rae), ABC News, 23-Apr-2020, www.abcnews.go.com

⤱ although Russia did close its eastern border with China after the virus breakout

Elite Sport in the Age of COVID-19: A Sporting World in Hibernation

Posted by Bonza Rottwheeler on April 21, 2020

Tags: AFL, ARU, Belarus Premier League, Burundi, Cricket, Cricket Australia, Elite sport, EPL, Football, Gov. DeSantis, Horse-racing, Liverpool FC, Motorsports, Nicaragua, President Ortega, Professional sport, Sport and health, Taiwan Chinese Baseball League, WWE

The spectacle of sport—either viewed from the bleachers, the corporate box, or beamed into punters’ lounge rooms—is in a COVID-induced drought just about everywhere in the world. The sports’ governing bodies find themselves in the “Twilight Zone”, sustaining a massive hit to their revenue sources and at the same time desperately trying to keep their sport relevant to the aficionados. How well they’ve managed to keep their heads above water varies from sport to sport and from country to country.

All the world’s domestic cricket leagues are in indefinite abeyance and all upcoming test fixtures have had the red-ink drawn through them. National bodies like the ACB (Cricket Australia), suddenly with time on their hands, have more carefully examined their finances and discovered worrying “bottom-lines”. Many are anxiously pondering how they are going to connect all the dots moving forward (as they say). Meanwhile, international cricket’s online bible, ESPN Cricinfo, has taken to filling its content with nostalgia trips – substituting the now non-existent live scores with scoresheets of some of the more memorable past world cups.

Boxing has also delved back into the sport’s history, not to re-project grainy footage of epic bouts from the pugilistic past onto screens, but to stage simulations of the fights that could never be …pitting the heavyweight greats of different eras against each other in contests to ‘decide’ who is boxing’s GOAT, leaving fans to agree or disagree with the computerised outcome. The overriding objective, to keep the fans’ appetites whetted – until the actual thing becomes a reality again. Motorsport, with the Formula One series a non-starter, has followed boxing into simulation substitution, staging its first “Virtual Grand Prix”, E-racing proving a real hit for for the “petrol-head” fandom [‘Coronavirus: The sports turning to gaming during lockdown’, (Joe Tidy), BBC News, 26-Mar-2020, www.bbc.com/]. In contrast to boxing, the theatricality of professional wrestling in the US gets the go-ahead…in Florida at least that’s the case, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has deemed WWE wrestling an “essential service” to Floridians and has has given the ‘sport’ his gubernatorial blessing✱ [‘Pro wrestling company WWE is an essential business during the coronavirus pandemic, Florida Gov. DeSantis says’, (Yelena Dzhanova), CNBC, 14-Apr-2020, www.cnbc.com].

(Image: virtuair.com)

The rugby codes have pulled down the shutters everywhere the game with the odd-shaped football is played. In Australia the 15-a-side game, rugby, has had its ongoing revenue source cut off, like everywhere else, but the difference is the ARU (Rugby Australia) was already in a parlous financial situation…before the virus hit. Now the code in Australia is undergoing an existential crisis, its own trial-by-fire. For the bedevilled ARU, massive player pay-cuts plus a wholesale bail-out from the IRB is the most likely end-game. The rugby league variant of football is in a state of flux as well. With the NRL, the sport’s national body, discovering that, despite its annal multi-million dollar TV and Foxtel revenue streams, it has found its cash reserves are sorely depleted. The NRL at least has a plan for restarting games, which it has styled the “Apollo Mission”. Mustering up the unilateral front of a Donald Trump, it announced early in April that it’s target date to resume playing was 28th May. Unfortunately, it didn’t consult with the relevant government authorities before taking this solo step. Given that, a) the state borders remain closed in Australia, and b) rugby league is a heavy body contact sport, the NRL’s 28th May quest may just turn out to be “mission impossible”. South of the Murray River, the AFL, custodian of the football code known colloquially as “Aussie Rules”, having formed a coronavirus ‘cabinet’ to chart the way forward is thinking aloud about different options for a possible winter restart (another “watch this space” scenario) [‘Mid-winter return likely for AFL restart after coronavirus shutdown’, (Mark Duffield), The West Australian, 17-Apr-2020, www.thewest.com.au].

(Source: ESPN.com)

Interestingly, about the only sport in Australia at the elite level given the green-light to continue is horse-racing (and it’s offshoot harness racing) – sans on-course spectators❂. This is perhaps surprising considering that horse-racing seems to fail the social distancing test (involving as it customarily does a conga-line of 16 jockeys in pretty close proximity). But the so-called “Sport of Kings”, if no longer seeped in the landed aristocracy, is intimately connected with the corporate “Mr Bigs” of society. Considering this and the kind of very serious money thoroughbred racing attracts, that it’s managed to secure a special exemption shouldn’t really surprise. Money talks, as the cliche goes [‘Why racing is so keen to avoid shutting its doors’, (Damien Ractliffe), Sydney Morning Herald, 25-Mar-2020, www.smh.com.au].

The sports calendar’s prospects for the rest of 2020 are looking at the moment pretty much a blank slate. Most of the sporting tournaments around the globe once the COVID-19 crisis, were catapulted into a state of suspended animation… some not officially abandoned at this stage but just kind of hovering in the ether, nothing really happening. After much hand-wringing Japan and the IOC finally swallowed a bitter dose of reality and pulled the plug, postponing the Tokyo Olympics for 12 months (although it’s still going to be called the 2020 Olympics whatever year it’s done). This year’s Wimbledon has been cancelled, so the strawberries and cream set will need to find another diversion for June-July. US basketball and baseball were among the first franchises to be halted. The US Masters has been canned for the year and the remaining golf majors have been postponed to a (fingers-crossed) TBA date. The IPL was postponed indefinitely but the scale and magnitude of India’s struggle against the coronavirus doesn’t bode well for its 2020 chances. The cricket T20 World Cup for later this year, a case of wait and hope.

🔺 In a game in Brazil in March before pro-football was suspended, the Gremio team took the field wearing masks to protest the dangers players were exposed to during the pandemic

What of the world game, football, what’s it’s current state of play? Well, just as gloomy in the main, all of the world’s major leagues have been suspended. The showcase EPL is optimistically hoping to resume in summer, none of the clubs more so than Liverpool FC, which having dominated the season up to the disruption, sit tantalisingly close but still short of claiming the league title. But world soccer is not entirely without ‘premier’ league football in the time of coronavirus. A handful of maverick countries have ploughed on regardless, or should I say, in disregard (or even denial) of the virus crisis. Belarus, with it’s “gung-ho” president, continues to play football⊰ – in stadiums with supporters in attendance, shoulder-to-shoulder, despite having recorded nearly 4,800 corona cases to date. The Vysshaya Liga, virtually unknown outside Belarus prior to the crisis, has by default, been elevated implausibly to the centre of the football universe. Fans from other soccer-starved countries like England have adopted Belarusian teams and now keenly follow the fortunes of these proxy clubs from afar. Both Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, the governments of which have buried their heads in the sand over the COVID-19 pandemic, have followed Belarus’s lead in keeping their peoples sated with bread and association football [‘In Belarus, unlike most places, soccer plays on despite virus’, (Yuliya Talmazan), NBC News, 20-Apr-2020, www.nbcnews.com].

🔺 Taiwanese baseball: synthetic “seat-fillers”, creating the illusion of making the stadiums look less empty during games (Photo: Cronkite News)

Some mass-supported sports played a few games behind closed gates before calling a halt to the season due to the pandemic. Many of the players commented on the strangeness and the flatness, the lack of atmosphere in the games. Taiwan, one country which has managed an effective response to coronavirus, has come up with a novel and innovative way of countering this problem. The country’s new baseball season opened a week ago with a ban on spectator attendance…in a bizarre move the organisers have installed dummies and cardboard cut-outs of fans in the bleachers, a contrivance intended, I guess, to make the players out on the diamond feel like they’re not all alone [‘Dummies replace fans at baseball in Taiwan’, Reuters, 14-Apr-2020, www.mobile.reuters.com].

Postscript: Odd man out in the Americas All the football-obsessed countries of Latin America have suspended their 2020 competitions due to the Covid-19 crisis except one, Nicaragua. The refusal of the Central American state’s president, Daniel Ortega, to halt Liga Primera soccer games (and other sporting events) is in keeping with his general, ‘ostrich’ stance of not taking any preventive measures against the pandemic✧ [‘Nicaragua Not Backing Down Despite Criticism Over Lax Measures During Pandemic’, (Carrie Kahn), NPR, 18-Apr-2020, www.npr.org] .

⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳⬳

✱ which no doubt pleased President Trump, a longtime friend of WWE head ‘honcho’ Vince McMahon ❂ horse-racing has been suspended in New Zealand, the UK, Ireland and South Africa among others, but still receives the thumbs-up in horseracing-crazy Hong Kong and California ⊰ and ice hockey, another favourite game of the president ✧ the only other country that didn’t close down it’s domestic football competition, the tiny African nation of Burundi, finally called a temporary halt to matches earlier in April

Revisiting the Coronavirus Origin Theories

Posted by funambulator@live.com on April 19, 2020

Tags: 2019 Wuhan Military Games, Bat transmission, Bill Gates, Chinese pangolin theory, Conspiracy theories, Covid-19, Donald J Trump, Fox News, Hua’nan markets, Hubei province, MERS 2009, Pangolin transmission to humans, SARS 2003, US media, WHO, Wuhan, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Zoonotic origin of Coronavirus

(Image: KPBS)

China notified the World Health Organisation on 31 December 2019 of a series of “pneumonia-like” cases popping up in Wuhan, however it took some time for peripheral parts of the country to get wind of the burgeoning health crisis. Information from the government, when it did come, was pretty sketchy in the early stages of the outbreak. Soon after Chinese migrant workers began returning home from Wuhan, rumours of what might have caused the virus started to circulate in the regions.

Zoonotic source As the infection rates in Wuhan and Hubei province started to steeple in early February, there was lots of speculations about animal transmission to coronavirus’ “Patient Zero”. Civets, snakes, seafood, wolf cubs, rats—all live wildlife sold at the Wuhan ‘wet’ markets—got mentions as possible candidates for transmission. The story most heard and retold at the time was that it was bats that had transmitted the pathogen to humans at the Hua’nan markets⌧ (‘How It All Started: China’s Early Coronavirus Missteps’, (J Page, WX Fan & N Khan), WSJ, 06-Mar-2020), www.wsj.com). The Rhinolophus bat (Horseshoe bat) has been identified as the specific type of bat likely to have carried the infection (‘Coronavirus animal origin’, Crikey, 16-Apr-2020, www.crickey.com.au). A few weeks later there was a new prime suspect – the pangolin, the world’s most trafficked mammal. Chinese virologists⚘ had traced the virus to pangolins being sold at those same seafood markets in Wuhan (‘Mystery deepens over animal source of coronavirus’, (David Cyrenoski), Nature, 26-Feb-2020, www.nature.com).

(Image: Frans Lanting / National Geographic)

The inevitable conspiracy theories: Genetically-engineered virus Since February China and the US have exchanged accusations that Covid-19 was deliberately created as a biological weapon—all without foundation (‘No, COVID-19 Coronavirus Was Not Bioengineered. Here’s The Research That Debunks That Idea’, (Bruce Y Lee), Forbes, 17-Mar-2020, www.forbes.com). Chinese officials have also made the wild claim that the US Army brought the virus to Wuhan when it participated in the Military Games in the city in October last year.

🔺 Wuhan markets (Photo: NOEL CELIS /AFP via Getty Images)

Over the last couple of months, another story disseminated by southern Republicans has been doing the rounds of the conservative media in America. It espouses the view that coronavirus originated not from a wet market but from a biosafety lab in Wuhan (Wuhan Institute of Virology), from an accidental leakage. Again this view is bereft of any hard evidence to support it but this hasn’t stopped President Trump and his allies at Fox from seizing on it!✱ (“’Biological Chernobyl’: How China’s secrecy fueled coronavirus suspicions”, (Q Forgey, D Lippmann, N Bertrand & L Morello), Politico, 17-Apr-2020, www.politico.com).

While Covid-19 continues to wreak its trail of carnage worldwide, media and social media platforms will no doubt continue to throw up theories about the causes but until China releases the clinical and epidemiological data on the Wuhan outbreak, the pandemic’s precise origin cannot be scientifically determined (Politico).

🔺 Exporting America’s homegrown “Gates-gate”conspiracy – ‘Covidiocy‘ to Melbourne (Photo: AAP/Ricky Barbour)

______________________________________________ ⌧ bats are major reservoirs of many viruses, and prevalent in both the SARS and MERS outbreaks ⚘ scientific evidence for the pangolin as the culprit is based on a high match of its genome sequencing with that of SARS-CoV-2, however the research remains unpublished and therefore unreviewed; it is thought that pangolins may have been intermediate hosts for the disease … bat ⇝ pangolin ⇝ human ✱ these are only the less implausible theories, a raft of other ludicrous and wacky conspiratorial notions have been floated purporting to explain the epidemic’s genesis – ranging from Bill Gates having manufactured the virus to establish himself as the ‘Czar’ of US health care, to Covid-19 being caused by the installation of the 5G cellphone network (‘Coronavirus spawns conspiracy theories’, (David Knowles), Yahoo!news, 18-Apr-2020, www.yahoonews.com)

Tangier as International Zone: A Multicultural Free Port at Africa’s Doorway

Posted by Sloane Snodgrasse on April 17, 2020

Tags: ‘Casablanca’ (1942), Act of Algeciras 1906, Ancient empires, Beat Generation, Carthaginian empire, European great powers, General Franco, Imperial Rome, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Germany, Maghreb (Arab North Africa), Marrakech, Moroccan Hippie Trail, Roman free port 38 BC, Scramble for Africa, Spanish designs on Tangier, Sultan of Morocco, Tangier International Zone 1923-56, Western Counterculture, William S Burroughs

Tangier is a coastal city in northern Morocco that looks out across the Strait of Gibraltar to Tarifa, Spain, a distance of just 20 miles, hence its sobriquet, “the Door to Africa”. Strategically located at the cusp of Africa and Europe, Tangier has a long history of interactions with foreign cultures and civilisations – having been occupied at different periods by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans❈, Vandals, Arabs, Moors and Berbers (Islamic and pre-Islamic), Byzantine Greeks, Spanish, Portuguese and English.

Tangier in the scramble for Africa By the beginning of the 20th century, during the “Scramble for Africa”, the territory of Morocco (which Tangier falls within) was divided up between Spain and France (and held as “protectorates”). The clandestine deal between the two prompted objections from Germany demanding a “slice of the (African) cake”. A provocative response by impetuous and volatile emperor Wilhelm II in Tangier precipitated an international crisis in 1905. Tensions were dampened down by the ensuing Act of Algeciras: Germany was appeased with a portion of the French Congo, but at the same time Britain and France consolidated their alliance.

Tangier’s special status Under an agreement (the Tangier Convention) signed by France, Spain and the UK in 1923, Tangier became an International Zone (TIZ), effective from 1924. The tripartite administration of TIZ was later extended to include the US, Belgium, Portugal, Netherland, Sweden and Italy. Forms of everyday official life in the enclave reflected its new internationalised nature, although limited to a very select band of foreign countries. As CG Fenwick described it at the time, TIZ was ”a condominium of select states, a limited board of trustees acknowledging no political responsibility to the nations of the world at large“ (Fenwick, C. G. “The International Status of Tangier.” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 23, no. 1, 1929, pp. 140–143. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2190247. Accessed 14 Apr. 2020).

The judiciary adopted a mixed court comprising two English judges and one each from France and Spain, and the type of law adhered to, analogous to French law (Brown, R. Weir “International Procedure under the Tangier Convention.” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, vol. 7, no. 1, 1925, pp. 86–90. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/753030. Accessed 14 Apr. 2020).

🔺 Tangier, 1924 (Photo: www.pinterest.com)

TIZ was neutral and demilitarised, retaining for zonal security a small force comprising 250 native Moroccan gendarmes under the command of a Spanish major assisted by other subordinate officers from the vested-interest countries. If needed, there was a provision to call on the sultan of Morocco to bolster security strength (Delore, Gabriel. “The Violation by Spain of the Statute of Tangier and Its Consequences as They Affect the United States.” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 35, no. 1, 1941, pp. 140–145. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2192608. Accessed 14 Apr. 2020).

The various international diplomatic corps in Morocco were consolidated in the city of Tangier (apparently the sultan preferred that they be accommodated there rather than Fez, Morocco’s principal city), together with other municipal services, further reflecting the special character of TIZ (Brown).

Political authority in TIZ The Zone’s political structure (from 1928) had as its basic unit of governance a Legislative Assembly (membership: 4 from France, 3 each from Spain, GB and Italy, 1 each from the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal and the US). Real power however lay with the Committee of Control – with consuls representing Belgium, France, GB, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. The Committee had the power to veto the Legislative Council and to dissolve it. At a grass-roots level there was an administrator in charge. Under the TIZ Statute the authority of the sultan, acting through a mandūb (proxy), was recognised (though the sultan’s sovereignty over TIZ was nominal) (Graham H Stuart, (1945). The Future of Tangier. Foreign Affairs, 23(4), 675-679, www.foreignaffairs.com)◘.

Tangier International Zone Area: 373 km. Pop Est.(ca 1936) approx 50,000 (Muslims 30,000, Jews 12,000, Europeans 8,000-plus). Currency: £ pounds sterling

Casablanca or Tangier? By this time Tangier had acquired a reputation for cosmopolitanism and diversity, being a destination for international businessmen, black marketeers, smugglers, diplomats, military men, refugees, writers and spies. It is widely thought that the classic war espionage film Casablanca (1942) was “inspired by the international ambience of Tangier” (Rachid Tafersiti, L’image de la Ville entire Cinema et Urbanisme, quoted in “The bar at Cinema Vox in Tangier”, Cinema Vox, www.cinemavox.ma)◍. More transparently, Tangier was the subject (or the mood-creating backdrop) for a spate of American mystery/thriller B-movies in the Forties and Fifties with titles like Tangier (reviewed by Variety, 1946: as “spy melodrama with plenty of hokum”) and The Woman from Tangier.

Franco’s takeover In 1940, with France totally blindsided by the immediate, existential threat to Paris from the German Wehrmacht, General Franco, using the pretext that he was protecting Tangier from a possible Italian invasion launched a surprise invasion of Tangier (‘Spanish protectorate in Morocco’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org). With Spain in military occupancy of the city, its soldiers tried to turn TIZ into a garrison town, imposing themselves, stopping citizens, checking their IDs, etc. The invasion and aftermath brought protests from UK and US and the Francoist state had to give assurances that the city would not be fortified and that the international institutions would be restored (‘U.S. Protests Step of Spain in Tangier’, New York Times, 16-Nov-1940, www.nytimes.com). At the end of the war the Allies forced the Spanish to withdraw…the TIZ continued until 1956 when the independent Kingdom of Morocco was created with Tangier subsumed within the new Maghreb nation.

PostScript: About a decade after its international status was terminated, Tangier became a sought-out destination for a whole new category of outsiders, the ”beat generation”, Western writers and artists like William S Burroughs. Within a few years other counterculture devotees were flocking to Tangier as it became part of the Moroccan hippie trail (although soon upstaged by Marrakech as the preferred ‘Mecca’ for Western non-conformists in Morocco).

⇿———-———⇿⇿———-———⇿⇿———-———⇿

❈ Tangier first acquired the status of a free city in 38 BC under imperial Rome

◍ gambling was not permitted in Moroccan cities, whereas the activity flourished in nightclubs in the International Zone, so the fact that it is featured in Casablanca gives further credence to the idea that Tangier was the template for the movie (Cinema Vox)

◘ the Statute was criticised for several shortcomings – including a lack of democracy, Tangierinos were disenfranchised; and TIZ’s economic interests were neglected (Stuart)

DeMille’s Lost “Egyptian City” Found in the Sand-dunes of Central Coast, CA

Posted by Bonza Rottwheeler on April 14, 2020

Tags: Cecil B DeMille, Charlton Heston, Cold War, Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes (California), Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center, Hollywood, King Tutankhamen’s tomb, Paramount Pictures, Peter Brosnan, Rameses II, Rameses’ city in the dunes, The Ten Commandments (1923 & 1956 versions)

Mention “The Ten Commandments” to cinephiles and almost invariably they’ll think of the 1956 epic with Chuck Heston as the resolute Moses. But that was Cecil B DeMille’s second attempt at filming the Old Testament story, or his (Cold War-inspired) interpretation of it at least. Back when Hollywood was still in it’s adolescence, 1923, DeMille made a silent version of The Ten Commandments, in black and white with some sequences in Technicolor.

(Image: www.bestplaces.com)

The location chosen by DeMille for his first go at shooting the biblical epic was a barren 18-mile stretch of sand some 170 miles north of LA, at Guadalupe on California’s central coast. Today, the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes, as they are called, are a protected sea coast and wildlife refuge (eg, for the endangered western snowy plover) and largely unchanged, but for three months in 1923 it was a hive of mega-budget movie-making activity as DeMille transformed the empty dunes into a reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian city. DeMille chose the Guadalupe dunes for the movie set because he thought it might pass for the Egyptian desert (or at least the Sahara Desert) [‘Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes’, Atlas Obscura, www.altasobscura.com].

𐅉 ‘10 Commandments’ of California in glorious “techni-tint”

Hollywood scale extravaganza The set was massive scale, destined to become the director’s trademark – 120 foot high by 720 feet wide, erected by 1,500 construction workers, a twelve-story tall “Egyptian city” of plaster, wood and straw. The city’s human population comprised a further 3,500 actors✖and technicians plus 125 cooks to feed the assembled masses. Add to these impressive numbers some 5,000 animals, 300 chariots and 21 plaster sphinxes. Statues of Pharaoh Rameses were eleven metres tall and the facade had a 110-foot high gate enclosure✧ [‘The Ten Commandments, (1923 film)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Bob Brier, Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, (2013); www.lostcitydemille.com].

A Virtuous Camp DeMille? DeMille had a huge makeshift tent city erected (nicknamed “Camp DeMille”) to house all of the personnel on the set. Perhaps, in keeping with the overtly religious theme of the film⊡, DeMille laid down strict rules of non-engagement for everyone involved on the production…men and women were billeted separately with no fraternisation allowed, no gambling, no alcohol and no coarse language [‘The Ten Commandments of 1923: The Exodus, Take One’, Patheos, 20-Apr-2012, www.patheos.com]. The alcohol ban adhered to the Prohibition rules in place in America at the time, but subsequent generations of beach-combing visitors to Guadalupe’s dunes have discovered evidence that participants on the movie set found a way round that…the debris of empty bottles of alcohol-laced cough syrup strewn all over the dunes [PJ Grisar, ‘How DeMille made his ‘Ten Commandments’ Jewish again’, Forward, 08-Apr-2020, www.forward.com].

A vanishing “Egyptian metropolis” After filming of The Ten Commandments on the Central Coast finished in August 1923✥, what DeMille did next astounds. Instead of dismantling and hauling the costly set (the overall budget for the movie was a staggering $1.5M or more) back to Hollywood, DeMille had it bulldozed and buried in the Guadalupe dunes. The film-maker just didn’t want to be bothered with the logistics or expense of an enormous removal task and/or he didn’t want rival Hollywood film-makers or studios to get their hands on the set.

Unearthing cinematic artefacts And there it sat—or shifted around in the constantly swirling winds of the dunes—for sixty years, one of Hollywood’s most expensive-ever film sets. Then in 1983 film-maker Peter Brosnan became intrigued after a chance encounter with the story, got hooked on it and spent the next 30 years searching for the site, finding it and trying (frustratingly) to excavate it. The project is ongoing, and has taken this length of time due to a combination of factors – local “red tape” (jurisdiction of the dunes falls under two separate counties); the site is a bird-life sanctuary with limited, seasonal access; plus there’s the extremely high cost of funding excavations. Over the years, archaeologists, both professional and amateur, have joined the quest to dig up DeMille’s treasure-trove. Buried replicas from DeMille’s Lost City have been unearthed including a 300-pound plaster sphinx which now resides in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center [‘There’s a Fake Egyptian City Buried in California’, (Marissa Fessenden), Smithsonian Magazine, 15-Oct-2015, www.smithsonianmag.com]. Brosnan compiled his years of research, including interviews with surviving actors, extras and other crew members, into a documentary film, The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille, screened in 2016.

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✖DeMille also bused in some 250 Orthodox Jews as extras to give the movie a more authentic Hebrew look ✧ Rameses’ ‘temple’ contained recreations of hieroglyphics copied from the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 ⊡ certainly in keeping with the sternly moralising tone of DeMille’s film ✥ only part of the film was made on the Guadalupe dunes, the wonky parting of the Red Sea scene was shot at Seal Beach in Orange County, and a modern-day morality tale DeMille tacked on to the film was shot back at the studios

Choosing the Pen over the Sword: Redemption of a Would-be Antipodean Assassin

Posted by E Curb Nottus on April 10, 2020

Tags: Arthur A Calwell, Australian Labor Party, Cabramatta NSW, Chalcolithic period, E Gough Whitlam, Hassan-i-Sabbah, John Newman MP, Lee Harvey Oswald, Marco Polo, Mongul Empire, Morisset Psychiatric Hospital, Nizari Ismail sect, Peter Kocan, Rupert Brooke, The Assassins of Alamut, Thomas Ley, Tyrolean Iceman, Vietnam War

The act of assassination❈—be it for political, religious or financial motives—has been around for … I was going to say the entirety of human history, but we can be more precise now, thanks to scientific discoveries made in the 1990s. We can now say with some confidence … since the Chalcolithic period (the Copper Age).

The Tyrolean Iceman Scientists in 1991 located the ice-preserved remains of a man (ascribed the name ‘Ötzi) in the Austrian-Italian Alps, believed to be the earliest victim of assassination… killed by an arrow ca 5,300 years ago [‘Preservation of 5300 year old red blood cells in the Iceman’, Journal of Royal Society Interface, (Marek Janko, Robert W Stark & Albert Zink), 02-May-2012, www.royalsocietypublishing.org].

⇧ Hasan-i-Sabbah

The ‘original’ Assassins The deed was perpetrated for thousands of years before the term by which we known it, ‘assassination’, was coined. It derives from the 11th/12th centuries in the Middle East. The ‘Assassins’ were from a branch of the Nizari Ismail sect of Shi’a Islam. From a mountain fortress base in Persia (there were Assassins also active in Syria), under the cult’s leader Hasan-i-Sabbah, they targeted particular Seljuk Turkish rulers for assassination. When they turned their retribution to rulers of the Mongul Empire later, the group was hunted down and wiped out by the invading Monguls. The etymology of ‘assassins’ derives probably from the Egyptian Arabic, hashasheen, meaning “noisy people” or “trouble-makers”. An alternate but it seems erroneous explanation, propagated by the oriental explorer Marco Polo, among others, is that the term derived from hashiti, because of the (unfounded) belief that the Assassins committed their murders while under the influence of hashish [‘Hashshashin: The Assassins of Persia’, (Kallie Szczepanski), ThoughtCo, 19-Sep-2019, www.thoughtco.com].

⇧ Lee Harvey Oswald (the person-in-the-street’s image of the modern “lone wolf” assassin)

A continent mercifully spared the assassin’s vengeance Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics, there are instances of it depicted in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and world history is littered with assassinations of the famous—Philip of Macedon, Julius Caesar, Caligula, Thomas a’Becket, Abraham Lincoln, JFK, Mahatma Gandhi, Archduke Ferdinand, Leon Trotsky—as well as more obscure figures of power and influence [‘Assassination’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Interestingly, Australia is one the few parts of the world with a modern political structure that has largely escaped the universal spectre of political assassination. In the 120 years of Australia’s Federation there has been only two instances involving serving politicians, one successful and one not successful❒.

⇧ John Newman

“Australia’s first political assassination” NSW Labor backbencher John Newman was pursuing an anti-crime, anti-drug campaign in his electorate in southwest Sydney, centring round the (then) criminal hotspot of Cabramatta. Newman earned the enmity of the local crime syndicate headed by a Vietnamese migrant club owner and was assassinated in his front driveway in 1994 [‘John Newman murder: Downfall of a merciless crime lord saved soul of Cabramatta’, (Mark Morri & Lachlan Thompson), Fairfield Advance, 03-Sep-2014].

⇧ AA Calwell (Source: National Library of Australia)

Nearly 30 years earlier Australia’s leader of the opposition Arthur Calwell very nearly anticipated the Newman assassination. In 1966 Calwell was attending a rowdy rally at Mosman Town Hall debating conscription during the Vietnam War. As the Labor leader was leaving the event, a 19-year-old itinerant factory hand approached the car and fired a sawn-off .22 rifle from point-blank at Calwell✪. Fortunately for the opposition leader, the would-be assassin only succeeded in shattering the window glass which lacerated the politician’s chin. The assailant, Peter Raymond Kocan, whose background was characterised as that of a “casebook disturbed loner”, when questioned why he shot Calwell, responded that “he wanted to be remembered by history for killing somebody important” and that “he didn’t like (Calwell’s) politics” [‘Arthur Calwell and Peter Kocan’, Shane Maloney and Chris Grosz’, The Monthly, Aug 2007, www.themonthly.com.au].

⇧ Peter R Kocan

At his trial, the press reporting took the “15 minutes of fame” line – portraying Kocan as a “coldly deranged Lee Harvey Oswald type…(determined) to kill to be famous, to rise above the nobodies of the world” [‘Pivotal chapter in Peter Kocan’s life’, The Age, 03-July-2004, www.theage.com.au]. But Kocan’s homicidal intent was not a political act or a rationally calculated one, rather it was the “distorted reasoning of a mind alienated, socially isolated and hyper-sensitively suggestible” [‘Portrait of a Loner’, Weekend Australian, (Murray Waldron), 03-July-2004].

Finding a calling in purgatory Arthur Calwell made a full recovery from his superficial wounds but “died politically” soon after. His loss in the national elections later that year (the stodgy, charisma-free Calwell’s third unsuccessful tilt at winning the prime ministership) ended his leadership ambitions⌧. Kocan, described by his defence psychiatrist as a “borderline schizophrenic”, was declared criminally insane, receiving a life sentence and ended up spending a decade in a psychiatric prison at Morisset Hospital. Out of such bleak adversity Kocan found unexpected light and hope. A chance encounter with the poetry of Rupert Brooke at Morisset launched the failed assassin on a post-incarceration career path in which he transformed himself into an award-winning, published poet and novelist [Graham Freudenberg, ‘Calwell, Arthur Augustus (1896–1973)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 13, (MUP), 1993].

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❈ “the act of deliberately killing someone especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons”, Black’s Law Dictionary

❒ Thomas Ley, a minister of justice in a state National Party government of the 1920s may have been Australia’s first political assassin…a trail of murders, including of two of Ley’s political opponents, point an incriminating finger back to him (‘Thomas Ley’, Glebe Society, www.glebesociety.org.au)

✪ portentously, Calwell told the town hall meeting “you can’t defeat an ideal with a bullet”

⌧ although Calwell stubbornly hung on to the Labor leadership until replaced by his younger, dynamically visionary deputy Gough Whitlam in February 1967

Weihaiwei Under the Union Jack: An Odd Little British Enclave in China

Posted by E Curb Nottus on April 7, 2020

Tags: Beiyang Fleet, Boxer Rebellion 1900, Commissioner Stewart Lockhart, German and Russian colonial expansion in China, Hong Kong and New Territories, Jiawu War (1st Sino-Japanese War), Liugong Island (Liu-Kung-Tao), Port Arthur/Lüshankou, Port Edward, Pu Yi, Qing Dynasty, Qingtao (Tsingtao), Reginald Fleming Johnston, Shandong province, Weihai, Weihaiwei

Weihai City is a commercial port and major fishing centre jutting out on the north-easternmost tip of Kiaochow Peninsula in Shandong province. Geographically it is the southern point guarding the entrance to the Gulf of Zhili (Bohai) and the maritime route to Tianjin, the gateway to Beijing. Up until 1895 Weihai or Weihaiwei as it was formerly known was the China’s base for it’s Beiyang Fleet (Northern Seas Fleet). That year the port city was taken by the Japanese in the Jiawu War (First Sino-Japanese War).

⇓ Liugong Is. Chinese naval memorial

Britain’s motives for securing a port at Weihaiwei Britain in the late 19th century was one of several European powers jockeying for territorial possessions in China. Weihaiwei was important to the diplomats in Whitehall, not so much because it had a deep-sea port (the British already had Hong Kong, to which they added the New Territories in 1898), but as a strategic buffer to other great powers in China. Early in 1898 the Chinese government leased Qingtao (Tsingtao) in southern Shandong province to Germany and the Liaoning Peninsula to Russia (which included the geopolitically important Lüshunkou, renamed by the Russians “Port Arthur”). Acquiring Weihaiwei in 1898 gave Britain a strategic foothold on the mainland to counterbalance the presence of the Germans and the Russians✲. Britain’s lease, it said, would last until the Russians pulled out of Port Arthur. However when Russia withdrew from Port Arthur in 1905, Britain stayed in Weihaiwei, mainly because another rival, Japan, took its place.

⇓1st Chinese Regiment, Weihaiwei (Picture: www.history-chron.com)

The British War Office took charge of administering Weihaiwei (the capital of which was called Port Edward) locating it’s naval base just off the port at Liugong Island (Liu-Kung-Tao). A garrison of 200 British men (who saw service in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in Peking) and a local Chinese regiment was stationed at Pt Edward [‘Wei-Hai-Wei Police’, (Harry Fecitt), Gentleman’s Military International Club, 11-Nov-2008, www.gmic.co.uk].The Navy’s plans for a base in the mould of Hong Kong turned topsy-turvy when Port Edward was found to be unsuitable either as a major navy base or as a trading port. Administration of the territory was passed from the War Office to the Colonial Office which appointed a civilian commissioner to take charge [‘Weihaiwei under British Rule’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The Navy retained a presence at Port Edward using it mainly as it’s China Station for summer anchorage∎.

A peculiar British enclave As British overseas entities go, Weihaiwei was quite atypical. First, it was a leased territory, a legal occupancy, but not a colony like Hong Kong. Britain had no sovereignty over Weihaiwei or it’s Chinese population. Unlike Hong Kong Chinese residents, the Chinese in Pt Edward could not achieve UK citizenship. From 1898 to 1930 Weihaiwei remained a Chinese territory with the British exercising “exclusive jurisdiction over a Chinese population”. Another difference from the colonial model: Hong Kong’s top office-holder was the governor, whereas Port Edward’s administration was headed up by “a lowly commissioner”⌖ [Reviews of British Rule in China: law and justice in Weihaiwei, 1898-1930, by Carol G S Tan, (2008), (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Peter Wesley-Smith, Vol. 49, 2009; Li Chen, Law and History Review, Vol. 28, 2010)].

A quiet, unassuming ‘backwaters’ With British ambitions for Pt Edward scaled down considerably, the navy and the civil administration—both largely doing their own thing—settled down for a long and uneventful tenure in Shandong province. Weihaiwei’s mild summer climate (compared to the hotter climes in Peking and Hong Kong) free of malaria, allowed the Navy to use the locale for the pursuit of rest and recreation for UK personnel serving in China⌂ (Weihaiwei under British Rule’, Wiki). The British civil servants posted to Weihaiwei also enjoyed these relaxed conditions. Commissioner Lockhart, who spent nearly 19 years running the post, spent the bulk of his leisure time horse-riding and playing golf (Lethbridge).

⇓ Comm. Lockhart with some local headmen (1909) (Picture: National Galleries Scotland)

Relations with the local population Lockhart’s tenure as civil commissioner from 1902 defined the pattern for the leasehold’s duration. A standardised tax-collecting system utilising the headmen of Weihai villages was established. The commissioner made sure that the enclave’s expenditure never exceeded that of revenue while implementing a modest program of reforms to education and infrastructure. Lockhart was able to administer Weihaiwei largely unencumbered…being free to govern unilaterally as there was no legislative council in the territory acting as a check on his actions. Lockhart, as a dedicated Sinologist, established a rapport with the middle-class Chinese merchants. He adopted an approach to the local community that was prudent and pragmatic, generally leaving them to run their own political and economic affairs at the village level. The Chinese headmen being conservative in nature in turn didn’t cause any undue problems for the commissioner (Wesley-Smith; Lethbridge). Retrocession of Weihaiwei In 1930 the lease expired on Weihaiwei, Britain handed back the territory to China and removed its garrison. By agreement Britain was allowed to retain certain buildings and facilities on Liugong Island for use by the British Navy for a further 10 years. Britain retained some personnel on the island using it only during winter…meanwhile the golf course activities continued. The day after the extended lease was up in 1940, a band of Japanese soldiers occupied Weihaiwei. Britain protested this action, contending that it had optioned a further extension on Liugong Island, but with larger issues to deal with didn’t press the matter. The remaining British personnel including the surgeon-commander were evacuated [‘Weihaiwei Withdrawal: Rights Reserved by Britain’, The Straits Times, 08-Dec-1940, www.eresources.nib.gov.sg]

Note: the last UK administrator of Weihaiwei, Reginald Fleming Johnston, had been a tutor and adviser to China’s last emperor, Pu-Yi.

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

Weihaiwei British Leasehold, 1898-1930. Capital: Port Edward. 288 square miles (including Liugong Island, 3.16 square miles) Population (1901) >120,000 European portion <200 (Li Chen)

✲ the British pressured China into the lease of Weihaiwei, doing so after the Japanese withdrew their forces, but apparently after overcoming some reservations within Westminster (Wei Peh T’i, Review of British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers, by Pamela Atwell, (1985), Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol. 27, 1987) ∎ although it did function also as a free port until 1923 ⌖ although one biographer of Commissioner Lockhart equated it with the rank of lieutenant-governor (Lethbridge, Henry James. “SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART: COLONIAL CIVIL SERVANT AND SCHOLAR.” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 12, 1972, pp. 55–88. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23881565. Accessed 4 Apr. 2020) ⌂ today under the PRC Weihai is a health and convalescence town

Covid/Ovid 2020: Crisis (Mis)Management – How the World’s Leaders are Responding?

Posted by E Curb Nottus on April 2, 2020

Tags: Andrew Cuomo, Angela Merkel, Belarus, Boris Johnson, Brazil, Coronavirus 2020, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Gavin Newsom, Germany v Italy, Herd immunity, Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro, Jay Inslee, López Obrador, Mexico, President Berdymukhamedov, Radio Free Europe, Religious Right (US), Reporters Without Borders, Rise in Authoritarianism, SARS Epidemic 2003, Sweden, Swine Flu 2009, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Viktor Orbán, White House

Lockdown immediately, quarantine everyone, isolate the virus? Close the borders! Go hard, go fast! Make haste slowly! Laissez-faire? Test as many as you can! Watch and wait, hold off, preserve the economy, keep people working! Half/half?Herd immunity? As the experts—both recognised and putative—come out of the woodwork, a plethora of different approaches to the 21st century’s greatest crisis are thrown up, causing ever deeper descent into confusion for those of us watching from the sidelines.

Sweden: Personal responsibility to do the right thing, fingers and toes crossed At one extreme there’s the “hands-off” non-interventionist line adopted by Sweden…”a relatively relaxed strategy, seemingly assuming that overreaction is more harmful than under-reaction” – in other words, keep calm and carry on. The Swedish government’s goal being to build up a “herd immunity” of the population to (they hope) forestall further waves of infection. The blueprint involves letting the virus spread slowly while sheltering the old and weakest elements of society until the bulk of the population become naturally immune. So schools, restaurants, bars and gyms remain open, all places that many other countries have ’hot-spotted’ as potential petri dishes (to use of the media’s current favourite buzzword in the virus crisis). Critics of the Swedish voluntary approach have stressed the risks it is exposing itself to – a danger of overwhelming the health system’s capability and precipitating large numbers of premature deaths [‘Inside Sweden’s Radically Different Approach to the Coronavirus’, (Bojan Pancevski), Wall Street Journal, 30-Mar-2020, www.wsj.com; ‘Sweden under fire for ‘relaxed’ coronavirus approach – here’s the science behind it’, The Conversation, (PW Frank & PM Nilsson), 30-Mar-2020, www.mamamia.com.au]. While Sweden persists in it’s “long game”, Sweden’s death toll from coronavirus has reached 239❈, a far-from-inconsequential figure for a small population nation like Sweden (and more than double the next highest total of fatalities in the Nordic region, that of Denmark). Not happy, Scandinavian neighbours of Sweden!

🔺 Boris in isolation – self-sacrificing crash-test dummy for the nation, gauging the coronavirus level of virulence: “taking one for the nation!” (Picture: No 10 Downing Street/AFP)

Boris, not dancing The UK government in the early stages of the crisis, along with the Netherlands, flirted with adopting Sweden’s herd immunity approach, but subsequently (and belatedly) opted for lockdown. The UK number of cases and mortality rates continue to rise alarmingly (2,352 dead❈) and it’s citizens can draw little reassurance from the antics of its erratic Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson. At the onset the insouciant Johnson downplayed the epidemic and declared that he was all for shaking hands with as many people as he could (his Churchillian bluff AKA confidence-building strategy?) This didn’t prove a good move, personally for the prime minister, as he was soon struck down with the virus (recalling wistfully whilst in self-quarantine that shaking hands with some people at a hospital, who with hindsight probably had coronavirus, probably wasn’t a good idea).

(Photo: AP)

China’s southern neighbours Taiwan and Singapore both got early warning of the outbreak in China, which helped them get an early start on their countries’ protective measures. Taiwan, at the get-go, posted health workers at airports – incoming passengers from Wuhan (the virus’ origin-point) were checked for symptoms before they exited the planes. Singapore on January 3, inside four days of China’s notification to WHO of an unknown virus, which later was confirmed to be the COVID pathogen, was temperature screening passengers arriving from Wuhan. Taiwan and Singapore were also in a better state of preparedness (than say northern Asian countries bordering China like South Korea and Japan which initially struggled with their respective outbreaks) The two southeast Asian micro-states had learned invaluable lessons from the 2003 SARS and the 2009 swine epidemics. That the Singaporean and Taiwanese governments were upfront and transparent with the public, also got everyone in society quickly on board with the “national project”. The death toll for both Taiwan and Singapore stands well short of double figures❈ [‘How Taiwan and Singapore Have Contained the Coronavirus’, (Chloe Hadavas), Slate, 11-Mar-2020, www.slate.com].

(Photo: AP)

Continental contrast The European comparison of how different countries have handled the virus focuses largely on a Germany v Italy correlation – unfortunately to the great disadvantage of the latter. Angela Merkel and Germany have been able to restrict their coronavirus fatalities thus far to 931❈, compared to Italy’s out-of-control, frighteningly catastrophic 13,155 deaths❈. The reasons for the size of discrepancy are manifold. First as with Taiwan Germany was ready at the outset, comparatively Italy wasn’t. Germany went to social distancing and lockdown early while Italy prevaricated, and Italy was also slow to seal it’s borders. Anticipation paid off for Germany, it had developed a favourable type of test for the virus before it hit. They then tested fast and widely. Italy was slower off the mark, and it’s testing regime was (and is) half or less that of Germany’s capacity. Integral to Germany’s edge is its medical infrastructure, the ratios are stark: Germany has 33.9 hospital beds for every 100,000 of population, cf. Italy, only 8.6 per 100,000. So, by the time Italy got its testing into full swing, the country was swamped with way too many corona-patients requiring critical and urgent treatment. Italy’s age demographic, skewed towards the geriatric end of the scale (second oldest population in the world after Japan) was also a decisive factor in the extremely high mortality rates it has experienced [‘How one country got months ahead of its neighbours in coronavirus fight’, (AP), Yahoo!News, 02-Apr-2020].

Life on Planet Trump In the US a reasonable expectation the citizens of the world’s leading democratic-capitalist state might normally entertain in such a disastrous crisis, would be to have mature, insightful national leadership. Instead, they have Trump! Countless reems of pages of news-copy have been wasted on the US president, but to briefly summarise his Covid-19 performance: at the start in January we got the glib and blasé Trump – “the virus was one person coming from China and we’ve got it under control”; by February it was, we had “pretty much shut it down” (somehow he thought it was over before it had hardly started taking root!?!); next he opined “warm weather will kill it in April”; “the numbers are going down” (said after public health officials had advised the White House that the virus was spreading); by late February it was “we have lost nobody to coronavirus” (there had already been US fatalities). In March Trump, rebuked for repeatedly spreading misinformation, resorted to “it’s the Democrats’ new hoax”; then, “it will disappear one day – like a miracle!” which perhaps demonstrates one of Trump’s rare threads of consistency, drawing a link to the president’s later assertion (completely tone-deaf to the message of social distancing and ignorant of realistic timeframes) that he wanted to see the churches in America full at Easter!✪ [‘Coming Soon: Donald Trump As the Hero of COVID-19”, (Richard North Patterson), The Bulwark, 23-Mar-2020, www.thebulwurk.com].

🔺 Trump impersonating a giant bully rabbit (Photo: CBS News)

Perhaps the most striking and alarming example of Trump’s off-the-cuff and off-the-rails raves is his wilful and flagrant ignoring of the professional advice of his top medical advisers, eg, “anyone who wants a test can have one” (wrong); “we’ll have vaccines relatively soon…they’re coming” (even the non-scientific layperson knows it will take at least one to one-and-a-half years to be publicly available); “we have tremendous control of the virus”, completely contradicting Dr Fauci’s starkly realistic warning that the worst is ahead of us. The consequences of Trump’s disregarding scientific truths provided by medical experts in favour of convenient misinformation has been downright dangerous. His advocacy of an unproven coronavirus treatment (chloroquine phosphate) still being scientifically reviewed was a causal factor leading to the death of a man who tried to self-medicate using the ‘treatment’.

Trump, master of the ad hominem at the lectern, recently on TV seems bored with the subject, maybe looking round for a new focus (Iran?). Trump as president takes no responsibility. When he should be uniting all the key cogs in a coherent national response to the corona-crisis which is killing hundreds of Americans every day, he has been his divisive worst, brawling with the media, attacking medical workers for supposedly hoarding supplies, shifting blame to state governors. Fortunately, governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom and Washington’s Jay Inslee, recognising the gaping gap in leadership and the lack of support coming from the White House, have risen to the mammoth and increasingly desperate challenge facing the country and taken the lead in the crisis [‘History’s verdict on Trump will be devastating’, (Michael D’Antonio), CNN, 30-Mar-2020, www.cnn.com].

(Photo: Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The “Trump of the Tropics” Trump’s abject performance, his “epochal incompetence” (to quote Michael D’Antonio), in the crisis, is bad enough for the risks he has exposed Americans to, but his influence as a “role model” for far-right leaders in other countries, is helping to undermine those countries’ fight against the virus. One such leader is Brazil’s authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro who expresses profound admiration for Trump (hence his nickname above), whose skepticism for the virus’ threat Bolsonaro mirrors. Bolsonaro has publicly dismissed the coronavirus as “a little cold”, refuses to isolate and continues to attend public events, irresponsibly mingling with crowds of his supporters, shaking hands with all❖. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has tended to “flip-flop” on the epidemic, lunging erratically from urging Brazilians to show caution in avoiding transmission of the disease (do as I say, not do as I do!) to calling for an end to the quarantine restrictions and removal of the shackles on the economy.

When confronted with the danger of the virus to Brazilian society, Bolsonaro rivals Trump in loopy explanations, eg, Brazilians possess a “natural immunity” which means that they cannot be infected by diseases❅ (part of the Bolsonaro fantasy playbook!) So far, despite these unique ‘antibodies’ claimed by Bolsonaro, some 244 Brazilians have died from coronavirus❈. The Brazilian president has also exhibited the Trump trait of disbelieving the medical experts and the official statistics. When São Paulo recorded a sharp spike in deaths from the virus, Bolsonaro was quick to cast doubts on the numbers. The governors of São Paulo and Rio are two of the most vocal critics of his lax approach to the crisis, in return Bolsonaro blames the state governors for their concerted measures to halt the disease, labelling their efforts ‘criminal’ [‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro makes life-or-death coronavirus gamble’, (David Biller), Sydney Morning Herald, 29-Mar-2020, www.smh.com.au].

🔺 Bolsonaro, unsafe at any distance?

Some analysts have noted the element of political calculation in Bolsanaro’s hard line on the epidemic. The Brazilian leader’s may feel that if he can take the economy (still feeling the severe effects of the 2015/16 recession) to the next elections in good health, the voters may be less concerned about the country’s death toll from coronavirus (David Biller). Mexico’s president, López Obrador, is singing from a similar hymn-sheet as Bolsonaro. Obrador contends that the severity of the virus has been overstated, and has been quoted as saying that personally he would rely on his (lucky) amulets to keep him safe [‘In Brazil and Mexico, Leaders Downplay Dangers of Virus Outbreak’, Latino USA, 26-Mar-2020, www.latinousa.org].

🔺 President Lukashenko, national leader, sportsman, tractor enthusiast

Belarus, 2020 global sporting capital Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko is another head of state professing an admiration for the US president and similarities in style can be observed. Lukashenko has launched the small East European country on a novel path to (supposedly) combat the deadly virus – a cocktail of sport, cold, vodka and saunas. The Belarus government has vetoed lockdowns and social isolation to counter coronavirus, and it is just about the only place in the world that hasn’t discontinued sporting events. The Tokyo Olympics have been canned for 2020 but crowds still flock to football matches in Belarus. The remarkable leader himself, leading by example, recently participated in an ice hockey game. Likewise, the annual victory parade scheduled for May is still all systems go! In addition to spruking sport (and would you believe, “tractor-riding” in the countryside⊞) as antidotes to the virus, the Belarusian president recommends drinking vodka and taking saunas, whilst reassuring Belarusian citizens that God will protect the country from the global pandemic, adding the rider that Belarus’ icy cold climate will also do the job [‘“Reckless” World Leader says vodka and saunas will protect people from coronvirus’, (James Hawkins), The Mirror, 30-Mar-2020, www.mirror.co.uk].

Postscript: Crisis climate – encroaching on democratic rights? While the pandemic continues to rage, the politics don’t abate. All countries trying to restrict the movements of their citizens have enacted emergency measures to try to confine the pathogen. Most countries have closed their borders and some have legislated the power to detain people. The fear for advocates of civil liberties is that the more authoritarian states may use the new arrangements to move towards martial law. Regimes cross the globe have enacted new powers, ostensibly to protecting the public, but at the same time with the effect of protecting themselves from public and press scrutiny and accountability [‘”Coronavirus” profound threat to democracy’, (Noah Millman), The Week, 01-Apr-2020, www.theweek.com]. In Hungary the right-wing Orbán government has suspended existing laws, by-passing the parliament to allow president Viktor Orbán to rule by decree (with no end date). Thailand has taken the opportunity to censor the nation’s news media (suing and intimidating journalists who criticise the government’s handling of the crisis). Turkmenistan has taken the unusual approach to the pandemic of banning all use of the word ‘coronavirus’ by it’s citizens and state-controlled media✧. According to Radio Free Europe‘s Turkmenistan watch group, people talking about the virus or wearing masks in public could be arrested by the authoritarian regime which claims to have had no confirmed cases of the virus…as Turkmenistan shares a border with coronavirus-ravaged Iran this claim is viewed from outside with extreme skepticism. President Berdymukhamedov✜, not to be outdone for whacky coronavirus remedies, has recommended inhaling smoke from a burning desert-region plant (Vanguard) [’For Autocrats and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’, (Selma Gebrekidian), New York Times, 30-Mar- 2020, www.nytimes.com; ‘Coronavirus: The unusual ways countries are managing lockdowns’, BBC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.bbc.co.uk].

🔻 President Berdymukhamedov, safe distancing not on the agenda here! (Photo: AFP/Igor SAFIN)

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❈ as at 1000 hours, Greenwich M-T, 02-Apr-2020

◘ faced with an overwhelming dose of reality, “Flip-Flop Man” Trump has been forced to pivot 180° away from this…now the White House is acknowledging the health authorities’ dire, nightmarish predictions, (‘US predicts up to 240,000 deaths even with social distancing’, ABC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.abc.net.com.au)

✪ the secular and materialistic lifestyle Trump follows, nay revels in, contrasts conspicuously with the image he tries to sow in the minds of the American public and especially the Religious Right, of him as piously religious

❖ Bolsonaro himself has apparently tested twice for coronavirus but won’t publish the results – transparent governance at its finest!

❅ including the notorious assertion by Bolsonaro that they “can swim in raw sewerage and not catch a thing” – in effect this is what he is doing to Brazilians with his cavalier policy

⊞ the Belarusian president was quoted as saying: “There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone.” (tractors are apparently something of a fetish item in Belarus!)(‘Belarusian president proposes ‘tractor’ therapy for coronavirus’, Vanguard, 16-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com) ✧ Turkmenistan is ranked by Paris-based RSF (Reporters Without Borders) as the country with the least press freedom in the world ✜ Berdymukhamedov has an exalted status in Turkmenistan, being seen as the Arkadag (protector of the people)