Showing posts tagged as: Donald J Trump
Angela’s Germany: A Science-Guided Response to the Present Pandemic
As Europe moves through Autumn, a number of countries are reporting new records for coronavirus infections. This month Italy recorded a 24-hour total of over 10,000 new cases for three consecutive days, while France recorded its highest ever total of new cases for a single day, 32,427. Similarly, the Czech Republic broke the 10,000 barrier for the first time (1,105 cases). Even in Germany, virus cases for a single day reached a pandemic high of 7,830 [‘Italy steps up coronavirus restrictions as Europe fights second wave’, Euronews, 18-Oct-2020, www.euronews.com].
October 4 2020 (Image: WELT)
Not withstanding this current setback in the fight against the pandemic, Germany has easily been the stand-out performer among the larger countries trying to combat Covid-19 in Europe. A raft of factors have been advanced to explain Germany’s success. Obviously, it hinges ultimately on a collective effort by the government, medical authorities and experts, and compliance by the nation. A lot of the credit for steering the ship into relatively safe waters (fingers crossed) goes to the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Almost from day one she did a number of things right. Projecting a visage of calm and composure, she was upfront with the German people. Honestly and transparently, she was prepared to admit when the government didn’t always have the answer at a given time. Building trust requires candour and elicits consent and compliance. From when the pandemic hit, she was proactive and decisive. There was no “coronavirus denying” by the leadership (unlike the errant course charted initially by the US and UK governments), but an immediate marshalling of efforts to tackle the problem facing it※ [‘The secret of Germany’s COVID-19 success: Angela Merkel Is a Scientist’, (Saskia Miller), The Atlantic, 20-Apr-2020, www.theatlantic.com].
There were other factors relating to demographics and the public health response that were vital—average age of coronavirus patients was lower than elsewhere; better delivery of testing than many countries; careful and comprehensive tracking of cases (>90%); modern, maintained public health system;local responses—but in a sense everything flowed from the chancellor who has been at the helm of the German state since 2005. With a science background (PhD in quantum chemistry), Merkel knew to listen to the scientists, the public health experts, like the celebrated virologist Christian Drosten. As a scientist herself she respected their views, knew that this was essential to finding out what was needed⚡. Drawing on the well-funded scientific-research organisations and university medical departments that she had maintained, she was able to coordinate these into a single, effective coronavirus task force (Miller).
(Photo: Getty Images)
One observer has attributed Germany’s (and Merkel’s) success to the “Four L’s” which may in the event of a new wave of Covid be integral to “bending the curve quickly once again – luck, learning, local responses and listening. The ‘luck’ amounted in part to being in the right place at the right time…having acquired and readied the coronavirus PCR tests in advance so they were “available in Munich when the first tests showed up there”, but this could arguably be equally attributable to due diligence and preparedness, and an instinctual willingness to follow hunches. Learning from the experiences of other countries who had prior exposure to coronavirus also played a key part – in this Germany was fortunate to have had a delayed arrival of the disease. The German authorities were able to look at the strategies of countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, see what was working well there, and cherry-pick. Germany’s political structure, emphasising localised divisions of authority (government by lander), permitted a decentralised approach to the pandemic which allowed the bureaucratic response to the crisis to be speeded up. The fourth ‘L’, listening to the scientific experts, was not just what Merkel, but what politicians at the local level in Germany◔ did assiduously [‘The four simple reasons Germany is managing Covid-19 better than its neighbors’, (Julia Belluz), Vox, 15-Oct-2020, www.vox.com].
(Source: www.dw.de/)
Of course Chancellor Merkel’s policies in the crisis have had their detractors—business lockdowns and restrictions that go on for lengthy periods are sure to draw displeasure—her measured approach however has been demonstrably unifying and has resulted in overwhelming support from the electorate rallying behind her (approval ratings for the chancellor during the pandemic have been as high as 86%).
PostScript: Denialists and Bunglers Inc
Last month British PM Boris Johnson, in an all-too characteristically ham-fisted way, tried to deflect criticism of his government’s abysmal handling of the pandemic vis-vís (especially) Germany by putting the UK’s worse handling of the crisis down to the ‘fact’ that the UK is “a freedom loving” country [‘Why is Germany doing better than the UK at fighting a resurgence of Covid-19?’, The Local – De, 26-Sep-2020, www.thelocal.de/].
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※ “communicating with scientific rigour, (and) with calm…(Merkel) disarms hysteria” (Ricardo Roa)
⚡ compare and contrast with you know who!
◔ such as the leader of the Free State of Bavaria, Markus Söder, one of the country’s politicians on the short list to succeed Ms Merkel
“We’re All Individuals!”: “Living Persons” in the Bubble of their Own “Sovereign Nation“ Speak Out
Who’d have thought that it’d take a pandemic to bring to light just how many cynics and crazies are out there? Before COVID-19 we only had the climate change deniers and the occasion conspiracy peddler to cope with. Since the virus first descended, coronavirus deniers have been coming out of the woodwork, a contagion not confined to the USA.
Human rights or human life? Recently, a new phenomena has popped up on social media and TV screens – from the “Republic of Covididiocy”. Provocateurs have taken to filming themselves confronting police and retail shop personnel during lockdown – provocatively refusing to wear masks, not giving their personal details and declaring loudly that their human rights were being transgressed. The extreme position adopted by these protesters connects them to conspiratorial views held by fringe extremists in the US✱.
Conspiracy heaven ⍌
A universal scofflaw mindset These individuals are part of a loosely-organised movement of people who call themselves “Sovereign Citizens” (or “Sov-Cits” or just ‘Sovereigns’, for short), whose purpose is to assert some set of existing natural rights which, they purport, places them outside of the jurisdiction of the government and the law. In a climate of pandemic-induced restrictions many of these people may just be (over)reacting to the state’s clampdown on their freedom of movement and activity, a knee-jerk libertarian impulse. However the concept of Sovereign Citizenry long pre-dates the current pandemic as a conspiracy-driven stratagem, with its origins, unsurprisingly, found in America.
The world according to Sovereign Citizens “The Sovereign Citizens Movement promotes the tantalising fantasy that anyone can declare himself or herself above and beyond the jurisdiction of the government by invoking arcane legal terminology”. ~ Southern Poverty Law Center
(Source: www.radicalisationresearch.org)
In the 1990s the SCM picked up the earlier Posse Comitatus movement’s baton of unrelenting enmity towards the federal government, portraying themselves as the “true defenders of the Constitution”. Sov-Cit beliefs rest on the same premise as that established by Posse Comitatus. They believe that the US government is illegitimate…it is, they say, a corporation that has duped ‘natural’ citizens (read “Sovereign Citizens”) into an unlawful contract. Sovereign theorists cite the 14th Amendment in 1868 and FD Roosevelt’s 1933 abandonment of the gold standard as a back-up to the paper currency as historical ‘proof’ of federal deception.
Gurus and methods The SCM is a loosely organised group of litigants, commentators, tax protesters/deniers and financial scheme promoters…leadership comes from “redemption gurus” who advise Sovereigns to use ‘legal’ phrases to remove themselves from the jurisdiction of government (BBC).
Prison recruitment, outreach and education Gurus and other Sovereign ‘mentors’ incarcerated for fraud or for not paying taxes have found prison an ideal environment to indoctrinate and recruit new adherents. Imprisoned drug dealers and embezzlers were particularly willing recruits to the cause, jumping at the chance to put Sov-Cit theories into place in the hope of getting out of jail, or to retaliate against the public officials and law enforcement officers who put them there! The pseudo-legal strategy employed by Sov-Cits (again following Posse Comitatus) is based on the ludicrous “Theory of Redemption”—a secret (and mythical) fund of money created for everyone at birth by the US government—which Sov-Cits can supposedly redeem or claim to pay debts [‘Sovereign Citizens Movement Resurging’, Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring Issue 2009, 26-Feb-2009, www.splcenter.org].
“American National”, the preferred nomenclature for Sovereigns ⍌
Before the advent of the internet training of Sov-Cits took place at seminars held at remote extremist compounds. Now recruits learn via online videos and forums (like You Tube and MySpace) which disseminate SCM doctrine and tactics. Some Sovereign groups sell booklets like “The Prison Packet” which purports to guide inmates towards the realisation of their freedoms. Religious outreach, through the agencies of numerous Christian fundamentalist fringe organisations in the US, is another avenue for recruiting Sov-Cits into the fringe fold (Southern Poverty Law Center).
Paper terrorism Sovereigns employ what are saturation methods, submitting countless bogus court filings containing hundreds of pages which are virtually indecipherable. The purpose? “To punish, to harass and mislead public officials”. The paper terrorism may take the form of elaborate scams, the generation of fake letters of credit or tax forms, frivolous law suits or other faux legal documents [‘Understanding the sovereign citizen movement: a guide for corrections professionals’, The Free Library, www.thefreelibrary.com/].
Law-enforcement officers in the Sovereigns’ cross-hairs Some Sov-Cits are out and out “con artists”, transparently pure 100% charlatan, but as Michael Barkun warns, others are politically-motivated anti-government extremists⧆…and dangerous! In 2010 a Sov-Cit duo, father and son, killed local police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas. A New Hampshire shootout in 1997 resulted in the death of five people including the Sovereign provocateur acting as a “lone wolf”❂. Cop killing by Sovereigns is not confined to America – in 2016 a Reichsbürger, the German version of the Sov-Cit, shot dead a policeman in that country. The FBI has declared some Sovereign Citizens to be domestic terrorists. Often inmates utilise the Sov-Cit strategies from within the prison system to carry out protracted vendettas against judges, IRS officials, prosecutors and local sheriffs (Southern Poverty Law Center).
(Source: www.bbc.com/)
The lengths a Sov-Cit will go to
Your dedicated Sovereign is not adverse to creating fake car licence plates or printing his or her own currency and then trying to pass it off as real money. One SCM provocateur in Florida, in acrimonious conflict with his local Bank of America branch, sent it a bogus foreclosure notice and even barricaded the branch during opening hours (SPLC).
Francis: “It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression” Reg: “Its symbolic of his struggle against reality” ~ Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Sovereigns don’t believe they need to hold a licence in order to drive (or to fish for that matter). When stopped by police patrols they have been known to deny that they are driving and affirm rather that they are in fact merely travelling⚅ (Dr Kaz Ross, interview, ABC Radio). And travelling, Sovereigns insist, is “a God-given right”. Some Sovereigns go even further than just mouthing the mantra that they are outside of federal jurisdiction, proclaiming to be citizens of other entities, eg, the Montana Freemen, the “Republic of Texas” (The Free Library)✫.
Anti-government protest in Oregon ⍓
(Source: http://m.dk.com)
Endnote: Sovereign Citizens are one of a panoply of Alt-Right, conspiracy-obsessed fringe hate groups in the US which might loosely be subsumed under the umbrella term “patriot movement”. There is a lot of blurring of the lines between SCM, QAon, the Three Percenters, the Boogaloo Bois, the Proud Boys, the Anti-Vaxxer groups and various others of a similarly contrarian ilk. In particular, the Sov-Cits’ emphasis on the duality of US citizenship echoes the philosophy of another group – the Freemen-on-the-Land movement. The latter proclaim that “with special knowledge and careful language, we can circumvent these laws and regulations and live freely as an alternative vision of ourselves under our own ‘natural‘ laws” (a virtual identikit image of the SCM’s credo and tactics) [’What is the ‘sov cit movement?’, BBC News, 05-Aug-2020, www.bbc.com; ’The seriously weird belief of Freeman on the Land”, (Shelley Stocken), News, 09-Jul-2016, www.news.com.au].
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PostScript: Black separatism On the surface you might think Sov-Cits would be an exclusively Caucasian phenomena, given its links to White Supremacist outfits like Christian Identity. But there is an African-American separatist subset that adheres to the Sovereign Citizens credo. Given their disproportionate representation in US prisons, Black inmates not surprisingly have been attracted to the SCM ideology. A clique of African-American drug-dealers on trial for murder in the 2000s in Baltimore employed its obstructionist ploys to delay proceedings for years [‘Too Weird for The Wire’, (Kevin Carey), Washington Post, May/June/July 2008].
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✱ the great danger here “is when fringe beliefs and proponents begin to slip into the mainstream”, eg, President Trump’s spruiking of alleged coronavirus cures which are not scientifically proven and possibly harmful, ‘The threads that don’t connect: Covid gives Australian conspiracy theorists a home’, (Michael McGowan), The Guardian, 02-Aug-2020, www.theguardian.com.au] ⊞ a right to hold possession of property owned by another until they discharge the debt (www.lexico.com/) ⧆ Barkun describes them as “a stubbornly resilient sub-culture, a community of the alienated” ❂ many Sovereign groups are thought to be aligned with militia groups ⚅ ‘driving’, they assert, is what a truck driver or a taxi driver does for a living ✫ it’d be stating the obvious to say that Sovereigns have a cockeyed notion of the rule of law, one based on the false premise that an individual can choose which law they consent to, and which they don’t (SPLC)
“Coronavirus’ Continuing Story: “Model Countries”, The “Second Wave”, More of the “New Normal”
Virtually from the onset of the pandemic, public health boffins around the world, mindful of the deadly follow-up wave of the Spanish Flu in the northern hemisphere autumn of 1918, were warning countries that even if they managed to suppress the virus, the danger of a second strain was incredibly real. And now it seems that second wave has come to fruition⍝. Australia, which had pretty much contained the spread of coronavirus by early June in all states and territories, has seen a renewed spike of infections in metropolitan Melbourne and a reimposition of border lockdowns by other states in the Commonwealth. In addition, another Covid cluster is currently emerging in a pocket of south-west Sydney.
Elsewhere there are even more concerning trends of new flare-ups. In Covid-19 ravaged Europe, Portugal was until recently thought to be an exemplar of sorts on how to handle the pandemic and minimise its harmful impact. While neighbours Spain and France had been beset by rapid rates of infection and steepling mortality counts in the earliest phase of the pandemic’s first wave, Portugal by April was coping comparatively well. The republic’s small population (about 10.25 million) no doubt aided the authorities’ efforts to fight the pandemic, but this was counterbalanced by inherent drawbacks – an elderly population (3rd highest population of over 80s in Europe) and underfunded health system (just 4.2 critical care beds per 100.000 people). Portugal’s centralised system of government and the early implementation of measures—locking down public places and events—was key to the country’s success in slowing the pace of infection, reflected in the comparative death rates [‘How Portugal became Europe’s coronavirus exception’, (Paul Ames), Politico, 14-Apr-2020, www.politico.com].
|
European country |
Per capita mortality from coronavirus |
|
Portugal 🇵🇹 |
3% |
|
Spain 🇪🇸 |
>10% |
|
Britain 🇬🇧 |
12% |
|
France 🇫🇷 |
15% |
|
(as at mid-April 2020) |
{Ames} |
(Source: Reuters/ Rafael Marchante / File Photo)
Portugal’s relative success at that time, 18,091 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 599 deaths, was also attributed to a unified political approach—opposition and government working towards the common goal of tackling the pandemic—and to the self-discipline of Portuguese people in faithfully adhering to the stay-at-home guidelines during the crisis (Ames). The situation in Portugal now sits at 46,818 confirmed cases and 1,662 deaths (14-Jul-2020) – the result of the reopening of economic activity and relaxation of restrictive measures [‘How Sweden and Portugal Went from Pandemic Role Models To Record Infections’, (Marina Velasco), Huffington Post, 11-Jul-2020, www.huffpost.com]. This surge in virus numbers is centred around the capital Lisbon.
Next door Spain is currently confronted with two new very serious cluster points in the north of the country. Galicia region (the northwest) and autonomous Catalonia (the northeast) have both imposed a second lockdown after the earlier easing of restrictions due to a similar upsurge in infections [‘Coronavirus: Spain imposed local lockdown in Galicia’, BBC News, 05-Jul-2020, www.bbcnews.com] . The timing of the spike is not good, especially as Spain and Portugal have just reopened their common border at the start of July.
🔺 Before the second strain: as of around 1st May Portugal had the Iberian bragging rights for best at weathering the coronavirus storm sown up (Source: www.ft.times)
Israel is another country whose fortunes with the pandemic have ebbed in recent weeks – going from “model nation fighting the novel coronavirus to a small, isolated country whose citizens face a long, deadly summer locked down”. An early, enforced lockdown saw Israel hold its fatalities to only 271 by May, with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu proclaiming it “the safest country on earth”. Two months later everything has gone pear-shaped in Israel, virus cases are spiking concurrently with a cratering economy and 23% unemployment (all adding to Netanyahu’s pre-existing political woes). The head of Israel’s public health service has quit in protest, frustrated by the government’s handling of the crisis – alleging a hesitant, disjointed, stop-start approach from the government (“six wasted weeks”), and equally worrying, a Trump-like reluctance by the prime minster to heed official public health expert advice✥. Adding his voice to the chorus of critics of the government’s approach, President Rivlin has commented that “Israel has failed to develop a clear and coherent doctrine to combat the coronavirus” [Noga Tarnopolsky, ‘“The Second Wave” of COVID Hits Israel Like a Tsunami’, Daily Beast, 10-Jul-2020, www.thedailybeast.com].
Ashdod, one of Israel’s virus hotspots (Source: www.timesofindia.com) 🔻
PostScript: “Second wave-ism”✪ and relaxed response mode⊡ In fact “second wave” contagion seems quite a global prospect at the moment. Other countries such as Germany, Singapore, South Korea and China have all managed to contain the first wave outbreak in their respective countries, only, as restrictions on movement and travel get lifted, to be hit afresh with subsequent clusters of local infections [‘New Covid-19 clusters across world spark fear of second wave’, (Emma Graham-Harrison), The Guardian, 27-Jun-2020, www.theguardian.com].
(Image: Getty Images)
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⍝ Professor Nick Talley (Australian Journal of Medicine) refutes the view that Australia is experiencing a “second wave” of the virus, contending that the current outbreak is actually the “real first wave”
✥ over a six-week period the number of confirmed cases multiplied by 499%; currently (14-Jul-2020) Israel has confirmed 40,632 cases and 365 deaths from the pandemic
✪ the concept of what constitutes a virus second wave is not a definitive or consensual one – “no precise epidemiological definition” (Harvard School of Public Health). It can be applied to “anything from localised spikes in infection to a full-blown national crisis” – so some medical experts avoid the term itself (Graham-Harrison)
⊡ epidemiologists worry that “social distancing fatigue” arising from being in lockdown for extended periods can contribute to pockets of new infections emerging
The UPU: Unobtrusively Beavering Away, Working for Cooperation and Democracy in the World of International Postage
In the age of virtual communication and instant electronic transactions, many people see the traditional mail service as less and less relevant in our daily lives, it is fashionable these days to scornfully dismiss it as “snail mail”. It may seem passé to many but the international postal system is still an active and vital service that bridges the gaps between vast distances, and it is one that is governed by a UN world body with a continuous history back to the last quarter of the 19th century.
The Universal Postal Union (UPU), (French: Union Postale Universelle), originally the “General Postal Union”, was established in 1874 with the task of laying down regulations and bringing uniformity to the setting of tariffs (including the transit costs) for mail exchanges between countries. Prior to it’s inception, a complicated, loose bilateral system prevailed where an individual country would have to establish postal treaties separately with each other country it wished to correspond with. Sometimes this involved calculating postage for each leg of the journey and finding mail forwarders in a third country if there was no direct delivery to the country of destination [‘Universal Postal Union’, www.parcelsapp.com/].
The initial mid-19th century impetus to create such a global entity came from American frustrations at postal communication with Europe, especially with France, but the decisive thrust came from Heinrich von Stephan, a senior Prussian postal official from the North German Confederation (and later the Reichspost), whose advocacy prompted the Swiss government to host the inaugural international postal conference leading to the formation of the UPU.
According to it’s own mission statement, the UPU is “the primary forum for co-operation between postal sector players…(helping) to ensure a truly universal network of up-to-date products and services” (www.upu.int). It is also tasked with responsibility for the coordination of member nations in promoting efficient postal services including the monitoring of postal security, stamp design, etc.
UPU’s role also includes the resolving of any polemical issues that may arise between member nations. The great explosion in E-commerce trade has tended to exacerbate cost anomalies in postage tariffs. In 2018 US companies were paying twice as much to mail an item to a US customer than it cost China (and other subsidised Asian countries) to send items to the same US customer (www.parcelsapp.com/). US president, Donald Trump, threatened to pull the US out of the international body if it failed to make reforms to the system (this provocative move has been part of the outlier American president’s global trade war campaign against China). The US exit was averted in 2019 with the brokering of a deal allowing it to start setting its own postal rates from July 2020, with other high-volume mail member-countries to follow suit from 2021 [‘U.S. Avoids Postal ‘Brexit’ as Universal Postal Union Reaches a Deal’, (Abigail Abrams), Time, (26-Sep-2019), www.time.com].
This issue aside, the habitually low-profile UPU has been largely free of controversy✶, but one other minor discordant note occurred in 1964 when the Fifteenth Congress of UPU voted by a large majority to expel South Africa from membership. This was controversial because several country delegates raised the objection that the action was unconstitutional, arguing that a member could only be expelled for violating UPU’s regulations. The South African delegate initially refused to budge but did so after other African delegates demanded his expulsion [“Universal Postal Union.” International Organization, vol. 20, no. 4, 1966, pp. 834–842. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2705750. Accessed 21 May 2020].
The UPU has gone from a largely Eurocentric organisation in 1874 to a truly universal one today with about 192 countries of the world (plus territories) signed up۞. A number of other non-member states and territories get their mail routed through a third (member) country including Andorra (through France and Spain), Taiwan (through Japan and US), Kosovo (through Serbia), Northern Cyprus (through Turkey), Micronesia (through the US) and Somaliland (through Ethiopia) [‘List of members of the Universal Postal Union’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Berne HQ (Source: www.jurist.org/)
Footnote: UPU is said to be the world’s second-oldest intergovernmental organisation, after the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), founded 1865, which, like the UPU, is a specialised agency of the UN.
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PostScript: Addressing the problem of the unaddressed The Postal Union engages in a number of ongoing projects, one of which is the “An Address for Everyone” global initiative – Deirdre Mask has made note of the surprising fact (at least to those in the relatively affluent First World) that even today, the majority of people in the world do not possess a street address!◙ UPU involves itself in making a contribution to remedying this situation, because of the spin-off benefits that such a simple thing as having a prescribed address brings…providing the recipients with “a legal identity, allowing them to participate in the political process, be part of the formal economy” including e-commerce, access credit, receive personal services and engage with the “information and communication age” [Deirdre Mask, The Address Book, (2020); www.upu.int/].
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✶ it’s not surprising if a lot of folk have never heard of the Universal Postal Union, the UPU has traditionally followed the low-profile path of the quiet achiever. As Richard John has noted, it’s preference has been to negotiate policies well out of the limelight, gaining it something of “a reputation as a secretive Postal Illuminati“…by keeping out of politics, John contends, this allows the UPU to be so effective (‘Here’s why Trump threatened to pull out of a 144-year-old postal treaty’, Original World News, 19-Oct-2019, www.originalworldnews.com) ۞ Palestine has special observer status; post-apartheid South Africa was readmitted in 1994 ◙ and not just confined exclusively to the slum and shantytown dwellers of the Third World, Mask points to the phenomena existing in parts of rural America such as West Virginia
Life on Planet Covid-19: Sometimes a Wacky Notion, a Glimpse into the Bizarre in the Time of Coronavirus
The Coronavirus outbreak has brought out both the good and bad in human nature, but as everyone tries with varying success to cope with the strange and new reality of lockdowns, closures, social distancing and restrictions on movement, it has brought out the downright weird and bizarre as well. In 1929 when Wall Street collapsed, triggering the Great Depression and a devaluing of the money currency, there was a run on the banks as people desperately tried to salvage their evaporating savings. In March when people in the ‘burbs heard the pandemic was not likely to go away any time soon, there was a run on the supermarkets, efficiently stripping the shelves bare (like locusts in a corn field) – of toilet paper! Somehow, the crux of what is needed for civilisation to sustain itself during an enforced hibernation has been reduced to this, apparently now the most precious of household commodities in a lockdown survival strategy. Widely circulated media footage of shoppers coming to blows in supermarket aisles over the providence of a single roll of loo paper and profiteering hoarders trying to flog bog rolls on eBay at an insane $100 a shot, is surely proof of the arrival of a new and dynamic currency (what price the toilet roll futures market?)✥.
(Source. www.mix1023.com.au)
Once the epidemic got in full swing, the demand for face masks, especially in those countries with a culture of wearing protective masks, quickly outstripped supply. Accordingly some people have resorted to ‘improv’, mask substitutes – scarves and bandanas, face shield visors and so on. Sometimes people are a bit creative, eg, converted bras, vacuum bag filters, and sometimes grossly inappropriate (and utterly gross) or bizarrely impractical.
KKK hood shopper, an injudicious choice of replacement for a face mask, San Diego, Ca. (Image: Tiam Tellez (FB))
A comfy 15L plastic bottle-head in lieu of face mask (Source: www.dailystar.co.uk)
Agencies tasked with enforcement all over the world struggle to come to grips with the need to make everyone social distance. India’s efforts at least have resulted in some comical outcomes (light relief perhaps from all the descending gloom). In India’s west coast tourist spots, foreigners found at the beach by local police have been forced to write out apologies 500 times for breaching the stay-at-home rules. Elsewhere, in southern India, in one village the mandated use of umbrellas outside (in any weather) is the prescribed method for enforcing social distancing.
(Photo: Hindustan Times, source: UGC)
Meanwhile, officials in the Swedish city of Lund, confronted with the Herculean task of stopping the multitudes ignoring voluntary social distancing guidelines, have gone for the unorthodox! To discourage people from crowding together in outdoor recreational areas, a frustrated Lunds Kommun (city council) has resorted to the somewhat “left-field” measure of dumping chicken manure all over the city’s main park.
(Source: www.internewscast.com)
Has any other natural or unnatural phenomenon ever inspired such an array of whacky bizarre headlines (a la “Ripley’s believe-or-not!”) as this minuscule spiky particle pathogen has? In an atmosphere heightened by anxieties over a sense of that which we cannot control, “miracle cures” have saturated social media channels, everything from Llama Antibodies Could Help Scientists Stop the Coronavirus Pandemic? to Does JK Rowling’s breathing technique cure the coronavirus? to Colloidal silver toothpaste will fix your Covid virus. Then there’s the “contributions to the debate” from the White House, a kaleidoscope of quack cures being incredulously recycled by “The Donald” who continues to be in the thrall of non-scientists sprouting convenient opinion to him (“UV light and disinfectant injections killing the virus inside human bodies”, “hydroxychloroquine and bleach“, etc). The Covid-19 pandemic has been somatotropin for conspiracy theorising, with no handbrake applied to how asinine they can get…the 5G network is an ‘accelerator’ of coronavirus; Bill Gates Foundation’s COVID-19 Vaccine is a Satanic Plot; Not a pandemic but a plan-demic; Coronavirus hoax is an Agenda 21 plot to microchip us; etc. ad nauseum⌖. (‘Miracle ‘coronavirus cures’ haven’t changed in 700 years’, (Jennifer Wright), New York Post, 18-Apr-2020, www.nypost.com)◨.
Suspicious-looking 5G mobile towers
PostScript: the coronavirus crisis leads to some surprising scenarios. A report on a news bulletin a couple of weeks ago disclosed the trials of tribulations the super rich have had to endure at this time. Because of social distancing measures, many of society’s wealthy burghers have for safety concerns dispensed with the services of their house maids and auxiliary staff. This has resulted in grievous inconvenience and vexation for the plutocrats as they are now forced to learn for themselves how to use washing machines and other appliances in their palatial homes…ahh, those eternal First World problems – they just never let up.
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✥ when Covid-19 first hit the US, eight of the eleven states in which cannabis is legal, declared ongoing access to the narcotic an essential service for medicinal and recreational users. This prompted, in microcosm, a similar run to that on toilet paper, on marijuana outlets by aficionados of the weed. Consumers flocked to their local dispensers to stock up on essential ‘pot’ for the long, hard days of confinement ahead. This panic-buying of cannabis led some with a vested interest in the industry to talk up the prospects of a medicinal marijuana-led recovery of the US economy once the cloud of coronavirus disperses (‘Aurora Cannabis and Tilray set to detail hoarding of marijuana during COVID-19’, (Max A Cherney), Market Watch, 09-May-2020, www.marketwatch.com)
◨ plucking supposed panaceas out of the ether in time of pandemic has been ever thus…in the Black Plague they tried onions to ward off the disease, in the coronavirus crisis the equivalent recommendation is garlic (same degree of effectiveness)
⌖ the authors of these expressions of coronavirus denial, once thought largely confined to the United States, are spreading to different parts of the world, ironically enough, like a virus in themselves. They are drawn from different groups of society—anti-vaxxers, 5G truthers, sovereign citizens, QAnon believers and other Alt-Right, fringe conspiracy theorists—that have through ”cross-pollination” of their beliefs, converged into “a virulent if not entirely coherent umbrella movement against coronavirus lockdown measures“ (’Why Are Australians Chanting “Arrest Bill Gates” At Protests? This Wild Facebook Group Has The Answers’, (Cameron Wilson), BuzzFeed, 11-May-2020, www.buzzfeednews.com.au)
Declaring War on an Internal Enemy Hiding in Plain Sight: The ❛Deep State❜
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 governor 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].
❈ 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