”Whom the gods would destroy, they first make accountants.” Despite their persistent problems in relying too heavily on statistical methods, the World Health Organization has at least now corrected an earlier estimate. The total number of “excess deaths'’ that have occurred, due to the onslaught of the Spring 2020 COVID pandemic, encompassing the two-year period from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021, is 14.9 million people—not 5 million, as was previously thought. That is triple the number of deaths usually reported by all world health and government agencies, and generally attributed, directly and indirectly, to the pandemic. What might that mean for actual rates of current planet-wide infection, particularly with the recent multiplication of variants, as we report in the relevant slug?
While the debate still continues as to the origins of the coronavirus, consider this week’s discovery of H5N1 avian flu in a Colorado inmate “employed” in culling infected poultry at a commercial farm, the first such infection in the United States. Consider, also, the recent cases of 19 people in China infected with H5N6. WHO has previously indicated that about half the people that contract H5N6, die of it. (Outcomes are not presently known regarding the China cases.) 21st Century Science and Technology devoted an entire issue in 2005 to the topic: “Flu Pandemic: It’s the Economy, Stupid!” featuring the danger of avian flu, and the potential of animal-to-human transmission. The World Health Program advocated by the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, and the Global Health Initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping, is a more urgent perspective than ever.
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make systems analysts.” Contrast the poor man’s Curtis LeMay, Adm. Charles Richard, to Lt. Col. and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Admiral Richard on Wednesday actually resorted to the outworn and discredited, as well as sexually impotent “gap” theory of “the arms race”: “The war in Ukraine and China’s nuclear trajectory – their strategic breakout – demonstrates that we have a deterrence and assurance gap against the threat of limited nuclear employment,” Richard claimed. He claimed that the same Russia, whose Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, and was then occupied and financially looted by triumphalist, neo-con systems-analysts who performed “shock therapy” experiments—that is, depopulated—Russia for the better part of the 1990s, is, somehow, now “an existential threat” to an ever-expanding and militarily re-arming NATO. “The nation and our allies have not faced a crisis like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in over 30 years. President [Vladimir] Putin simultaneously invaded a sovereign nation while using thinly veiled nuclear threats to deter U.S. and NATO intervention.” Contradicting Richard,Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement posted on Twitter: “We’re already in a hot war with Russia, and it’s going to get a lot hotter because the Biden Admin’s stated goal is the complete destruction of Russia’s economy & military.…The path the Biden Admin has us on will lead to WWIII & nuclear Armageddon. Our country, families & world will suffer beyond comprehension. Obviously this isn’t what the American people want.…” (https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1522535121915588609)
Sweden May 1 saw a 25,000 person demonstration in Stockholm opposing Sweden joining NATO, with other comparable protests in cities throughout that nation of 10 million—comparable to an 800,000 person demonstration in the United States. Hungary, Austria and other nations are making clear, in different degrees, their opposition to the NATO sanctions regime’s effect on their economies, and to their being dragged into what could even become direct military skirmishes along their borders. Perhaps the most important expression of sanity has come from Germany’s Gen. Harald Kujat (ret.), inspector general of the German armed forces from 2000 to 2002 and chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 2002 to 2005. Kujat is a signer of an appeal for the “primacy of reason” by the Carl-Friedrich-von-Weizsäcker Foundation. His unusual statement said: “We appeal to reason to stop the suffering of Ukrainians and the destruction of the country and to prevent the expansion of the war in Ukraine into a European war. The main actors in this war are not Ukraine and Russia, but Russia and the United States…. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated in late April during a visit to Kyiv that the United States `wants to see Russia weakened to the point where it can no longer do the things it did when it invaded Ukraine.’ This strategic rethinking—if it is such at all—makes a negotiated settlement even more urgent.”
Several variations on the theme of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s call for a new Security and Development Architecture for the mutual security of all nations have appeared with increasing frequency. Direct opposition to her proposal has been recently observed in the spoor of the speech-droppings of British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Truss tends to be long on Winston Churchill’s anti-Russian imperial vulgarity, but short on his occasional eloquence. The Schachtian financial, monetary, and debt policies of the trans-Atlantic ancien regime have been self-exposed for what they are—theft—by European Council President Charles Michel: “I instructed the legal service of the Council to prepare some possible ideas in order to find (a) legal solution in line with the principles of rule of law, that would facilitate and make possible the confiscation of the assets of the people who are sanctioned by the EU or by other countries in the world. In my opinion, this is a question of fairness, not only the idea to freeze the assets, but the confiscation to make this money available for Ukrainian authorities for a trust fund.…” (https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/donor-conference-on-may-5-should-become-a-starting-point-of-the-marshall-plan-for-ukraine.html)
Although Ukraine has, as of 2021, been ranked the second most corrupt country in Europe, “cyber-Proudhonist” Michel says “we trust the Ukrainian authorities, and governance must show that we trust Ukrainian authorities. And that is what we have done with budgetary support and with macro financial assistance. We trust them. Of course, we will maintain all interactions regarding the reforms that are needed. But also taking into account the fact that today there is war launched by Russia and it means that reforms are more difficult. We understand it very well.”
Wait a moment. Search the dim tunnels of your memory. Does anyone remember Iraq, now referred to by various surveys as “the most corrupt country in the world?” Does anyone remember, for example, the David Pallister Feb 7, 2007 London Guardian article, “How the U.S. Sent $12 Billion in Cash to Iraq. And Watched It Vanish?” “The U.S. flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.” Remember what you have been told about the weapons being sent to Ukraine, and how, despite NSA and drone capabilities galore, “no one knows where the weapons are going?” Is that who we are to trust with “a development fund?” Do the American people, does the European population, really support this, as food and fuel prices go through the roof? Is the target Russia, the American and European populations, nations like Sri Lanka, or all of the above? Are we looking at a war on Russia, or a war on humanity, with Russia, China, India and other nations standing in the way?
Signs of sanity are surfacing, “and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.” The Schiller petition; letters and calls to the United States and other national congresses; independent candidates advocating the new security and development architecture; and a vibrant youth mobilization against war and for scientific/technological and cultural development, is the way ahead.
