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Protesters around the White House: “Trump Failed, 180,000+ Died”

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Protests surround White House as
Trump delivers lie-filled RNC speech

by Jake Johnson — Common Dreams

Closing out a GOP convention that featured rampant law-breaking, fascistic hysteria, and cynical distortions of the current administration’s record, President Donald Trump delivered more of the same Thursday night as he formally accepted the Republican Party’s presidential nomination while protesters rallied near the White House blasting music and spotlighting Trump’s deadly failure to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

The sound of demonstrators’ air horns was occasionally and faintly audible during the president’s speech from the South Lawn of the White House, which Trump shamelessly used as a stage for his reelection bid. One ethics expert decried the White House campaign speech as an “abomination” that is perhaps “the most visible misuse of official position for private gain in America’s history.”

Trump’s hour-long address before an audience of 1,500 largely mask-less cabinet officials, Republican lawmakers, and other supporters of the president was jam-packed with fearmongering, “law and order” dog whistles, and lies about the administration’s efforts to fight the coronavirus, which Trump repeatedly called the “China virus.”

“When the China virus hit, we launched the largest national mobilization since World War II, invoking the Defense Production Act,” said the president, who in fact stubbornly resisted utilizing the Defense Production Act despite vocal pleas from experts and frontline workers.

Contrary to his depiction of the White House’s pandemic response as swift and coordinated, Trump dragged his feet and repeatedly downplayed the severity of the virus as it spread rapidly across the United States in March.

As recently as last month, the president insisted that the virus will simply “disappear” on its own as new infections surged across the country, forcing states to reverse their reopenings and sparking another wave of mass lay-offs. In an interview that aired earlier this month, the president said, “It is what it is” in response to the nation’s Covid-19 death toll, which is the highest in the world.

On Thursday night, with the official coronavirus case count in the United States approaching six million, Trump claimed the nation will “have a safe and effective vaccine this year, and together we will crush the virus.”

As fireworks erupted at the close of Trump’s remarks, nearly two dozen demonstrators near the White House stood shoulder to shoulder to send an illuminated message: “Trump Failed, 180,000+ Died.”

As Trump spoke, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden—whose name the president mentioned more than 40 times in his address—condemned Trump’s disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic collapse, which has left tens of millions of Americans jobless, hungry, and at risk of eviction.

“Donald Trump calls himself a wartime president. But now, instead of leading the charge to defeat this virus, he’s waved the white flag,” Biden tweeted. “He abandoned the American people when we needed him most.”

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), smeared by the president as a “wild-eyed Marxist,” fact-checked the president’s speech in real time on Twitter Thursday night.

In response to Trump’s vow to “protect Medicare and Social Security,” Sanders noted that the president’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2020 “cuts Medicare by $845 billion” and highlighted Trump’s promise less than three weeks ago to “defund Social Security by permanently terminating the payroll tax.”

The president claimed he “will always and very strongly protect patients with preexisting conditions,” but the Vermont senator pointed out that Trump is “now in court actively trying to take health insurance away from 32 million Americans and eliminate protections for preexisting conditions during a global pandemic.”

Sanders went on to agree with Trump’s characterization of the November election as the “most important” in US history.

“Yes,” Sanders tweeted, “this is the most important election in history. And you are the most dangerous president in the history of our country. That’s why you’re going to lose.”

 

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¿Wappin? Never forgotten / Jamás olvidado

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For Anthony Huber, the Black Lives Matter protester who died trying to stop a fascist gunman with his skateboard.

Nevertheless, we persist
No obstante, persistimos

Joan Osborne – One of Us
https://youtu.be/8lBuqscNe6o

Miles Davis – Time After Time
https://youtu.be/FpZHjvFXprk

Kafú Banton – No Me Habla de Bala
https://youtu.be/QdMWMGxA1v8

Mon Laferte – Funeral
https://youtu.be/Ew1BUe_RenU

Dinah Washington – This Bitter Earth
https://youtu.be/BmEhO1OiEkY

The Golden Gospel Singers – Oh Freedom!
https://youtu.be/nqPZUnV-vrw

Youssou N’Dour & Neneh Cherry – 7 Seconds
https://youtu.be/wqCpjFMvz-k

Prince – Free
https://youtu.be/uHJFG4tmoeE

Pink Floyd – Waiting for the Worms
https://youtu.be/Xt0b77N5kWg

Eva Cassidy – People Get Ready
https://youtu.be/bzLd2MDAHK8

Rubén Blades, Carlos Santana & Fela Kuti – Muevete
https://youtu.be/eKThNAeiH4c

Joan Baez – We Shall Overcome
https://youtu.be/yLOvkjEenCg

David Bowie – Heroes
https://youtu.be/JFHC6t13hi0

 

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Attorney Eduardo Leblanc is the new national ombudsman

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Leblanc
The new Defensor del Pueblo, Eduardo Leblanc, addresses the legislature. Photo by the Asamblea Nacional.

Banking law specialist picked to
head the Defensoría del Pueblo

by Eric Jackson

On Wednesday August 26, attorney Eduardo Leblanc got 56 votes to be the next national ombudsman, or Defensor del Pueblo. That was 20 votes more than he needed in the 71-member legislature. It was a foregone conclusion once the PRD chose him as its candidates, as that party plus its MOLIRENA junior partners hold 40 votes. There were three votes cast for other candidates, two formal abstentions and 10 absences.

This is only a seven-month appointment. Last October, after a bizarre debate, 60 members of the National Assembly voted to remove Alfredo Castillero Hoyos in the midst of his 2016-2021 term on allegations of sexual harassment and neglect of his duties.

It was a political rather than a court proceeding. The sexual harassment charge was without a complaining witness. Castillero Hoyos did not deny that he had an affair with a woman at the office, but she never complained. That was left to a shrieking Zulay Rodríguez (PRD – San Miguelito).

Then there was deputy Mayín Correa’s complaint that former president Ricardo Martinelli, in jail at the time, was not being allowed to sleep in his jail cell — someone put a snake in his bed to keep him awake and the ombudsman wouldn’t loot in to it. At the time Martinelli was avoiding trial by claiming mental illness. His bipolar condition is well enough known to the general public, and one common symptom is irregular sleep patterns. So was declining to investigate the claims of a man who ran for office on a platform of being crazy that he’s got a snake in his bed neglect of duty?

In any case Castillero Hoyos was not a very active defender of citizens’ rights and had carefully avoided getting into the scandals of the Varela administration. The politics drove him out, but not until after veteran PRD activist Maribel Coco had been appointed to the vacant number two spot. But an old plagiarism scandal prevented her rise above acting status.

So now this brief appointment. Upon his election by the legislature, though, Leblanc talked about both short and long term changes. We should not be shocked if he runs for a full term next year.

From labor unions and the left, the main complaint about Leblanc was the opinion that he has little background as human rights defender.

Leblanc is a specialist in banking law. He was head of the legal departments at Banco Nacional de Panama and Caja de Ahorros, manager at Citibank, a junior member of the legal staff at Banistmo, He was a member of the legal committee of the Banking Association of Panama.

He’s a founding partner of Signature Regional Law Group, which represents a variety of business clients, not just banks. Some of them have been government contractors or those hoping to be such. Leblanc is winding up his private law practice to clear away those sorts of potential conflicts of interest.

The new ombudsman actually does have human rights advocacy experience. He was an observer and coordinator with Panama’s Catholic human rights group, the Comisión de Justicia y Paz. He’s also a lieutenant in the Bomberos.

In his address to the legislature, he questioned the legality and wisdom of the many arrests for violating the emergency health regulations, opining that a presidential decree should not have the same effect as a duly passed law. He advocated administrative sanctions rather than criminal penalties in these cases.

Leblanc also decried the insufficient government protections offered children and senior citizens, especially the lax standards for day care centers and nursing homes.

The new ombudsman is 45 years old, a Panama City native and possessed of a licenciatura degree in law from ULACIT.

 

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ANOTHER in-our-faces PRD curfew violation

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influencer
The roughly translated stream of consciousness rant by one of President Cortizo’s “influencers:” “This fuckup page! The only thing they know is to incite disturbances. Luckily they are only a couple of guys and never are able to create a real crowd. Because all those who live there come to the “peaceful protest.” It surely gets out of control and there may even be injuries. Good night. Blessings.”

Yet again

by Eric Jackson

The PRD legislators’ meeting at Jimmy’s. The PRD mayor of Panama City on the beach at Coronado. The party at the apartment of sanitation authority aide Pedro “El Guarachero” Ortíz, for which a government vehicle was used to bring in people and supplies.

Now an after hours gathering at the La Fragata bar in Obarrio, at which figured, say neighbors who streamed out into the streets banging pots and pans to protest, several government officials. “Influencer” Alisson Staff, who is on the National Customs Authority payroll, posted photos of the event on social media. A director of a health clinic for the Ministry of Health and a project administrator for the Ministry of the Presidency were also among those allegedly there, although they either deny it or won’t comment about it. The police showed up to face the crowd outside.

The event was identified in social media as a birthday party for a local fashion designer. Curfew was supposed to be at 7 p.m., but the party went on until midnight or so.

What about the bar, which under the curfew decree was supposed to be closed at that hour? The police waited until a justice of the peace showed up sometime later before going in, and found the place empty.

And Nito’s “influencer?” She had the talking points down right, launching the PRD call center talking points against the press and accusing the ruling party’s critics of trying to foment violence.

Most likely the health ministry will hand out fines to the establishment and those identified as being there after hours. Minor offense, perhaps, but another reminder that the social strata and party activists in the president’s entourage consider themselves unbound by rules that affect everyone else. We shall see if anyone gets COVID, but in any case the political effect is toxic to the Cortizo administration.

FOCO, the object of Ms. Staff’s would-be influential wrath, is a muckraking little news organization with a website and social media feeds, something of a thorn in the PRD administration’s side. PRD voices dismiss them as a front for the Independent Movement (MOVIN). Whenever government figures make public displays of special privileges, locked up neighbors tend to get irate and come out to protest, and tend to contact FOCO about the situation.

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Varner, USPS under attack

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take him away
“I’ve been a postal driver for over 20 years. I’ve never seen an attack on the service like this one.” Shutterstock photo.

Trump’s postmaster general
should be returned to sender

by James E. Varner — OtherWords

President Trump’s postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, recently testified before Congress about major slowdowns in mail delivery under his watch.

As a 20-year postal veteran, I had only one reaction: DeJoy needs to be Returned to Sender.

DeJoy, a Trump fundraiser who owns millions worth of stock in Postal Service competitors, has been on the job barely two months. But already, his changes have caused serious delays in delivery.

Ostensibly, these moves are cost-saving measures. But it doesn’t take a partisan cynic to understand how this kind of disruption could affect voting in November’s election. The president himself has said he hopes as much.

Postal employees pride ourselves on a culture of never delaying the mail. Our unofficial mantra can best be summed up as, “Mail that comes in today, goes out today — no matter what.”

We are now being told to ignore that. If mail can’t get delivered or processed without overtime, it is supposed to sit and wait. That can mean big delays.

For example, letter carriers normally split up the route of a colleague who’s on vacation or out sick. These carriers each take a portion of the absent employee’s route after completing their own, often using a little bit of overtime. Now, that mail doesn’t get delivered until much later.

Then there’s the mail that arrives late in the day. Before, late arriving mail would often be processed for the next day’s delivery, even if that required the use of overtime. Today, that mail sits in the plant at least until the following evening. Mail arriving late on a Saturday or a holiday weekend could be delayed even longer.

In the plants, meanwhile, the short staffing of clerks means it takes longer to get all the mail through the sorting machines. To make matters worse, under orders from DeJoy, mail processing equipment is also being scrapped.

Even though the processing takes longer, drivers aren’t allowed to wait on it. Postal truck drivers are being disciplined for missing their departure time even by a few minutes — even if they haven’t gotten all the mail they’re supposed to haul. In some cases, the trucks that leave are completely empty!

With package deliveries up by 50 percent during the pandemic, as the Institute for Policy Studies reports, large mail trucks operating between facilities are often already full. Imagine how much mail will get left behind when that’s combined with seasonal holiday mail, or a large number of absentee ballots.

Finally, DeJoy’s proposals to cut hours of operation at many smaller post offices — and the removal of many public mailboxes — will make it harder for the public to access postal services.

When you limit hours to 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and close on Saturdays, you eliminate access for anybody working the day shift. Throw in mandatory closure for lunch breaks in the middle of the day, and it makes matters that much worse for our customers.

Postal workers have been doing their best to keep the nation’s mail and packages moving in these difficult and hazardous times. We don’t deserve these attacks.

DeJoy now says he’ll delay more changes until after the election, but he also had the nerve to tell Congress he wouldn’t replace the 600 sorting machines he’d already removed.

Delaying more changes isn’t enough. Instead, Congress must approve crisis relief for USPS — and reverse DeJoy’s disastrous service cuts altogether.

 

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COVID-19’s deadly inflammation

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Shutterstock by Halfpoint

Inflammation: the key factor that
explains vulnerability to severe COVID

by  Sheena Cruickshank, University of Manchester

The severity of COVID-19 can vary hugely. In some it causes no symptoms at all and in others it’s life threatening, with some people particularly vulnerable to its very severe impacts.

The virus disproportionately affects men and people who are older and who have conditions such as diabetes and obesity. In the UK and other western countries, ethnic minorities have also been disproportionately affected.

While many factors contribute to how severely people are affected, including access to healthcare, occupational exposure and environmental risks such as pollution, it’s becoming clear that for some of these at-risk groups, it’s the response of their immune system – inflammation – that explains why they get so sick.

Specifically, we’re seeing that the risks associated with diabetes, obesity, age and sex are all related to the immune system functioning irregularly when confronted by the virus.

Inflammation can go too far

A common feature for many patients that get severe COVID is serious lung damage caused by an overly vigorous immune response. This is characterized by the creation of lots of inflammatory products called cytokines – the so-called cytokine storm.

Cytokines can be really powerful tools in the immune response: they can stop viruses reproducing, for example. However, some cytokine actions – such as helping bring in other immune cells to fight an infection or enhancing the ability of these recruited cells to get across blood vessels – can cause real damage if they are not controlled. This is exactly what happens in a cytokine storm.

Many white blood cells create cytokines, but specialized cells called monocytes and macrophages seem to be some of the biggest culprits in generating cytokine storms. When properly controlled, these cells are a force for good that can detect and destroy threats, clear and repair damaged tissue, and bring in other immune cells to help.

However, in severe COVID the way monocytes and macrophages work misfires. And this is particularly true in patients with diabetes and obesity.

Glucose fuels damage

Diabetes, if not controlled well, can result in high levels of glucose in the body. A recent study showed that, in COVID, macrophages and monocytes respond to high levels of glucose with worrying consequences.

The virus that causes COVID, SARS-CoV-2, needs a target to latch onto in order to invade our cells. Its choice is a protein on the cell surface called ACE2. Glucose increases the levels of ACE2 present on macrophages and monocytes, helping the virus infect the very cells that should be helping to kill it.

An immune cell releasing thousands of small cytokines.
Cytokines, small proteins released by a number of immune cells, play a key role in directing the immune response. scientificanimations.com, CC BY-SA

Once the virus is safely inside these cells, it causes them to start making lots of inflammatory cytokines – effectively kick-starting the cytokine storm. And the higher the levels of glucose, the more successful the virus is at replicating inside the cells – essentially the glucose fuels the virus.

But the virus isn’t done yet. It also causes the virally infected immune cells to make products that are very damaging to the lung, such as reactive oxygen species. And on top of this, the virus reduces the ability of other immune cells – lymphocytes – to kill it.

Obesity also causes high levels of glucose in the body and, similar to diabetes, affects macrophage and monocyte activation. Research has shown that macrophages from obese individuals are an ideal place for SARS-CoV-2 to thrive.

Other risks tied to inflammation

The same sort of inflammatory profile that diabetes and obesity cause is also seen in some older people (those over 60 years). This is due to a phenomenon known as inflammageing.

Inflammageing is characterized by having high levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines. It’s influenced by a number of factors, including genetics, the microbiome (the bacteria, viruses and other microbes that live inside and on you) and obesity.

Many older people also have fewer lymphocytes – the very cells that can specifically target and destroy viruses.

This all means that for some older people, their immune system is not only poorly equipped to fight off an infection, but it is also more likely to lead to a damaging immune response. Having fewer lymphocytes also means vaccines may not work as well, which is crucial to consider when planning a future COVID vaccine campaign.

Another puzzle that has been worrying researchers is why men seem so much more vulnerable to COVID. One reason is that cells in men seem to be more readily infected by SARS-CoV-2 than women. The ACE2 receptor that the virus uses to latch onto and infect cells is expressed much more highly in men than women. Men also have higher levels of an enzyme called TMPRSS2 that promotes the ability of the virus to enter the cells.

Immunology is also offering some clues on the sex difference. It’s long been known that men and women differ in their immune responses, and this is true in COVID.

A recent pre-print (research that has not yet been reviewed) has tracked and compared the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in men and women over time. It found that men were more likely to develop atypical monocytes that were profoundly pro-inflammatory and capable of making cytokines typical of a cytokine storm. Women also tended to have a more robust T cell response, which is needed for effective virus killing. However, increased age and having a higher body mass index reversed the protective immune effect in women.

Studies like these highlight how different people are. The more we understand about these differences and vulnerabilities, the more we can consider how best to treat each patient. Data like these also highlight the need to consider variation in immune function and include people of varied demographics in drug and vaccine trials.The Conversation

 

Sheena Cruickshank, Professor in Biomedical Sciences, University of Manchester

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

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Editorials: Nito’s priorities; and Trump’s troll legion and the left

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Delany
“Influencer” Delany Precilla. Does some 17% of the entire Panamanian population follow her day-to-day antics? Most probably, just a tiny fraction of that — and a lot of bots – tune into her. Graphic from her social media.

Where the priorities lie

Two “influencers,” an item from the Panamanian imitation of gringo “reality TV,” Paul McDonald and Delany Precilla, have been on the government payroll for a combined income of between $9,000 and $10,000 a month. So how has this “influence” been deployed to advance public policy goals? Search and you will not find. Just like you have a hard time finding any public evidence of what another “influencer” who was on the legislature’s payroll, sausage heiress Ursula Kiener Ford, did to promote any governmental purpose.

Meanwhile, more than one-third of our public school students are not attending the online classes that are being offered. Their unemployed parents lack the money to pay the monopolistic foreign-owned private telecommunications companies for data cards. Or there are more kids than cell phones or computers in their families. Or the telecom companies all along neglected their contractual obligation to provide full national coverage and this administration is not about to hold them to it.

Business groups that have the president’s ear lobbied for precisely that state of public education. They’ve also lobbied for austerity policies, lower wages and stern police repression of protests. The first two demands they have won, but we shall see how much. Health care professionals going months without pay and a Chepo water system that working at 40% with the response being water rationing instead of prompt repairs are two examples of austerity in the news lately. Employment and wages have been cut, although a challenge to that derogation of the Labor Code is now before the courts.

The cops have yet to start shooting protesters. Given the privations and dangerous jobs without proper protective gear that they have had to bear along with many of the health care workers, it may not be wise to ask them to do so.

The business executives and the tourism authority are demanding a reopening of the economy that abandons health measures. Even if they get those things economic conditions will start out depressed. Then they would worsen along with the epidemic.

Things are broken. The government, business, labor and everyone else needs to understand that. Even those who don’t believe in government but do believe in their own survival have to act in conjunction with the health decrees as a practical matter.

Panama can get past the harsh realities of the moment without a big social explosion. However, that doesn’t seem to be a priority. Things will get worse again before they get better if the president doesn’t wise up right away.

  

So why are social media groups like this one flooded with ‘Bernie or Bust,’ ‘Vote Green’ and ‘Don’t Vote’ messages?

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The group.
1
The message.
2
The group members’ reactions to that message.

So what’s it all about, really?

Those social media groups on the left side of Democratic politics that put up with it, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Progressives — NOT a group that she controls — have in recent days been bombarded by messages that on the face of it urge votes for the Green Party that’s irrelevant on the national level, or urging write-in votes for Bernie Sanders notwithstanding his endorsement of Biden, or telling people not to vote. Many a ‘Vote for the Democrats’ discussion thread has been monopolized by personas making arguments like these for de facto abstention from this November’s presidential voting.

But look closer. In a few local races around the country, Green candidates have a chance to win. NONE of the avalanche of messages in the left groups talk about them. Nor anything in particular for which Greens stand.

Then look even closer. The personas posting such messages don’t generally show any activity more than a few months or a year old. They don’t generally feature photos of a real person who fits the professed persona. They hardly even give any information by which they can be identified.

Then look at tactics. The personas who post such stuff often work in tag teams.

Unless there have been some stupendous advances in artificial intelligence, these are not bots. They are trolls, pseudonymous or anonymous fake characters. They are deployed by or for the benefit of the Trump campaign. The nature of the trolls is a bit better hidden than were the personas that the Kremlin fielded in 2016. They still don’t withstand close inspection.

The Bernie voters are not dissolving their organizations or abandoning their principles, but almost all of them are planning to vote for Biden. Perhaps the Trump trolls will have a little better luck pushing the ‘Vote for Kanye West’ scam among younger African-American voters.

Why does the DNC remain silent in the face of this stuff? Some of it is about corporate operatives who prefer intra-Democratic faction fighting to fighting Donald Trump. Some of it is the influence of entrenched social circles who can’t and never could organize their way out of a paper bag. The failure to identify and confront such sleaze was a major failure of the 2016 campaign. By contrast, the Obama campaigns had special response teams for online low blows.

And what if it IS the Russians again? It may or may not be, and in any case the last time it wasn’t only them. If it’s them it would be a fact to bear in mind for future dealings. However, like a human body’s immune system in an asthma attack, overreaction could be more harmful than the provocation.

Some technically sophisticated opposition research ought to be deployed to find out, though. It gets to be far more than a matter of defending a candidate. The United States of America needs to be intelligently and appropriately defended against such attacks.

 

Kenosha, Wisconsin this past Sunday. The neighbor’s video from which this was taken got worse.

This morning, the nation wakes up yet again with grief and outrage that yet another Black American is a victim of excessive force. Those shots pierce the soul of our nation.

Joe Biden

Bear in mind…

It is not healthy when a nation lives within a nation, as colored Americans are living inside America. A nation cannot live confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens.

Pearl S. Buck

Dreams you have to fight for, so that they become less dreams and more reality.

Pepe Mujica

The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children, when yesterday’s executioner becomes today’s victim.

Hannah Arendt

 

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What Republicans are saying: Trump’s talking points

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Also sprach Der Donald

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What role might Russia play in Belarus?

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Belarus

Belarus: what role could Russia play
in Alexander Lukashenko’s future?

by Jennifer Mathers, Aberystwyth University

Mass protests, strikes and calls for Alexander Lukashenko to step down after a disputed election have raised the prospect that his long grip on power in Belarus may be coming to an end.

But Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is widely expected to play a decisive role in what happens next in Belarus.

Russia’s leaders regard the security of their own state and society as closely bound up with the political orientation of their neighbors. This is especially the case with those countries that were once part of the Soviet Union, sometimes referred to by Russia as the “near abroad”.

This is why the prospect of major political change in a neighboring country is always a matter of concern for Moscow and nearly always involves some kind of a response.

Russia and Belarus have strong historical, ethnic and linguistic ties and Moscow has backed Lukashenko’s rule for a generation. But recently, the relationship between Putin and Lukashenko has been fraught. Russia has reduced its generous economic subsidies and Lukashenko has become more of an irritant to Moscow than a loyal ally.

Nevertheless, Lukashenko reached out to Putin for help during this current crisis, knowing that Moscow’s support may be all that stands between him and disaster.

To understand the factors likely to drive Russia’s decisions on Belarus, it’s useful to look for patterns in Moscow’s reactions to previous types of change in its nearest neighbors.

Stability issues

Instability, especially when it takes the form of mass violence and armed conflict, is the type of change most likely to provoke an immediate response by Russia involving the use of force. This happened on several occasions in the 1990s, when the struggles for political power and control of territory were most fluid, for example the civil war in Tajikistan and separatist movements in Georgia and Moldova.

Russia’s response to these situations was to deploy peacekeeping forces, often together with military forces from other post-Soviet states, to compel an end to the fighting and enforce a peace or a freeze to the conflicts in a way that protected Russia’s interests.

This is an unlikely scenario for Belarus, where the opposition has been remarkably peaceful. Still, claims by the interior minister, Yuri Karaev, that protesters attacked the police are worth watching carefully.

Such allegations not only seek to justify abuse, torture and murder, but imply that the opposition lacks respect for law and order and would allow the country to descend into chaos and violence if it were allowed to take control. These are coded messages aimed both at society in Belarus and at observers in Moscow.

Suspicion of the west

Another serious concern for Russia is that a pro-western government will come to power in a neighboring state. Putin views the west as relentlessly hostile towards Russia and always looking for ways to undermine Moscow’s security interests. This view, combined with Russia’s approach to security as a zero-sum game – in which gains made by one side are equivalent to losses by the other – make the prospect of a close neighbor giving its allegiance to the west truly alarming.

This is why Ukraine’s 2013-14 Maidan revolution provoked such a strong response from Moscow. A core demand of the protesters and opposition parties was closer economic and political ties with the European Union rather than the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. The pro-western orientation of the post-Maidan governments in Kyiv has included explicit calls for Ukraine to join the EU and NATO.

As well as the annexation of Crimea, Russia’s actions in Ukraine included the use of the military, the covert supply of troops and weapons, and a multifaceted disinformation campaign.

Belarus is unlikely to follow in Ukraine’s footsteps. Its opposition leaders and protesters have focused on domestic political and economic issues. Anti-Russian or pro-western rhetoric has been remarkably absent. A protester who carried the EU flag at one event was even criticized by others in the crowd for bringing a foreign flag.

Lukashenko and the state media have tried to discredit the opposition by claiming that they have foreign backing. They argue that if the opposition gains power, they would introduce blatantly anti-Russian policies, such as banning the use of the Russian language.

Treading a fine line

These messages are aimed as much at the Kremlin as at ordinary citizens in Belarus in the hope that they will persuade Putin to intervene to save Lukashenko and his regime if the opposition’s position continues to strengthen.

The most optimistic scenario for political change in Belarus with minimal response from Moscow is the precedent set by Armenia. In 2018, Armenia experienced a regime change following popular protests against a rigged election. Its new leadership has been careful to maintain good relations with Russia and there is no suggestion of active interference by the Kremlin.

One indication that Russia’s response to the political turmoil in Belarus has yet to be decided comes from Russian news coverage of the protests. Russian reporting has been largely positive about the protesters but has not presented a consistent narrative about whether Lukashenko or his opponents represent the best future for Belarus. This reflects the lack of direction from the Kremlin about what line to take on the story.

In reality, Putin may be reluctant to rush to aid Lukashenko, especially if another leadership emerges in Minsk that is acceptable to Moscow.The Conversation

Jennifer Mathers, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Aberystwyth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

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Jackson, After the plague (3)

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San Carlos
Checking for COVID-19 at the Policlinica in San Carlos. CSS photo.

A possible “new normal”
Ending the pandemic

part 3 of 3, by Eric Jackson

Nazis who believe in the positive virtues of “weeding out the weaklings” among humanity tend to love this latest coronavirus. The Republican governor of Alabama also embraced this eugenics doctrine when she ordered her state’s hospitals to deny the use of respirators to the “mentally defective.”

We, the “weaklings,” are sometimes wont to indulge in evil chuckles. Like when the various flavors of fanatics who demonstrably oppose masks, and shutdowns where and when it gets bad, get sick and die. Made a big show of attending Donald Trump’s Tulsa rally without a mask and died of COVID-19 not long afterward? It’s a tragedy, but then so is the demise of the guy who drives onto the wrong side of a freeway and punches the gas pedal to the floor.

Not a laughing matter that there will be lasting demographic effects.

Not just a much higher death rate among the elderly, but also lasting effects among a lot of those struck by the virus who don’t die. Hearing problems. Kidney problems. Neurological issues. Permanently damaged lungs. The medical literature about the aftermath is bound to grow, and the human legacies upon which it will be based will be the stuff for more proposed nazi final solutions.

It’s likely to be as severe a political defeat for those kinds of people as it was for their ideological forebears when the films of what liberating Allied troops found at the concentration camps were shown to worldwide audiences.

More immediately, though, many of the elders of social sectors that have traditionally been in worse health and received worse health care will be gone. Part of ghetto scenes worldwide will be an extra need to care for those with chronic conditions caused by COVID-19 infections.

In the USA, these demographics are bound to exacerbate a previously existing generation gap within African-American communities. In St. Louis the toppling the Clay dynasty by nurse and Black Lives Matter activist Cori Bush may be the most noteworthy event but that’s far from the whole story. A new alignment among black voters realigns the Democratic Party.

In Panama, initial success at keeping the epidemic under control foundered on the class prejudices of the rich and Nito’s eventual compulsion to the pander to these. Unpaid and underprotected health care workers, all the police officers who got sick, most of these will survive and let’s see how many of them will vote for the PRD next time.

The ongoing scandals about the widespread corruption in the Varela and Martinelli administrations may officially end with court findings that nothing ever happened. Nobody will believe it. Of all the political forces in the field, the two biggest left standing would be MOVIN and the left. MOVIN criticizes the obvious corruption but has little to offer in the way of a way out of Panama’s predicament and represents a small upscale base. The left has not surmounted more than a half-century of faction fighting, even if they generally do understand the basic problems and offer some rational responses. So Panama comes out of the pandemic not only economically depressed, but with something of a political vacuum.

And how will it end? The march of science is likely to determine the possibilities, and then social and political things add complications.

Will there be a vaccine? What percentage of people who get it will be immunized, and for how long?

A shot that’s 80 percent effective for 100 days might be just enough, but only if governments get hard-nosed about it.

You’re a Christian Scientist, or that variety of Orthodox Jew who opposes vaccinations, or a New Ager anti-vaxxer? That kid who’s not vaccinated is not allowed into a school. There are all sorts of places – business establishments, government offices, public transportation… – where you are not allowed without showing your vaccination card. Foreigners who preach against vaccinations get to do so back in from whence they came.

For a short-lived vaccine, Panama needs to get its supply in place and then vaccinate everybody at once. Part of that process would be preparations to treat bad reactions, as typically happen with some people with almost every vaccine. Make almost everyone immune all at once, then very carefully monitor and isolate any infections after that. This, and not some laissez-faire nonsense about letting everyone get sick, is how you get herd immunity.

What if a vaccine is developed and gets used as a political weapon by a country that has a monopoly to pursue other ends in less powerful countries? Might a country like Panama decide to wait for the next offer? It might even become the essence of a “national liberation struggle.”

Lots of ifs, and among them possibilities of reputations destroyed by present claims of a vaccine that turn out not to be.

With a vaccine or without, COVID-19 will be with us for a very long time. Just like yellow fever still lurks in some our our remote areas, mostly in the bodies of a few jungle animals. With bad luck and bad sanitation, notwithstanding an available vaccine, that old scourge could also come storming back to infect much of the Panamanian population.

What this reporter expects – opinion, not news, here – is a useful if not perfect vaccine within the next year, and permanently altered social and economic landscapes in the wake of this traumatic experience.

 

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