ABOMINATIONS

PHILIP A. FARRUGGIO—The old adage should say : Nothing is certain but death and taxes… and Karma. Karma is as real as it gets. The various holy books made sure to state that ‘ What ye sow so shall ye reap’ AKA ‘ What goes around comes around.’ Karma has many flavors, but the end result is always the same: What one does will eventually come back to revisit in some form or manner. In 1914 the whole of Europe and parts extended were in a world war. This war was not what was advertised as ‘ Good vs. Evil’ . No, it was a war between major imperialist, colonialist nations for increased power and control. The propaganda was such that the USA got itself involved to back up our British ally, or should I say our British ‘ Big brother’ at the time.

ERIC ZUESSE—People I know who live in Russia have told me that it’s a Western lie that Navalny has ever had any significant political support inside the country, and that he is widely considered to be just a front for the U.S. and allied governments and their mainstream fake ‘news’-media in order to stir a movement in Russia to overthrow Putin, who is widely respected by Russians. I don’t know whether that’s true, but certainly any ‘journalists’ who allege — without documentation — that “The most popular opposition leader challenging Putin, Alexei Navalny,” is an example of fake ‘news’-media that are trying to stir support of their own population for action (sanctions, etc.) against Russia. In other words: they’re propagandists.

This week, Russia sent a huge cargo plane to the US with medical equipment to fight an escalating epidemic of the deadly disease. The US is on track to become the new epicenter of the pandemic, partly because the country has critical shortages of equipment. The gesture of solidarity from Russia was promptly arranged after President Trump phoned Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin requesting assistance.

SERGE HALIMI—When this tragedy is over, will everything just go back to the way it was? For 30 years each new crisis has raised unreasonable hopes that the world would return to reason, come to its senses, end the madness. We have dreamed of containing, then reversing, a sociopolitical dynamic whose deadlocks and dangers were finally understood (1). We hoped that the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987 would end runaway privatisation, and that the financial crises of 1997 and 2007-08 would halt happy globalisation. They didn’t.

Berlin’s state interior ministry blamed the US for confiscating 200,000 masks ordered from a US producer when they were in transit through Bangkok. French officials have accused unidentified Americans of paying over the odds to secure masks in China that had already been earmarked for France.