BRITISH/ EU/ NATO COMPLICITY

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PEPE ESCOBAR—Soft power is paramount. Beijing sent an Air China flight to Italy carrying 2,300 big boxes full of masks bearing the script, “We are waves from the same sea, leaves from the same tree, flowers from the same garden.” China also sent a hefty humanitarian package to Iran, significantly aboard eight flights from Mahan Air – an airline under illegal, unilateral Trump administration sanctions.

UMAIR HAQUE—Nobody asked: who was going to pay for those tests? How long would it take? Would what passes for “insurance” [in the USA] even cover it? What happened if you tested positive? Why couldn’t people just go to their nearest doctor’s office…and get tested? Or their nearest hospital? For free? Why rely on a bizarre coterie of corporations, mostly owned by hedge funds, to provide the public good of healthcare…during a literal global pandemic? What the? The answer, of course, to all those questions, is: capitalism.

XU KEYUE—“Without vaccinations, the herd immunity approach is that we, as a civilized society have agreed that the weak, the old, the infirmed, as well as random healthy people die. Leaving those that have been infected and survive. How did we come to this?” a netizen tweeted on Saturday, whose sentiments resonated with the views of several other commentators. Another netizen slammed the strategy as fundamentally about economics. “Personally, I think it’s irresponsible to claim it’s based on science…The judgement is ultimately political…”

MATTHEW EHRET—Four months after the Skripals (and one unfortunate detective named Sgt. Nick Bailey) were released from British hospital care, two more figures were stricken with Novichok poisoning and taken to hospital on June 30 with one of them (Dawn Sturgess) dying 9 days later. This too was blamed immediately on Russia.