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Archive for April, 2020

The New Arab Coronavirus: Israel’s spy agency Mossad admits to stealing face masks overseas amid global PPE shortage

Israel‘s spy agency Mossad has admitted to resorting to theft to obtain face masks and other medical supplies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mossad official made the revelation during an interview with Israeli media.The intelligence agency has and will use all means to procure necessary equipment during the pandemic, according to Ilana Dayan, host of Channel 12‘s “Fact”.

Mossad is currently involved in efforts to procure supplies ranging from face masks to the mechanical ventilators required to keep some Covid-19 patients alive.

When asked whether those efforts have included theft, the head of the intelligence agency’s technology division, identified by “Fact” only as H., affirmed: “We stole, but only a little.”

Read also: Israeli forces ‘steal coronavirus food aid for needy Palestinians, beat aid workers’

“The citizens of Israel will have no shortage,” he said according to Haaretz. “In the world in general there will be a great shortage. People are dying because of a lack of equipment. In Israel people won’t go without.”

H. did not elaborate further on what methods the Mossad has used to procure medical equipment.

A number of countries worldwide have blocked the export of face masks and other medical supplies in order to preserve their own stocks as they come face to face with the highly contagious virus.

Mossad’s role in confronting the coronavirus crisis came to light last month when the agency’s director, Yossi Cohen, quarantined himself following close contact with Israeli Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, who had tested positive for Covid-19.

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In early March, the agency set up a command and control centre to handle procurement and distribution of supplies in collaboration with the Ministry of Defence and a military intelligence division, the New York Times reported.

Six current or former officials with knowledge of Mossad’s counter-coronavirus operations told the NYT it had “used international contacts” to avert possible shortages of equipment and prevent Israel’s healthcare system from being overwhelmed.

The intelligence agency had been able to procure supplies and equipment Israel’s own health ministry could not, the six people said on condition of anonymity.

Arab media had earlier reported that Mossad had been involved in procuring thousands of coronavirus tests from countries with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations. 

Read also: Gaza factories consider exporting masks to Israel as enclave ramps up homemade coronavirus response

As well as bringing in 1.5 million surgical masks, tens of thousands of N-95 masks and other supplies, Mossad has obtained technology and expertise from outside of Israel that will be used to scale up coronavirus testing and boost local production of ventilators and face masks, one high-ranking official said.

The intelligence agency’s efforts were easier in countries with authoritarian rulers, another senior official said. Intelligence agencies in such countries generally have strong ties with leaders, and in turn those agencies sometimes have existing relations with Mossad.

In some cases, Mossad chief Yossi Cohen even spoke directly with ruling politicians, the official added.

Israel has reported more than 11,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases, including 117 deaths.

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Letter to the Editor :Covid 19 in Pakistan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Salam

I’ll cover my points very short.
Observing the recent conditions Pakistan as of today govt should raise the actual no of cases of covid19 to 200% on daily basis to cover up peoples (no fear to it) and to win different wars against different  categories like financial issues (IMF)and others as well.

As US is raising the no of cases of COVID19.
Its just a suggestion  . Social media whatsapp videos should be launched in groups for interviews of cured covid19 patients to fear out public.i am a thinker and just wanted to suggest to the think tanks of Pakistan.
Regards
Sheraz gulbar

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Event 201 Pandemic Exercise: Segment 3, Finance Discussion

Event 201 Pandemic Exercise: Segment 3, Finance Discussion

Event 201 is a pandemic tabletop exercise hosted by The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership …

Unipolar Martial Law or Multipolar Marshall Plan?

As I outlined in my previous paper, the mass-panic generated by COVID-19 has created a 9/11-situation with the expected police state laws being passed under the radar of many people who would normally be paying attention to such things. One of the most dangerous measures enacted involved a classified bill in February which formally mandates the head of NORTHCOM (who is also the head of NORAD) to become acting President of the United States under conditions of Martial Law, un-governability of the executive branch or general chaos in America. This later scenario is not terribly unlikely considering the danger of a financial blowout of the banking system combined with economic lockdowns of the west.

 

 

 

 

 

 

China and Russia both understand the nature of the game and both nations have acted responsibly in dealing with the outbreak of Coronavirus with China’s successful containment having won seven consecutive days of no new cases. It is important that unlike the remedies promoted by London’s Imperial College, neither Russia nor China have totally shut down their nations, but have rather kept their economies alive which [included] selecting methods for selective quarantines and lockdowns (China only locked down 15 nations plus Wuhan while the remaining 95% of their economy continued to produces and support the recovering component).

We know that President Trump has resisted the pressure by Deep State Experts to shut down America and has stated so repeatedly, but up until his recent conversations with Xi Jinping and Putin, there were very few options available to him beyond those proposed by Dr. Fauci, the Green New Dealing Dems or “bailout everything” monetarists around Mnuchin and Kudlow.

Now that China and Russia have begun sending cargo ships of vital medical equipment to America as part of the Health Silk Road (over the screams of neocons and neoliberal technocrats like), a new possibility for a cure has presented itself. If Trump acts decisively with courage and intelligence, there is still a chance that sovereign nation states may yet stay in the drivers’ seat and use this crisis as an opportunity to force through a debt jubilee, banking reform and new Bretton Woods emergency conference to establish a foundation for a new just economic system. If Trump is unsuccessful in this task, it is more than a little scary to think about what hell will beset the world in the coming months and years.

About the author

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review and has authored 3 volumes of ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series. His works appear regularly on The Duran, Strategic Culture, SOTT.net, Fort Russ, Zero Hedge, Global Times, L.A. Review of Books, LeSaker.fr, Vigile Quebec, South Front and Veterans Today. He is a correspondent/BRI Expert for Tactical Talk. In 2019 Matthew co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation. He can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

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Indian liberalism is a historical myth that must be countered if we want to understand our society

Indian liberalism is a historical myth that must be countered if we want to understand our society

We continue to believe that what is happening today is simply an aberration and long to return to a past that did not exist.

Mar 09, 2020 · 06:30 am

Sanjay Srivastava

The last few years have been particularly noticeable for remembering dead and ageing parents. Not just any common garden variety ones, of course, but a very specific kind. These are the parents who, apparently, bequeathed a tolerant, liberal and non-majoritarian India to their children. They embraced religious diversity, resisted various forms of bigotry and promoted the values of constitutional morality. They instilled in their progeny the importance of imagining a post-colonial republic where differences of class, caste, religion and ethnicity would be unequivocally erased.

In media articles and social media outpourings, these parents – narrators of a tryst with destiny – are sorely missed. Over the past six years, everything that the immediate ancestors dreamt of has been, apparently, upturned. In around half a decade, centuries of Indian tolerance – the aforementioned parents being its clearest exemplars – has been wiped out.

The romance of Indian liberalism, fed by the ever-nourishing rivers of historical myth-making of recent origin, needs to be countered if we are ever to undertake the task of taking a good hard look at ourselves – and our parents. Liberal ancestor worship does not serve us well. It certainly does not allow for an understanding of the nature of Indian society either over the longue durèe or in the recent past.

The good Muslim syndrome

The most fundamental aspect of our recent past is that our parents were not particularly committed to the values of religious tolerance that they are frequently credited with as a pre-Modi phenomenon. Their relationship with their Muslim co-citizens was premised on a specific set of circumstances.

Firstly, it had to do with Muslims “knowing their place”. Muslims were to act as mascots of Hindu India’s tolerant culture, rather than exercise an identity that might assert equality with members of the majority community. This was the condition of Hindu contextualism where “secular India” was deeply rooted in the values and public symbolism of Hinduism. Our public functions began (and still begin) with lighting lamps, ships were launched by breaking coconuts and we sang (and now sing with greater fervour) Sanskrit hymns at various national occasions as if these were areligious markers of post-colonial identity.

That is the world our parents grew up in and subscribed to: the “good Muslim” was the one who knew his or her place in a society marked by Hindu contextualism. Even Nehru, perhaps one of the very few who might have understood the meaning of genuine multiculturalism, was not able to counter these tendencies.

Eliding caste

Secondly, there was no India of our parent’s generation that seriously engaged with the caste question. Rather, if we have now come to believe that our parents decried casteism – and that its resurgence is linked to the break-down of their culture of liberalism – this is an entirely spurious view, nurtured by a very Indian culture of filial obligation.

Men and women of an earlier generation – the first and second generation of post-Independence parents – were as deeply casteist as their apparent antithetical contemporary counterparts. What was true of the earlier generation was that – like the Left parties – they pronounced that “in their circles” caste was not a problem.

There is a very common refrain among many now in their seventies and eighties that as school-going students, they had no idea about the caste of their fellow students. This does not, of course, prove that India of the 1950s and ’60s was not marked by caste hierarchies. Rather that in our parents’ generation, there was no occasion for encountering it as those among whom they moved were uniformly upper-caste. The comforts of caste-homogenous social circles ensured that there was no necessity of thinking about caste as a problem. This might only have been the case if different castes encountered each other in the same social milieu.

A soft bigotry

The fact of the matter is that neither was our parents’ time one of a golden age of tolerance and constitutional morality nor is it the case that we have now – in a space of six years! – dramatically changed. The first perspective is misplaced filial obligation and the second is a simplistic understanding of social and cultural change.

Our parents practised bigotry of a quiet sort, one that did not require the loud proclamations that are the norm now. Muslims and the lower castes knew their place and the structures of social and economic authority were not under threat. This does not necessarily translate into a tolerant generation. Rather, it was a generation whose attitudes towards religion and caste was never really tested.

The loud bigotry of our times is no great break from the past in terms of a dramatic change in attitudes – is it really possible that such changes can take place in such few years? Rather, it is the crumbling of the veneer of tolerance against those who once knew their place but no longer wish to accept that position.

The great problem with all this is that we continue to believe that what is happening today is simply an aberration and that we will, when the nightmare is over, return to the Utopia that was once ours. However, it isn’t possible to return to the past that was never there. It will only lead to an even darker future. And, filial affection is no antidote for it.

Courtesy -@Scroll.in

 

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Broadening split in India’s Federation By Sajjad Shaukat

 

Since Narendara Modi, the leader of the ruling party BJP became the Indian Prime Minister in 2014, he started implementing ideology of Hindutva ((Hindu Nationalism). Under his regime, persecution of religious minorities such as Dalits, Sikhs, Christians and particularly Muslims, including even of lower cast-Hindus might be cited as instance.

 

In this regard, the Indian Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA), passed by the Indian Parliament further exposed the discriminatory policies of the Modi government. The CAA coupled with the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is mainly against the Muslim immigrants especially from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

 

Since December 15, 2019, daily mass protests, even by the moderate Hindus have been taking place across every state in India against the CAA and the NRC, which resulted into killing of more than 100 persons and injuring 800-mostly Muslims by the police and fanatic Hindus. But, Modi-led regime has not withdrawn the CAA/NRC.

 

It is mentionable that more than seven months have been passed. But, Indian extremist government led by the extremist Prime Minister Modi continued lockdown in the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK). While, Indian fanatic rulers are also escalating tensions with Pakistan to divert attention from the drastic situation of the (IOK), and have continued shelling inside Pakistani side of Kashmir by violating the ceasefire agreement in relation to the Line of Control (LoC).

 

Indian forces have broken all previous records of gross human rights abuses since August 5, 2019 when Indian Prime Minister Modi’s government ended special status of the Jammu and Kashmir by abolishing articles 35A and 370 of the Constitution to turn Muslim majority into minority in the Indian Held Kashmir. Implementing the August 5 announcement, Indian central government issued a notorious map on October 31, 2019. In accordance with it, Jammu and Kashmir was bifurcated into two union territories—Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

 

Besides Pakistan, China also rejected the Indian map. In this regard, China objected to the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories as “unlawful and void”, saying that India’s decision to “include” some of China’s territory into its administrative jurisdiction “challenged” Beijing’s sovereignty. Border dispute between New Delhi and China, which remains unsettled, has increased tension between the two countries.

 

 

 

It is noteworthy that former Soviet Union which had subjugated the minorities and ethnic groups in various provinces and regions through its military, disintegrated in 1991. Learning no lesson from its previous close friend, New Delhi has been acting upon the similar policies in some way or the other.

 

However, India, dominated by politicians from the Hindi heartland—Hindutva have been using brutal force ruthlessly against any move to free Assam, Kashmir, Khalistan, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu and Tripura where wars of liberation continue in one form or the other.

Due to the discrimination against the Sikh community, Sikhs have been fighting for Kahalistan as an independent state.

 

In the recent years, Maoist intensified their struggle by attacking official installments. In this context, Indian media admitted that Maoists have entered the cities, expanding their activities against the Indian union. On 22-23 April 2018, at least 39 Maoists were killed in an alleged encounter with Indian security forces in district Gadchiroli. Maoist uprising is second major freedom movement after that of the Occupied Kashmir. Indian former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had called Maoist insurrection, “the single biggest internal-security challenge”, whereas, Home Secretary G.K Pillai had reiterated the magnitude of this threat by saying that the Maoists want to completely overthrow the Indian state by 2050. The Naxalite-Maoists, as they call themselves, are the liberators, representing landless farmers and the downtrodden masses who have been entangled into vicious circle of poverty, misery and deprivation.

 

Tamil Nadu is another area where separatist movements are haunting federation of India.

 

And, the seven states of Northeastern India, which are called the ‘Seven Sisters’ are ethnically and linguistically different from rest of the country. These states are rocked by a large number of armed and violent rebellions, some seeking separate states, some fighting for autonomy and others demanding complete independence. These states which include Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura, accuse New Delhi of apathy towards their issues. Illiteracy, poverty and lack of economic opportunities have fueled the natives’ demand for autonomy and independence.

 

As regards the state of Assam, the BJP-led alliance has been targeting the 4 million Assamese Muslims who are being denied Indian citizenship under the NRC. On August 31, 2019, nearly two million people have been excluded from a list of citizens in India’s Assam, raising fears they could be rendered stateless.

 

Undoubtedly, these states have witnessed various sorts of India’s state terrorism, but, did not stop their struggle. Instead of redressing the grievances of the people by eliminating injustices against them, Modi-led Indian regime is depending upon ruthless force to crush these extremist and secessionist movements. Therefore, India’s unrealistic counterinsurgency strategy has badly failed.

 

It is of particular attention that Indian Minister of External affairs Jaswant Singh who served the BJP for 30 years was expelled from the party for praising Mohammad Ali Jinnah [Founder of Pakistan] and echoing the pain of the Indian Muslims in his book, “Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence.”

 

Pointing out the BJP’s attitude towards the minorities, Singh wrote: “Every Muslim that lives in India is a loyal Indian…look into the eyes of Indian Muslims and see the pain.” He warned in his book, if such a policy continued, “India could have third partition.”

 

We can conclude that Modi’s “New India”, which is “Meta Nationalism”, is transforming the country into a “fascist and extremist India”, as Modi is intolerant and inflexible to any kind of opposition. So, Prime Minister Narendar Modi’s extremist policies have broadened the split of India’s federation which will disintegrate like the former Soviet Union.

 

Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations

 

Email: sajjad_logic@yahoo.com

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