Open Borders and Free Trade induce national suicide slowly and gradually, without the victims waking up to what is going on until it is too late. But the coronavirus has brought home with global clarity that human societies need governments and regulated borders for their own survival.
As scary as it is for some to admit even at this stage of the game, the current financial system sits precariously on the edge of a meltdown beyond anything ever recorded in human history. Normally, such a systemic meltdown would generate such turbulence and panic that the masses of complacent subjects would be induced to action in defense of their families and nations, however under current circumstances, the coronavirus pandemic has ensured that no such mass movement, or policy fight has taken shape.
At a time when change is most needed, he’s asking voters to turn back, give up, and accept our country’s senility.
Daniel MCCARTHY
The Democratic Party is decadent, its future stillborn as its past seizes ownership of its backward-looking present. In 2020, the party is set to nominate for president a man who wasn’t good enough for the nomination in 1988 or 2008. Has he acquired a new vision or new vigor? No, but his party has run out of options.
No matter how hard I try to dig German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political grave she proves more adept at staying alive than a cockroach in a woodpile. And the recent fight amongst European Union members over “Coronabonds” has proven yet another escape path for her to avoid political termination.
Thanks to Merkel holding the line on debt mutualization and EU fiscal integration, which is very unpopular in Germany, her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is now polling at levels it hasn’t enjoyed since before the last general election in 2017.
Some have queried how it could be that President Putin would co-operate with President Trump to have OPEC+ push oil prices higher – when those higher prices precisely would only help sustain U.S. oil production. In effect, President Putin was being asked to underwrite a subsidy to the U.S. economy – at the expense of Russia’s own oil and gas sales – since U.S. shale production simply is not economic at these prices. In other words, Russia seemed to be shooting itself in the foot.
They came, they saw – and they were conquered.
Southern European countries, led by Italy and Spain, with the half-hearted help of France, lost yet another battle to their Northern neighbors at the Eurogroup, the Germany-dominated, informal gathering of the Eurozone finance ministers.
The spiteful petulance shown by President Trump this week in announcing the cutting off of U.S. funding to the World Health Organization casts a long shadow on his character and on bombastic claims of American leadership.
In the midst of a global pandemic, Trump has decided to pull the plug on U.S. financial support for the United Nations’ health body. At $400 million a year – 15 per cent of its total budget – the U.S. represents the biggest funder of the WHO. Kudos to the U.S. for its erstwhile support.
Gary D. BARNETT
“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
~ Albert Einstein–“The Harper Book of Quotations Revised Edition”. Book by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 356, 1993.
Economic disparity has been killing many New Yorkers all along – the coronavirus just brings it into horrifying perspective.
Peter VAN BUREN
The talk in New York is about when to return to normal. But that misses the point; normal never really left, it just changed clothes. We traded economic disparity expressed through poverty for economic disparity expressed through viral death. The real problem isn’t when we’ll return to normal, it is that we will.
Surgical masks. They cost a trivial amount of money, tens of millions can be easily and safely stored for a long time. Eleven years ago, during the H1N1 pandemic (aka “swine flu”) the Center for Disease Control released from its Strategic National Stockpile “personal protective equipment including over 39 million respiratory protection devices (masks and respirators), gowns, gloves and face shields” This amounted to 25% of the total.
