Voici le 80ème “SitRep” d’Ayssar Midani sur la Syrie, intitulé « À l’ombre du coronavirus ». Au programme :
• Palestine
– les conditions de détention des palestiniens dans les prisons israéliennes
– absence de mesures de prévention dans les territoires occupés
– offensive pour faire fuir les habitants de Cisjordanie
• Syrie
– renforts turques à Idlib
– renforts américains
After weeks of dismissing it as a liberal “hoax” designed to unseat the president, brushing the virus off as no big deal and under control, the Trump administration is clearly floundering in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite weeks of warning where it could have taken precautionary steps, the United States currently has four times the confirmed cases and twice the deaths of any other country.
The 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic is taking a toll all over the globe, causing severe socioeconomic disruption, the stock market crash, millions of job losses, the postponement or cancellation of cultural and political events, and widespread fears of supply shortages resulting in panic purchasing. The coronavirus, which causes a respiratory disease known as COVID-19, is currently affecting more than 200 countries and territories. It has so far infected over 1.6 million people and killed around 100,000 others.
Imagine if countries put aside their differences in order to mount an effective international campaign against Covid-19? If they stopped shooting one another and fought the virus instead? If instead of sending aircraft carriers around the world in a show of strength, they competed to see who could supply more face masks and ventilators?
Wouldn’t that be terrible? Wouldn’t it be a sign of a dangerous new threat?
After decades of being spoken about historically in terms of the Cuban Revolution and ideological anti-imperialism, the coronavirus pandemic has thrust Cuba onto the international arena and as a formidable opponent to capitalism. While Western countries struggle to cope with increasingly failing healthcare systems that account for a high death rate among coronavirus patients, Cuba is managing the situation at home while also maintaining its internationalist outreach. No longer isolated, Cuba and its doctors are very much in demand by the same governments that pander to U.S.
Enhanced transcript on an interview with PressTV
Background
Cuba complained recently that a shipment of test kits, masks and respirators, donated by the Chinese Alibaba group, didn’t arrive because the American company tasked with transportation feared breaching US sanction rules. Washington imposed an embargo on Cuba in 1962 after the island nation nationalized its oil industry. The measures have been denounced by the United Nations 28 years in a row.
PressTV: What are your views on this?
Although the redoubtable New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared that the Covid-19 virus “has been ahead of us from Day One. We’ve underestimated the enemy, and that is always dangerous, my friends. We should not do that again” it is too much to expect of most political figures that they should ever admit they were wrong about something.
Like most everyone else, I don’t get out much lately due to shelter-in-place. But when I walk around my community, I am heartened by neighbors asking if there is anything we might need. I suspect this scenario is taking place everywhere.
Like most everyone else, I don’t get out much lately due to shelter-in-place. But when I walk around my community, I am heartened by neighbors asking if there is anything we might need. I suspect this scenario is taking place everywhere.
Regime change-hungry HRW is proudly taking credit for crushing new US sanctions on Nicaragua while pushing to escalate Washington’s economic war on Venezuela. The Grayzone presents a deep dive into the “human rights” arm of US empire.
Ben NORTON
