In this section, Crescent International will highlight news and events that do not attract much media Attention. We will provide our brief analysis. Hyperlinked references will be provided for confirmation, corroboration and crediting purposes.
Canadian medical doctor, Dr. Tarek Loubani, speaking to the Electronic Intifada, discussed the disastrous situation in Gaza following the coronavirus outbreak and policies of the Zionist occupation regime in Palestine.
According to Dr. Loubani, Israeli occupation policies have created an acute shortage of basic medical supplies in Gaza spanning over several years.
The Electronic Intifada wrote, “Michael Lynk, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the West Bank and Gaza, affirmed that Israel, as the occupying power, is obligated under international law to guarantee basic services and health infrastructure for Palestinians. Instead, Israel has diminished the capacity of Gaza’s health system and prohibited vital supplies from entering the territory. Israel has imposed a siege on Gaza’s two million population for the past 13 years and controls the passage of goods in and out of the territory. Israel bans the import to Gaza of a long list of so-called ‘dual-use’ items which it claims may have military purposes. These include medical supplies like glycerine and hydrogen peroxide, which is used as a disinfectant. Israeli rights group Gisha is calling on Israel to suspend its blockade on Gaza and allow all necessary items to enter.”
Due to Zionist Israel’s unending brutality, the regime is unlikely to ease the siege on Gaza in these extraordinary circumstances until the virus spreads and begins to affect Israelis themselves, due to the small landmass of Palestine. Once the situation reaches that level, it will be too little, too late. Thus, the international community must act now to help Gaza.
(Courtesy: Electronic Intifada)
On March 23, the Venezuelan government announced that all commercial and residential rent, as well as all capital and loan interest payments, are suspended for six months. Public- and private-sector workers will receive a special government bonus, and wages of small and midsize companies will be paid by the state until September.
On the same day, the Venezuelan government announced that 4200 additional temporary hospital beds are to be incorporated into the public health system, mostly through an agreement with large hotel chains.
The Government of Venezuela is currently facing a severe economic, political and military sabotage by NATO regimes. Yet, instead of blaming external interference and shirking responsibility, the Venezuelan government is attending to the needs of its citizens. Actions of the Venezuelan government once again confirm the fact that the current elected government of Venezuela is a people first system of governance.
(Courtesy: Venezuela Analysis)
The Coronavirus crisis has exposed the autocratic regimes in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan as economically incompetent and bankrupt. In both ex-Soviet states, the regimes asked ordinary citizens to chip in from their pockets into government set-up funds to battle the virus.
Aydos Ukibay, press secretary to the first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, announced that “Elbasy” (Leader of the Nation) wanted “those who want and are able, to help the country” and donate to a special fund to help Kazakhstan in these difficult times.
Last week in Azerbaijan, the Aliyev regime announced the creation of a fund to combat the coronavirus. These sorts of schemes are a common tactic in Azerbaijan for the ruling caste to enrich itself.
Both the Aliyev and Nazarbayev regimes are notorious for regularly producing inflated economic figures out of thin air to brag about their economic policies. With the collapse of the oil price and the coronavirus crisis, both regimes stand exposed as mere gas-stations for Western regimes with no productive economic sector outside of the oil and gas industry.
(Courtesy: RFERL, Eurasianet)
On March 26, The Grayzone, an independent news website managed by Max Blumenthal, an award-winning American journalist, published a report about a meeting between far-right Ukrainian nationalists and the former prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper.
According to the Grayzone, “Harper spoke as the keynote guest at a gala organized to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC) and its newspaper, Homin Ukrainy (“Ukrainian Echo”), as well as the 65th anniversary of the League of Ukrainian Canadian Women (LUCW)…. Today, the transnational crypto-fascist network of Banderite NGOs once known above board as the “Organizations of the Ukrainian Liberation Front” operates in the open and with the full-throated support of Western politicians like Stephen Harper. Its global coordinating body is called the International Council in Support of Ukraine, or ICSU, which in turn looks to the OUN-B for leadership.
The ICSU and the Ukrainian World Congress are presently headquartered in Toronto. And it is there that the LUC – the group that hosted Harper – presides over the ICSU’s Canadian branch, the CCSU. Oksana Prociuk-Cyz, CEO of the largest Ukrainian Canadian credit union, is a former treasurer of the ICSU, whose present-day leader, Borys Potapenko, is from Detroit, but a former executive director of the LUC.
Over forty years ago, Potapenko chaired a “Committee in Defense of Ukraine” that “conducted a major campaign in protest against the showing of the [1978] television movie ‘Holocaust’ starring Meryl Streep and James Woods.”
Most so-called conservative political parties in Western countries have regressed into far-right oriented political groupings with little to no connection to classical conservatism rooted in Christian traditions. Just like the Zionist movement hijacked Judaism for its supremacist political agenda, many conservative political organizations in Western countries utilize conservative rhetoric to mask their white supremacist agenda.
(Courtesy: the Grayzone)
Key exemplary countries which are successfully combating the coronavirus are non-Western states like South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
Taiwan and Singapore managed to contain the virus through rigorous medical approach and some form of social distancing without shutting down the entire country.
According to the National Post, Taiwan, which had 2.7 million visitors from China in 2019, had just 135 cases and two deaths as of Friday March 27, versus Canada’s 846 cases and 10 deaths.
The fact that the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus are the so-called first tier countries with dismal healthcare systems is one of the manifestations of changing times. Western countries are no longer ‘go to systems’ for sophisticated public policy approaches. It would not be surprising if Singapore and Taiwan’s approaches are ignored or downplayed by the Western regimes to insist on their own ‘superiority’.
(Courtesy: National Post)
