This is report from this past Friday from Russia Matters:

Russia confirmed 5,849 new coronavirus infections on April 24, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 68,622. Six hundred and fifteen people have been killed by the virus, according to The Moscow Times. Meanwhile Russia’s central bank has lowered its key interest rate by half a percentage point to 5.5 percent to help ease the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak, according to RFE/RL. The bank expects the country’s economy will shrink by 4 percent to 6 percent this year, while the IMF has forecast that Russia’s economy could contract by 5.5 percent, according to the Financial Times.

To put this into perspective, most countries’ economies are expected to contract in 2020 due to the forced economic shutdown from the virus. Some higher end predictions for the U.S. economy this year include a contraction of 10-14% as reported by CNBC:

The U.S. economy could experience a double-digit percentage contraction in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC on Monday, suggesting a much steeper decline than most economists.

“I think we may be at minus 10% to minus 14% growth for the U.S.,” the Allianz chief economic advisor said on “Squawk Box.” “This is a big hit.” 

El-Erian said the distinct nature of this economic downturn — stemming from a health crisis — means traditional frameworks may not be applicable, acting as a further obstacle for a rebound. “The benefits you would expect normally, lower oil price means more dollars in consumers’ pockets, even that doesn’t work in this economy. So I’m a little bit more worried than what the consensus of economists out there is right now.

According to Bloomberg, Germany, the traditional powerhouse of the EU, is expected to see it’s worst post-WWII contraction this year at over 6%:

Germany expects the fallout from coronavirus to lead to the worst economic contraction since the country began its recovery in the aftermath of World War II.

Gross domestic product is forecast to shrink by 6.3% in 2020, a deeper plunge than even during the financial crisis a decade ago, Handelsblatt reported citing Economy Ministry projections due to be presented next week. The low point of the recession — the worst since at least 1950 — is expected in April, before a gradual stabilization, according to the daily newspaper.

The IMF is projecting zero growth for the Asian economy, which is unprecedented for the past 60 years:

For the first time in 60 years, Asia as a region will not register any economic growth this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to forecasts by the International Monetary Fund.

“This is a crisis like no other. It is worse than the Global Financial Crisis, and Asia is not immune,” Chang Yong Rhee, director of the Asia and Pacific Department at the IMF, wrote in a blog post published on Wednesday.

China just suffered its first quarterly GDP contraction in 28 years according to Business Insider:

China’s economy shrank in the first three months of 2020, its first contraction since 1992, as production and spending were frozen by the country’s coronavirus lockdown.

The National Bureau of Statistics reported on Friday [4/17] that gross domestic product fell by 6.8% during the quarter. China hasn’t reported a full year of contraction since the 1970s.

In short, no one is going to escape this economically unscathed. Not by a long shot.

The coming year will reveal who is in a better position to ride it out with relatively less damage in terms of external debt, financial reserves and general macroeconomic stability, productive capacity of essential goods, and a more robust safety net for its population.

Well, I’m afraid it’s time for another rant from me about how bad the mainstream corporate media is in its coverage of Russia. On April 16th, Politico ran an article entitled “As corona casualties mount, Putin keeps a low profile” in which it is suggested that Putin is not doing much amid the pandemic except for delegating authority. The article also calls into question when Putin’s video addresses to the country were recorded while trying to kick up some kind of controversy where there isn’t one.

Now Time magazine is jumping on the “where’s Putin?” bandwagon, suggesting that the Russian president is basically MIA. Apparently checking the Kremlin website (which is in English) where most of Putin’s typically workaholic schedule of meetings is posted is too hard for these paragons of journalism.

This reminds me of the time in March of 2015, when some “Russia watcher” in the corporate media decided to write an article stating that Putin was “missing” for about 10 days or so. This started a whole series of speculations about what had happened to Putin. Some suggested a palace coup, others that he was ill, and still others that he had fathered a love child with the gymnast that he was supposedly carrying on a secret affair with. As it turned out there was absolutely nothing to this idea that Putin had disappeared as the Kremlin website showed meetings that he’d conducted during the time in question, including – if memory serves me correctly – a photo or two. I guess maybe the Kremlin needed to send these “journalists” one of Putin’s fingers in an envelope as proof of life.

This is just another reminder that “journalists” in mainstream corporate media will think nothing of simply making junk up out of whole cloth about Russia. This begs the question: what are they making up about other countries or issues that they and their owners have an interest in making up?

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/the-doomsday-machine-still-exists-daniel-ellsberg/

The Win Without War coalition tweeted out some stats from an article published recently in the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire:

Also from the article:

Lawmakers have defended massive expenditure on nuclear weapons for decades, touting the safety and security they are supposed to bring to the American people. But in the midst of a global pandemic it becomes painfully clear how hollow are promises of security based on threats to use weapons of mass destruction. A virus doesn’t care how many nuclear weapons your country has. Every dime wasted on nuclear weapons could be better spent giving the American people a fighting chance against COVID-19.

This is not just a rhetorical argument. We did the math. Diverting U.S. spending on nuclear weapons for only one year would meet reported gaps in health care supplies and save lives…

…Doctors around the world see no place for nuclear weapons in this world – neither do most countries. In 2017, 122 countries adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which bans the use, production and possession of nuclear weapons. The treaty will officially take effect once an additional 14 countries ratify it. 

Well, color me shocked but the military-industrial complex is pushing a narrative that the way to address the pandemic is more arms sales. It seems ridiculous – I mean, are you going to drop a bomb on the virus? Maybe aim a rocket launcher at it? It may sound like something out of Cracked Magazine but we all know that the MIC lobbyists are all missing the shame gene as they got weapons manufacturers deemed essential businesses. From an article co-written by long-time expert on the MIC, William Hartung, at The Nation:

On one side, there’s a growing bipartisan consensus that the coronavirus has fundamentally changed the way we should think about national security. Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House, recently argued in The Atlantic that we have to rethink the orientation and priorities of our government, and “it makes no sense that the Pentagon budget is 13 times larger than the entire international-affairs budget, which funds the State Department, USAID, and global programs at other agencies.”

Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the bottom line is that “we’re going to see enormous downward pressure on defense spending because of other urgent American national needs like health care.”

…If history is any indication, the military-industrial complex isn’t going down without a fight, nor is the Pentagon budget. Through their droves of lobbyists, the revolving door between the Pentagon, contractors, and Congress, and the promise of providing jobs to every Congressional district, Pentagon contractors have kept the defense budget artificially inflated for years at the expense of funding for things like the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies that can help fight disease outbreaks. And, in this new coronavirus era, they’re using the same playbook once again….

….The arms lobby is well-positioned to exert influence over Pentagon spending going forward. Hundreds of former senior government officials—645 in 2018 alone, according to the Project on Government Oversight—have gone through the “revolving door’ to work for the defense industry as lobbyists, executives, consultants, or board members. This gives them an inside track on debates over budget priorities. And, the revolving door swings both ways. The last three secretaries of defense have been a former board member of General Dynamics, a former Boeing executive, and the former chief lobbyist for Raytheon, respectively. Most importantly of all, President Trump has been the greatest champion of the arms industry, touting (and exaggerating) the number of jobs created by arms sales to countries like Saudi Arabia.

Read the full article here.

Those of you who read my last book may recall coverage of a Cold War era group called The Committee on the Present Danger. It was a lobbying group started by a gaggle of neoconservatives during the Ford administration with the goal of spreading falsehoods about the Soviet Union involving violations of nuclear treaties that had been negotiated by the Nixon administration, led by Henry Kissinger. The neocons used defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to convince president Ford to take these baseless accusations seriously for a time.

Fast forward to 2019 and The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) gets revived like Night of the Living Dead. Long-time neocon, PNAC veteran and all-around peddler of nonsense Frank Gaffney set up shop last year with Sinophobe Steve Bannon. According to an article by Dave DeCamp at Antiwar.com:

Members of the CPD refer to China as the greatest “existential threat” to the US. “The United States is likely to face in the foreseeable future a determined and aggressive superpower adversary, prepared and willing to use force, as well as nonmilitary forms of warfare, to defeat this country decisively,” reads one of the CPD’s “guiding principles.” Another principle says, “There is no hope of coexistence with China as long as the Communist Party governs the country.” The Covid-19 pandemic is the perfect opportunity for this group to exploit the fears of Americans and push for a more hawkish policy towards China.

Steve Bannon played an influential role in President Trump’s campaign and the early days of the administration and pushed hard for tariffs on Chinese goods during his short-lived role as chief strategist. Bannon’s China ambitions do not stop with the trade war. “I think ultimate success is regime change [in China], and I realize in that regard I’m considered a radical,” Bannon told NPR in May 2019.

Bannon has a podcast titled “Bannon’s War Room.” Back in January, in the early days of the outbreak, Bannon changed the title to “War Room: Pandemic.” In the show, Bannon rails against China’s response to the virus. Bannon frequently refers to the pandemic as a “Biological Chernobyl” and has said there will be a “Nuremberg-type trial” in Wuhan. Last week, Bannon appeared on Fox Business News and said, “Blood is on the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”

As I explained in a recent post, there is nothing constructive to be gained from this kind of vilifying rhetoric which has historically set the stage for escalation and even war. After all, in order to destroy someone you first must demonize and dehumanize them and those doing the demonizing usually play fast and loose with the facts while exploiting genuine concerns.

The “casus belli” if you will this time is China intentionally being deceptive about the coronavirus. In recent weeks, the usual politicians who can be counted on to beat the war drums every time have been out in full force about the dastardly China and its alleged partner in crime the WHO, exaggerating China’s initial mistakes to excuse our own government’s foot-dragging and lack of preparedness.

It has just come out via an article in the Times of Israel that American intelligence had discovered – through monitoring of internal Chinese communications – that a pandemic threat was possible and had passed this information onto the IDF, NATO, and the White House back in NOVEMBER.

US intelligence agencies alerted Israel to the coronavirus outbreak in China already in November, Israeli television reported Thursday.

According to Channel 12 news, the US intelligence community became aware of the emerging disease in Wuhan in the second week of that month and drew up a classified document.

…US intelligence informed the Trump administration, “which did not deem it of interest,” but the report said the Americans also decided to update two allies with the classified document: NATO and Israel, specifically the IDF.

…Last week, ABC News reported that US intelligence officials were warning about the coronavirus in a report prepared in November by the American military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence.

It was unclear if that was the same report that was said to have been shared with Israel.

The ABC report was denied by the NCMI.

It does appear that China dropped the ball in the early days of the outbreak in that country, but the fact of the matter is that our executive branch of government did not take the potential of a pandemic – something other agencies had discussed and tried to better prepare for – seriously. Trying to point the finger solely at China for our shortcomings is not much better than the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party cooking up Russiagate to cover and distract for its own failures. And it’s about as reckless.

Furthermore, there is an active propaganda campaign at work in the State Department as publicly admitted by Daniel Blumenthal during recent testimony to Congress. Blumenthal co-wrote the propaganda blueprint with Nicholas Eberstadt. Both work at the neoconservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. Blumenthal was in charge of the Pentagon’s China operations during the Bush II administration. During his testimony Blumenthal stated his desire to go back to a Cold War style propaganda offensive, citing the NGO’s and media outlets that the national security state has at its disposal to manipulate the narrative. See video below.

Trump’s regime-change-the-WHO strategy follows a blueprint laid out by former Bush administration official @DAlexBlumenthal, who is calling for “political warfare” against China and deployment of State Department “information warriors”. Watch my latest: pic.twitter.com/wSF6U01zuZ

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) April 14, 2020

I’m not so naive as to believe that the Chinese government is filled with angels. I’m not against an intellectually honest critique of what China may have done wrong so the world can learn from it for the future. However, it’s hard to undertake such a critique when so many who are given a platform by our corporate media to discuss China are linked to the national security state or are dangerous ideologues like the neocons. Moreover, there’s an old saying about criticizing the splinter in your neighbor’s eye while ignoring the log in your own. Did the Chinese government force Trump to not take the crisis seriously once the information was finally out in January?

Remember, neocons are not your friends and just because they are not as visible as they were during the Bush II administration does not mean they have gone away. Neocons are always warmongers and anything coming from them must be viewed with suspicion. Their very ideology necessitates the U.S. having to have an enemy in order to have a pure and meaningful identity since they believe there must always be a battle between good and evil. They must have a bogeyman for Americans to fear so they can maintain power. The bogeyman may be Russia, terrorism, or China. Neocons are imperialists who believe that the United States must have “full spectrum dominance” over the world – because they inherently represent good. For a refresher on who the neocons are, what they think, and the roots of their warped philosophy, watch the 2004 BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTg4qnyUGxg

Russia’s COVID-19 cases continue to climb as there are now reported cases in all 85 regions of the country. There were just under 28,000 cases with 232 deaths as of yesterday. Here are some thoughts on how the virus is affecting Russia by Canadian Russia expert Patrick Armstrong:

This raises the question of why the death rate in Russia appears to be lower. One theory is that the widespread Soviet-era tuberculosis vaccinations (BCG vaccine) may have had an effect – just how or why is unclear, but there seems to be a statistical relationship. A test of its effectiveness is beginning in Australia. Over half the cases are in Moscow but every region except one reports cases [the last holdout of Altai reported its first case yesterday – NB]: most of Sunday’s infections in Shanghai came from a flight from Russia the day before. A pass system was introduced in Moscow yesterday but not very successfully (and many standing in line waiting to be checked). The new hospital in Moscow Region is up and running. A vaccine prototype is undergoing human testing (including by the developer). The Victory Parade is postponed. Meanwhile Russian military specialists are working away in Italy. (This, by the way, is why NBCW units were sent – not to spy, or for “gaining access to Italy’s health and military system, which is part of a larger NATO structure“, or to create “A hybrid lie. Or a hybrid truth” or be useless or whatever else NATO flacks imagine).

St. Petersburg is among the top three regions affected and is expecting a significant increase in cases in the coming week, according to the head of the official task force in the area who predicted a possible scenario of 6,000 severe cases. But he said the area’s medical facilities will be ready for it.

Meanwhile, another small exchange of prisoners took place yesterday between the Kiev government and the Donbas rebels in Ukraine. The OSCE reported the following:

TIRANA / VIENNA, 16 April 2020 – The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Prime Minister and Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of Albania, Edi Rama, and OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger welcomed today’s mutual release and exchange of detainees in eastern Ukraine.

“Today’s mutual release and exchange of detainees is an important step taken before the Orthodox Easter. The sides demonstrated political will and humanitarian action. This day has been long awaited by both the detainees and their relatives and friends,” Rama said.

Below is a link to Part 5 of the TASS news agency’s interview with Vladimir Putin on 20 topics. Unfortunately, I’m unable to embed the videos.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62867