Is Russia Ripe for a Coup?

Is a coup possible in Russia? Several months ago, most analysts would have dismissed the idea as absurd. Today, with the war in Ukraine going badly for Russia and President Vladimir Putin, the question is relevant. It might even be urgent. 

Indeed, that question has been supplemented by another: Can a leader who has created such an immense catastrophe for his regime and his country possibly survive?

Read more at: Is Russia Ripe for a Coup? - 19FortyFive

USA: Why the CDC’s guidelines on isolation, boosters, and masks are so confusing - by Dylan Scott

The fierce backlash to the CDC’s recent decision to shorten the recommended isolation period for people who test positive for Covid-19 was the latest in a series of communications blunders so severe that they have now become a meme.

Communication is an essential part of any public health response. But US health agencies have struggled with it since the very beginning of the pandemic, when government officials initially advised against wearing masks in early 2020 before reversing themselves to recommend nearly

It appeared the initial guidance may have been issued in order to preserve enough masks for health care workers. Government officials were warning at the time that hospitals’ supplies could be depleted at a critical moment if there was a run on masks. It was the first of the pandemic’s “noble lies,” The Week’s Ryan Cooper wrote in a blistering essay on the paternalistic treatment of the US public that has undermined the country’s Covid-19 response.

America’s public health institutions have failed to communicate effectively with the US public throughout the pandemic for two reasons: either they have been left trying to defend poor policies, or the messaging has taken the place of creating any kind of coherent policy at all

Read more at: Why the CDC’s guidelines on isolation, boosters, and masks are so confusing - Vox

Israel-Hamas conflict: Gaza Doctors Say Hospitals Overwhelmed With Casualties From Israeli Airstrikes

Palestinian public-health authorities say doctors are struggling to treat hundreds of people injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza as medical supplies run short in hospitals on the verge of collapse.

Public hospitals have canceled nonemergency surgeries and transferred Covid-19 patients to private clinics to free up resources to treat trauma cases. Even so, at Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, patients often endure long waits for treatment or must share scarce beds, doctors said.

Read more at: Gaza Doctors Say Hospitals Overwhelmed With Casualties From Israeli Airstrikes - WSJ

USA - Bicycle Casualties: Florida’s 2020 Bicycle Accident Statistics - by Barthelette Law

Florida did betterthan in 2019. Still the figures were too high. With 5082 accidents and 127 fatalities. There are non or very few specifically indicated bicycle paths.

Read more at: Florida’s 2020 Bicycle Accident Statistics - Barthelette Law

Palestine: Israel kills 10,000th Palestinian since 2000, US media largely ignore it

Israeli forces invading Palestinian Territory just killed a 15-year-old unarmed Palestinian boy with a bullet to the head. The 10,000th killed since 2000

Read more at :
https://israelpalestinenews.org/israel-kills-10000th-palestinian-since-2000-us-media-largely-ignore-it/

Turkey’s Coronavirus Cases Up 5%, Death Toll Rises to 2,259

Read more at:
Turkey’s Coronavirus Cases Up 5%, Death Toll Rises to 2,259 - Bloomberg

EU - Spain sees sharp drop in daily Covid-19 death toll

Spain registered a sharp drop in its daily death toll from the new coronavirus on Sunday, with the number falling to 410 from 565.

Read more at:
https://www.france24.com/en/20200419-spain-sees-sharp-drop-in-daily-covid-19-death-toll

HUNGARY : Presenly 7 dead recovered, while 21 still are missing after tour boat sinks in Hungary

7 dead, 21 missing after tour boat sinks in Hungary

Read more at; 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/tour-boat-sinks-hungary-1.5155324

Africa: Cyclone: disaster strikes Mozambique and Zimbabwe

Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47624156

ITALY: Autostrade pledges to rebuild collapsed Italy bridge - by Paola Balsomini and Giulia Segreti

Italian toll-road operator Autostrade per l’Italia, which managed a bridge that collapsed in Genoa this week, pledged on Saturday to rebuild the viaduct.

Autostrade Chief Executive Giovanni Castellucci, holding the firm’s first news conference since the disaster, said a new bridge would be built using funds from the roughly 500 million euros ($572 million) it had set aside for disaster recovery.

Chairman Fabio Cerchiai also told the news conference that Castellucci would remain in his position. A government minister had called on Autostrade top managers to quit over the collapse.

Read more: Autostrade pledges to rebuild collapsed Italy bridge | Reuters

Turkey: a major Earthquake in the Istanbul area could kill at least 30.000 people say experts

Read more:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/expected-istanbul-earthquake-could-kill-up-to-30-000-people-expert-warns-135865

Mexico: 7.1 magnitude quake kills 55 as buildings collapse in Mexico - by M. Stevenson,C.Christopher, S. Sherman, and P.Orsi

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake rocked central Mexico on Tuesday, killing at least 55 people as buildings collapsed in plumes of dust and thousands fled into the streets in panic.

The quake came less than two weeks after another quake left 90 dead in the country's south, and it occurred as Mexicans commemorated the anniversary of a 1985 quake that killed thousands.

Mexican media broadcast images of multiple downed buildings in densely populated parts of Mexico City and nearby Cuernavaca.

A column of smoke rose from a structure in one central neighborhood in the capital. Morelos Gov. Graco Ramirez reported on Twitter that at least 42 people had died in his state south of Mexico City.
7
Read more: .1 magnitude quake kills 55 as buildings collapse in Mexico

Saudi Arabia - US relations: 110 Billion dollar arms deal

The US Secretary of State proudly stated the huge multi-billion dollar arms sales agreements will help Saudi Arabia deal with 'malign Iranian influence and create thousands of new jobs in the US. 

Unfortunately, it will also mean hundreds of thousands of  people killed by these weapons.

The question, obviously, which should have been asked in this case: "wouldn't a ban on all weapons sales to the war  ravaged Middle East have been  a far better way to go?: "Maybe less profitable for the US Weapons Industry, but certainly a more moral way of action".

Specially for a country which prides itself to be a "champion for peac".  

EU-Digest

Middle East: Operation in Mosul to lead to Iran-Saudis conflict

Operation on liberation of the Iraqi city of Mosul from the IS fighters may turn into a catastrophe in the Middle East.

'The attack on Mosul is turning out to be a total disaster. We gave them months of notice. U.S. is looking so dumb. Vote Trump and win again!' the US presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed. What did he mean?

What is going on around Mosul? Isn't the American operation there not only a fight against ISIS, but also a plan to deploy more terrorists in Syria given latest reports that the number of refugees in Syria has drastically increased?

You can say that again. The main thing in arrangement of this attack is demonstration of the US principal intentions and those of the coalition troops to combat international terrorism.

The area which is under control of the Bashar al-Assad's army has increased four times at least. In this regard, the Americans have nothing to boast of.

Thus, during the last months of Obama's being in power they decided to organize such a political play on the US adherence to fight against terrorism.

What may come out? The worst I'm expecting is a new clash between the Sunni and Shia. That is the worst problem.

In case massacre is started, and it can't be excluded, there will be hell to pay. Because both Iran and Saudi Arabia will not stand aside. It's a pity that the US practical Oriental studies have a few people who think about consequences of interreligious clashes.

Read more: Operation in Mosul to lead to Iran-Saudis conflict - PravdaReport

Syria: There is no method to this tragic madness as the global political establishment "implodes"- by RM

Aleppo, Syria

On 23 April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 470,000 that had died in the war.  

These cold numbers are the first thing that hit you about Syria. Figures telling of a human catastrophe on a scale hard to compute. Suffering on a level to which any rational response seems inadequate – 470,000 people killed, according to the latest estimates; 11.5 percent of the population injured; 45 percent of a country of 22 million made homeless; 4 million refugees and 6.36 million internally displaced persons. Life expectancy is down from 70.5 years in 2010 to an estimated 55.4 years in 2015. Welcome to the Syrian civil war. 

The Syrian conflict has become worse than a nightmare, because after a nightmare you usually wake-up to some kind of normality, instead this is an ongoing nightmare, from which you never wake up.

In the meantime, the global political establishment, our political leaders, representing different so-called "power blocks", blame everything and everyone, except themselves, as they fuel this war with weapons from their weapons industry and that from around the world. 

Worse still, is that these weapons purchases are financed with money from mostly ignorant and misinformed taxpayers. 

Taxpayers usually are more interested in using an App on their smartphone, or in finding out on social media, like Facebook,what a friend is doing, or even why his or her dog prefers a certain type of dog food above another. Being concerned about whatever does not directly affect him or her is the last thing on the agenda. 

In Europe the war in Syria hardly ever is looked at as a human tragedy, or has anyone ask who the real culprits are of this tragedy, but sadly equated to what kind of impact the large number of refugees will have on European living standards.

Former US President Dwight Eisenhouwer once said about the weapons industry: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron ".   

Yes indeed, arms dealers and their government cabinet-level cronies always profit from a war.

On top of that there is now also a perverse logic that pervades restrictions. Military aid and arms sales by the US, but certainly not restricted to them alone, are now approved to formerly off-limits regimes.

Of the 67 countries which have received or are set to receive U.S. military aid, 32 were  previously identified by the State Department as having "poor" or worse human rights records.

Obviously, the central question is: does this make the world a safer place for anyone but arms manufacturers and the politicians who love and have them funded ?

Every academic in the world will tell you, Syria today is the most awful humanitarian catastrophic drama to hit the Levant since World War II. Do politicians realize that and make an effort to remedy it? No, not at all.

Whole families with small children ‒ some people terribly wounded by the bombings ‒ living in  olive groves under the elements, with neither shelter nor provisions.

And the drama continues. Russia used its Security Council veto at the UN to prevent any concerted action against the regime. Moscow also keeps the weapons and bombs coming.

Turkey, a NATO member, whose leader has his own aspirations for the area, supports whoever can help him diminish the Kurdish influence in the area, even ISIS. 

The Iranians use their expertise in crowd control to help Assad control the demonstrations against his regime, and the Americans are funding and supplying a Kurdish proxy army and different rebel groups to fight Assad forces, in addition to also bombing so-called "enemy targets".

Our global political establishment has had chance after chance to remedy the situation, but greed and hypocricy within a defunct political world order has made that impossible.

Syria and the surrounding region is now the epicenter of what is still to come - it is the beginning of cataclysmic developments around the world that will clarify to the world at large, "who was", "who is", and "who will come".

© this report can be copied only if its source is mentioned

EU-Digest 

Turkey coup: Chaos continues in Turkey Live updates - by Lauren Said-Moorhouse

After a night of explosions, gunfire and tanks rolling along the streets, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Turkey Saturday that an attempted military coup was over and the government was in charge.

However, the sounds of fighting were still being reported in Ankara and Istanbul after the chaotic attempt by members of the military to wrest control from Erdogan.

At least 90 people died and 1,000 people were injured and hundreds arrested across the country.

Read more: Turkey coup: Live updates - CNN.com

Syria: Does the US President have the legal right to involve US military on the ground in Syria?

Uncle Sam: "see you guys in my next military involvement"

Critics in the Senate charge that, of all the foreign forces operating in Syria today, the Russians are on the most solid legal ground. Damascus has invited Russia to make its deployment, whereas neither Congress nor Syria has ever explicitly authorized any American military involvement there.

The US Founding  Fathers pervasive fear of strong Executive suggestswhy the explicitly noted in the US Constitution that any power to initiate military strikes should remain with Congress.

There is consequently no sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion that the US President may proactively attack or send troops to another nation under whatever "window - dressing" defintion he might give, without the approval of Congress.

Looking back to 2007 the then-candidate Barack Obama told The Boston Globe: :

"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent.

History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action".

 President Obama’s change of heart shows that the adage, “Where you stand depends on where you sit,” proves true in politics as in the rest of life. Those sitting in Congress have a very different view of their prerogatives than does a person sitting in the Oval Office. It is not unlike how a Senator will oppose the use of the filibuster when in the majority, but support it when in the minority.

If the section of the Constitution treating the President as Commander in Chief does not plainly permit him to launch an unprovoked attack without congressional approval, one who would argue thus must infer it from somewhere else in the document. However, the overall sense of the document gives a certain primacy to Congress in setting national policy, suggests that it is fitting that the legislature must approve an unprovoked attack.  For instance, the President is forbidden to take actions without Congress that are far less momentous.

The President is Commander in Chief, but Congress is granted the power to “make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces” (Article I, Section 8). Presumably, matters concerning military regulation are generally less important than the decision to launch an unprovoked attack, so such decisions should probably best be left to the Legislature as well. Likewise, the President is considered the chief diplomat, but any treaty he negotiates must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate. Similarly, he ordinarily requires the consent of the Senate to fill his cabinet—the only exceptions being when the Upper Chamber is unable to fulfill its duties.

Yet, normally, military action would be far more consequential to the welfare of the nation in general, and certainly to the soldiers in particular, than any treaty or cabinet appointment. It stretches credulity to suggest that the Framers of the US Constitution would approve of the President initiating, without congressional support, an action more consequential than that of a treaty or cabinet appointment.

Once again the US is wandering into the quicksand of a military involvement in a foreign country.

Looking at the record of US  military involvements around the world since the second world war one can only define these involvements as disastrous.

EU-Digest  

Syria: More than 55,000 killed in Syria in 2015: monitor

More than 55,000 people were killed in Syria in 2015, the country's fifth year of war, including over 2,500 children, a monitor said Thursday.

The total number of dead since the beginning of the conflict had reached more than 260,000, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, though the number of those killed in 2015 was lower than the 76,021 people who died in 2014.

In 2015 alone, the monitor documented the deaths of 55,219 people, including 13,249 civilians. Among them were 2,574 children, it said.

As in previous years the dead were mostly combatants, including 7,798 rebels and more than 16,000 jihadists from the Islamic State group, Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and associated organisations.

The group also documented the deaths of 17,686 regime forces, among them over 8,800 army troops, more than 7,000 Syrian pro-regime militiamen, and 378 members of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement.

A total of 1,214 foreign fighters from other countries, including Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, died fighting for the regime, the Observatory said.

Read more: Flash - More than 55,000 killed in Syria in 2015: monitor - France 24

EU sends €3m emergency aid package to Hait i -100.000 feared dead

The European Union is sending an initial emergency aid package to Haiti worth €3m( US 4.5m) following talks in Brussels led by new foreign affairs supremo Cathy Ashton.

After convening an “emergency co-ordination meeting” with the Commissioners responsible for humanitarian aid and civil protection, Baroness Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and a commission vice-president, said: “We are troubled by the reports on the devastating earthquake in Haiti. “We are still gathering information to understand the impact on the population. My colleagues in the commission and I offer our full assistance to Haiti and will mobilise all available instruments to support the population of Haiti in this difficult time. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families.”

Working with the United Nations, EU priority will be given to contributing to search and rescue teams, water purification and the provision of field hospitals.

Note EU-Digest: Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN the final death toll from the 7.0 quake could be "well over 100,000," as an international aid effort geared up in a race against time to pull survivors from the ruins. The temblor toppled the cupola on the gleaming white presidential palace, a major hotel where 200 tourists were missing and the headquarters of the UN mission in Haiti where up to 250 personnel were unaccounted for. Five people were confirmed dead in the UN headquarters, and the head of the peacekeeping mission, Tunisian Hedi Annabi, was among the missing.

For the complete report: Haiti rocked by huge earthquake | IOL

NYT: Italy Looks at Afghan Pullout After Deadly Blast - by Abdul Washeed

For the complete report from the NYTimes.com click on this link

Italy Looks at Afghan Pullout After Deadly Blast - by Abdul Washeed

A powerful suicide bomb that killed six Italian soldiers here on Thursday prompted Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy to declare that his nation had begun planning to “bring our young men home as soon as possible.”In Brussels, Mr. Berlusconi, a close American ally but in some political trouble at home, was careful to say that Italy would not unilaterally withdraw its 3,100 troops from Afghanistan, though he said he wanted the withdrawal to happen “as quickly as possible.” But it seemed the strongest expression yet from a European leader of the rising doubts about the Afghanistan mission among America’s allies.