The US and China's Dangerous Race to a Vaccine

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Issue 1799- May - 08/05/2020

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Editorial

A Weekly Political News Magazine

www.majalla.com/eng In recent years, the relationship between the US and China grew from an international rivalry to a hostile enmity. As China has been rising on the global stage, the US has been growing weary that its position as the global leader would come under threat from Beijing.

Nevertheless, the US has tried to keep a somewhat amiable relationship with China that is until 2016 when Trump was elected president. The Trump administration’s vow to protect American businesses meant that spats with China were inevitable. As if things couldn’t get more intense, the Coronavirus has placed a bigger wedge between both superpowers, which are currently playing a blame game on the world’s current predicament. This week’s cover story by Yasmine El-Geressi focuses on the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, as Trump claims that the virus might have been manufactured in a Wuhan lab, something China denies.

Moreover, both sides are racing to manufacture a Coronavirus vaccine, in hopes that an inoculation would tip this brewing Cold War in their respective favours.

Joseph Braude writes on how Iran’s decision to withdraw forces from Syria, as it is still suffering the financial burdens of international sanctions. This was welcome news from Israel, as it has been suffering from missile hits coming from Syrian based Iranian forces.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a rare agreement between Democrats and Republicans occurred as 382 members of the Democratic controlled House of Representatives signed a letter urging Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to extend the arms embargo on Syria.

The world was a much more different place before the Coronavirus pandemic. While governments are trying to ease restrictions and introduce its citizens to the “new” normal, there are many things that will never be the same. Elie Fawaz writes on these developments as he notes how the pandemic will usher in a new Cold War era, which will this time pin the United States against China.

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Editor-in-Chief

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

16 Latin America’s Prison Gangs Draw

Strength From the Pandemic

Issue 1799- May - 08/05/2020

is Yielding Ground to the 14 Iran Combined Pressure of its Adversaries

Health Calls for Solidarity, 24 Public Not Warfare

Coronavirus Won’t Usher in an 28 The American Welfare State

20 Finding a Vaccine Is Only the First Step

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Quick-start guide to an anti inflammation diet 3

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Production Thrives In 40 Documentary Spite of Coronavirus Restrictions

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A herder drives camels on Badain in Alxa 2020 ,1 Jaran Desert on May League, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. Getty

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Resident Johanna Pfeiffer96, looks on from her room as singer Alf Weiss performs live at the Hermann Radtke Haus nursing home during the novel coronavirus crisis on April 29, 2020 in Berlin, Germany. Getty

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Iran’s Rouhani Pledges ‘Crushing Response’ if U.S. Extends Arms Embargo Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened a “crushing response” on Wednesday if the United States goes ahead with plans to extend an embargo on Iranian trade of conventional arms, which the United Nations is set to lift later this year. Under Iran’s deal with world powers to accept limits to its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of sanctions, a U.N. weapons embargo is due to expire in October. The United States, which exited the deal in 2018, says it wants to extend the embargo. In a speech on Wednesday, Rouhani repeated Iran’s longstanding criticism of Washington’s decision to exit the nuclear deal, which he called a “stu-

Lebanon Summons German Ambassador Over Hezbollah Ban

heavily armed Hezbollah, which he said had no official presence in Europe.

Lebanon’s foreign minister summoned the German ambassador on Tuesday to explain Berlin’s decision last week to ban the Shi’ite Hezbollah movement on its soil. Germany also classified the Iranian-backed movement as terrorist, a step which Hezbollah’s foe Israel has long urged along with the United States.

Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti affirmed that “Hezbollah is a main political component in Lebanon which represents a wide section of the people and part of parliament,” his office said on Tuesday. Hitti called in Germany’s ambassador after the leader of Hezbollah, a military and political movement that is a major backer of the government, accused Germany on Monday of bowing to U.S. pressure. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah denounced police raids on mosque groups in Germany suspected of being close to the

Syrian Army Says Israeli Jets Hit Military Outposts in Aleppo Province Syrian air defences thwarted an Israeli missile attack on a research centre and a military base in the northern province of Aleppo state media said on Monday in the fifth such strikes in two weeks on suspected Iranian targets. The Syrian army said in a statement that Israel hit military barracks in al Safirah in the eastern Aleppo countryside. Earlier, state television had said a research centre was targeted. The army said it was now assessing the damage caused by the strikes. A regional intelligence source said Israel was stepping up raids in Syria at a time when world attention and the region, including Syria, were distracted by the coronavirus pandemic.

pid mistake”. “If America wants to return to the deal, it should lift all the sanctions on Tehran and compensate for the reimposition of sanctions,” said Rouhani, a pragmatist whose rhetoric towards the United States is frequently more measured than that of some officials. “Iran will give a crushing response if the arms embargo on Tehran is extended,” Rouhani added.

Iraq Lawmakers Approve Government of Prime Minister-designate Kadhimi Iraqi lawmakers approved a new government on Wednesday after six months without one as parties squabbled until the last minute over Cabinet seats in backroom deals.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Iraq’s intelligence chief and a former journalist, will head the new government. He will begin his term without a full Cabinet, however, after several ministerial candidates were rejected. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo welcomed the new government in a call with Kadhimi, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. It also said Washington would renew for

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120 days a waiver allowing Iraq to import electricity from Iran “to help provide the right conditions for success” of the new government.

Israeli Parliament Nominates Netanyahu to Form New Government The Israeli parliament formally nominated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday to form a new coalition government despite his upcoming trial on corruption charges, bringing him closer to a fifth term after more than a year of political stalemate. Seventy-two of the Knesset’s 120 lawmakers signed on to Netanyahu’s candidacy after parliament passed legislation approving details of a power-sharing deal between the premier’s right-wing Likud party and centrist rival Benny Gantz’s Blue and White, a joint statement from the factions said.

Netanyahu’s nomination was submitted to President Reuven Rivlin.

Netanyahu and Gantz, who were deadlocked in three inconclusive elections since April 2019, plan to swear in their new coalition in on Wednesday.

Their deal would see Netanyahu serving as prime minister for 18 months after which Gantz would take over.

sador to the European Union. Governments aim to continue raising funds for several weeks or months, building on efforts by the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and wealthy individuals, and turn the page on the fractious and haphazard initial response around the world.

World Leaders Pledge $8 Billion to Fight COVID-19 but U.S. Steers Clear World leaders and organisations pledged $8 billion to research, manufacture and distribute a possible vaccine and treatments for COVID-19 on Monday, but the United States refused to contribute to the global effort. Organisers included the European Union and non-EU countries Britain, Norway and Saudi Arabia. Leaders from Japan, Canada, South Africa and dozens of other countries joined the virtual event, while China, where the virus is believed to have originated, was only represented by its ambas-

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US Blames China for Hundreds of Thousands of Virus Deaths U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday renewed his aggressive criticism of China, blaming it for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people from the coronavirus and demanding again that it share information about the outbreak. COVID-19 has killed more than 255,000 people worldwide, including more than 70,000 in the United States, making it the worstaffected country according to official statistics.

The virus first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December. Most experts believe it originated in a market there selling wildlife and jumped from animals to people, although Pompeo has said there is significant evidence it came from a laboratory. At a White House event, Trump, who is seeking reelection in November, called it the worst “attack” the country had ever experienced, and blamed China for not stopping it.

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The US and China’s Dangerous Race for a Vaccine Rivalry and Lack of Cooperation Could Threaten the Quest Towards a Universally Available Coronavirus Cure

by Yasmine El-Geressi A dramatic deterioration in US-China relations in recent weeks has further destabilised a critical relationship between Washington and Beijing that was already under serious strain before the novel coronavirus appeared in January. The fraying of trust on trade, technology, and military deployments has played out as Beijing has expanded its global footprint, raising questions about its ambitions to alter the US-centered

international order. Covid-19 has exasperated those cracks.

As the US and China lock horns in an increasingly ugly and enduring blame game over the coronavirus pandemic, there is fear that a new “Cold War” with far-reaching consequences is brewing between the two superpowers at a moment of global crisis. These concerns are only deepening as both countries race to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus. The need is urgent. The virus has sickened more than 3.3 million and killed more than 250,000 worldwide, and the true count

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is probably much higher. A vaccine is viewed as the key to ending the pandemic, and developing one first would be a huge economic, public-health and geopolitical victory.

THE BLAME GAME

President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Osaka last )June. (Getty

President Donald Trump has accused China of a coronavirus cover-up, suggested the government may have allowed the disease to spread, threatened to extract a “substantial” price from Beijing for the pandemic and has claimed that the virus originated in a Chinese virology lab based on evidence he had seen, but declined to give details. “My opinion is they made a mistake. They tried to cover it. They tried to put it out, just like a fire,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday.

Although the Wuhan Institute of Virology was studying batborne coronaviruses like the one that causes Covid-19 at the time of the first known outbreak nearby, there has so far been no evidence showing it possessed the previously unknown strain.

Beijing has sought to push back against the U.S.’s virus allegations without prompting a confrontation with President Donald Trump. Chinese state media lashed out at Secretary of State Michael Pompeo calling him “evil” and a liar. The official Xinhua News Agency said the top U.S. diplomat was speaking “nonsense,” while a newscaster from China Central Television read a commentary accusing him of “spitting poison.” Xinhua also published a short animation this week titled “Once Upon a Virus” mocking the U.S. response to the new coronavirus using Lego-like figures to represent the two countries. China also tried to provoke Trump when a foreign ministry spokesman circulated unsubstantiated allegations last month that U.S. Army athletes introduced the virus to Wuhan. Trump blamed that move for his decision to start referring to the pathogen as the “Chinese virus,” a term he has refrained from using in recent weeks. The closest Beijing has come to provoking trump without criticising him by name in recent days was a foreign ministry statement Thursday attacking “certain U.S. politicians.” Such officials “have attempted to shift their own responsibility for their poor handling of the epidemic to others,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters.

SURVIVAL STRATEGY

As China faces criticism at home and abroad over its handling of the virus, especially during the initial outbreak - it is accused of silencing whistle-blowers and delaying in informing the public about the severity of the crisis - it’s hoping that being the first to offer the world a vaccine would provide vital leverage and help ease tensions with the international community, while also helping to deflect international criticism.

Meanwhile, as President Donald Trump seeks to deflect from his own failures in regard to the pandemic, he’s granted carte blanche to his administration’s coronavirus-vaccine project: “Operation Warp Speed.” In a sign of the country’s desperation, the Trump Administration had also reportedly already

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A vaccine is viewed as the key to ending the pandemic, and developing one first would be a huge economic, publichealth and geopolitical victory. tried to get a head start by trying to convince a German biopharmaceutical firm working on a COVID-19 vaccine to move its research operations to the U.S. That raised alarm bells among German officials worrying Trump was trying to make a deal that would get Americans access to the vaccine first. Trump aides and CureVac officials adamantly denied the mid-March report, but German officials confirmed and condemned it.

But Beijing’s drive to win the race for a vaccine seems to be working. Four Chinese companies have begun testing their vaccine candidates on humans, more than the United States and Britain combined. Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech has already announced that its candidate—made with chemically inactivated virus—can protect monkeys from infection without noticeable side effects. After the early human trials are complete, the company says it will request emergency authorisation from China’s FDA to give the vaccine to those at high risk of becoming infected, such as customs agents and police officers.

The head of China’s CDC has said a vaccine could be ready for emergency use by September, while the US is planning an intense push to create a vaccine and have enough doses available to cover most Americans by the end of this year, the president confirmed.

There are growing concerns among current and former US national security officials and top global health experts that if China develops a vaccine for the novel coronavirus first, that it could put the US at a major disadvantage a time of historic tensions between Washington and Beijing. “Often, Chinese offers of aid come with strings attached,” Matt Kroenig, a former Pentagon and CIA official who recently released a book examining American power competition with China, told Politico. “So, they could use it as a way to try to increase their influence and further push out the US.” A national security official who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about government affairs also confirmed to told Politico that Beijing “does have a head start” in the global effort to develop a vaccine, while another official said China knows “whoever finds a workable vaccine right now basically rules the world.” These sentiments were echoed by Michael Callahan, an infectious disease doctor and special adviser to the US assistant secretary for preparedness and response, who told Wired that there is no doubt that China’s three- to six-month lead will result in a reshuffling of the

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global order. “That is terrifying our administration now,” he says.

But China’s companies must also win over the trust of the public, Kroenig noted, given the recent episodes of China delivering faulty medical equipment to Europe. “One of the great advantages the U.S. has in this competition is that we have these 30 formal treaty allies with leading scientific research communities,” Kroenig said. “So we could and should be doing a much better job of galvanizing allies and bringing them together” on the vaccine issue.

China has publicly framed the race as a contest between the two countries. A headline in the state-run Xinhua news broadcast that China “is the first to enter Phase 2 clinical trials.” A video published on the state-run CCTV news website in April read “China vs. U.S. - Whose Vaccine With More Hope?” Beijing has also been accused by the US government of attempting to hack and steal research on the coronavirus to bolster its vaccine development. Meanwhile, there has been a spike in hacking attempts on US hospitals and labs, which intelligence and national officials attributed primarily to China.

AN UNHEALTHY COMPETITON

The rivalry between the two countries and lack of interest in cooperation has prompted fears that they could threaten the quest towards a universally available vaccine after they both snubbed a virtual summit of world leaders on coronavirus earlier this week. Leaders from Britain, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia and European countries joined the meeting that pledged $8 billion towards developing a vaccine that could be manufactured and distributed to the world, irrespective of which countries’ scientists get there first. The US skipped the summit and China made the last-minute choice to send its ambassador to the EU. Both countries also didn’t join in when global leaders gath-

There are growing concerns among current and former US national security officials that if China develops a vaccine for the novel coronavirus first, that it could put the US at a major disadvantage a time of historic tensions between Washington and Beijing.

ered virtually last month at the behest of the World Health Organization to commit coordinate research and development for vaccines, tests and coronavirus cures in an internationally equitable way. The absence of the two pharma powerhouses disappointed European leaders, who are pushing for a cooperative approach. French President Emmanuel Macron said he hoped they could “reconcile this initiative with China and the U.S.” Trump has also dealt a blow to the WHO by recently pausing America’s substantial funding for it and his administration has accused the UN body of a few things: of being too close to China; being complicit in a Chinese cover-up of the initial information on the virus, and in so doing, delaying the world’s ability to respond; and it’s of making the wrong call on travel bans. The WHO’s supporters say Trump is trying to deflect attention from his own downplaying of the crisis early on.

The fear is the race between the US and China to develop and distribute the vaccine to evolve into a global contest which will drag out the health crisis by letting the virus spread for longer than it otherwise might if poorer countries, who are least equipped to fight it are left behind. Another risk is that if one country develops a vaccine first, it could find ways to limit access to their adversaries.

However, the problem spreads beyond the America-first/ China-first vaccine war. Nationalism thrives in times of crisis and many of countries have imposed travel restrictions, unilaterally shut borders and hoarded critical medical gear and disrupted food supply chains. Global health leaders are demanding a strengthening of international cooperation

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An engineer looks at monkey kidney cells as he make a test on an experimental vaccine for the COVID19coronavirus inside the Cells Culture Room laboratory at the Sinovac Biotech facilities in Beijing on April 2020 ,29. (Getty)

The fear is the race between the US and China to develop and distribute the vaccine to evolve into a global contest which will drag out the health crisis by letting the virus spread for longer than it otherwise might if poorer countries.

and multilateral institutions to try and to avoid a repeat of such insular attitude and nationalist tactics when it comes to vaccines and other types of medicines that could combat Covid-19. They warn that leaving the virus to fester in one

A test tube labelled with the coronavirus is placed on U.S. dollar banknotes, in this illustration ,1 taken on March )Reuters( .2020

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country could mean it will reemerge elsewhere. “The worst situation would be, if when these tools are available, they go to the highest bidder — that would be terrible for the world,” said Melinda Gates, who, along with her tech entrepreneur husband, Bill, leads a powerful foundation that has devoted billions to health research. “Covid-19 anywhere is Covid-19 everywhere. And that’s why it’s got to take global cooperation.”

But as the global health infrastructure isn’t entirely the control of any one government, it could be difficult to ensure global cooperation. And even though the WHO has announced a global initiative for the equitable distribution of vaccines and other medicines, few believe it will hold any weight—even if all countries had signed on.

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Iran is Yielding Ground to the Combined Pressure of its Adversaries Israeli air strikes, Coronavirus, Sanctions are Weighing Heavily on Tehran 14

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by Joseph Braude The past week has been a difficult one for Tehran and its regional ambitions. Israeli air strikes, economic collapse stemming from the coronavirus, and an ever-tightening American campaign of sanctions have exacted a heavy toll. Tehran has begun to show signs of yielding ground to the combined pressure of its adversaries on both the Syrian and international fronts.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a press conference in New York on September ,26 2018,on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

(Getty)

If Tehran expected a drawdown to lead to a slackening of the Israeli defense posture, there has been little evidence of it

an overwhelming majority, 382 of the 435 members of the Democratic-controlled House IRANIAN DRAWDOWN IN SYRIA AMID of Representatives have signed a letter urging ONGOING ISRAELI PRESSURE Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to extend the arms embargo on Iran, currently due to On May 5, Israeli defense officials reported that expire in October, in addition to renewing Iranian forces have begun to withdraw from UN travel restrictions on Iranians involved Syria and close some of their military bases in in the arms trade. “The UN arms embargo that country. This follows a spate of incidents is set to expire in October, and we are in which unconfirmed but probable Israeli concerned that the ban’s expiration will lead airstrikes have targeted Iranian-linked militias to more states buying and selling weapons throughout Syrian territory. According to both to and from Iran,” according to the letter, Syrian government and opposition sources, two co-drafted by Democratic Representative additional such attacks took place late Monday Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign night, killing 14 Iranian and Iraqi nationals linked Affairs Committee, and Republican Mike to Iranian-led militias, and severely wounding a McCaul. number of others.

Secretary Pompeo wasted little time in signaling If Tehran expected a drawdown to lead to a his sympathy and support for the bipartisan slackening of the Israeli defense posture, there initiative, saying on May 6 that “we’re going has been little evidence of it. Commenting on the to use every tool we can in our diplomatic purported Iranian withdrawal, Defense Minister capability to ensure that that prohibition on arms Naftali Bennett announced that Israel would sales to Iran doesn’t expire [in] just a handful continue to pursue Iranian forces stationed in of months.” Pompeo also noted that the U.S. is Syria, saying “They’re trying to immiserate and working closely with “our British, our French threaten our population centers and we won’t partners, our friends saying, ‘You all know this put up with it. They need to get out of Syria.” doesn’t make sense, either.’ I think they agree Bennett added, “We are more determined than with us on that.” the Iranians, because our lives and our children’s lives are at stake... For them, this is just an For their part, Iranian officials offered little adventure a thousand kilometers away from noticeable pushback. Speaking in Tehran on home.”

Wednesday, President Rouhani merely noted, “If the arms embargo is extended in any form BIPARTISAN MOVE TO EXTEND and through any mechanism, our response will ARMS EMBARGO MEETS LITTLE be what I have stated in the last paragraph of my RESISTANCE letter to the heads of JCPOA member states.”

That letter promised no concrete retaliation, Meanwhile in Washington, Democrats and simply claiming that “if [the U.S. and its allies] Republicans embarked on a rare display of make a mistake, it will mark a historic defeat for bipartisanship in the halls of Congress. By them.”

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Latin America’s Prison Gangs Draw Strength From the Pandemic Where Governments Step Away, Outlaws Step Up

by Steven Dudley

to the pandemic. A few hours after the clashes began at the Mongaguá medium-security prison, inmates could be seen On March 16, riots broke out in four prisons in the state jogging out of the premises. Videos of the escape, posted of São Paulo in Brazil. The novel coronavirus was at the on Twitter, looked as apocalyptic as a high-budget Netflix heart of these disturbances: the prisoners rebelled at the an- series. nouncement that their temporary release was canceled due “Come back on Monday!” a desperate voice cries out.

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As many as 1,375 inmates escaped before the upheaval subsided. But the anxieties provoked by the virus continued to spread throughout the region’s prisons. Two days later, on March 18, 80 prisoners escaped from a penitentiary in Santa Bárbara, Venezuela. In the subsequent fighting between the prisoners and the authorities, at least 12 other inmates died. An Agence France–Presse report linked the tumult to new restrictions on prison life imposed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Similarly, on March 21, inmates from La Modelo prison in Bogotá, Colombia, rebelled. The ensuing battle with the authorities left 23 prisoners dead and another 83 injured. The prison director claimed the inmates were trying to escape; the prisoners said they were being treated “like dogs” even as the virus spread.

The unrest only continues to mount. Throughout the month of April and the first days of May, there were coronavirusrelated riots and jailbreak attempts in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela.

Inmates are seen on the top of a tower of the Puraquequara prison during a rebellion to demand better conditions inside the prison during which seven prison guards were taken hostage, in Manaus, Amazona State, Brazil, on May ,2 2020. (Getty)

Latin America faces a potential crisis in its prisons as the pandemic descends. Correctional facilities in the region are overflowing. In the last 20 years, according to the World Prison Brief, Brazil’s prison population has multiplied from 233,000 to 773,000, stretching the country’s carceral system more than 68 percent beyond its intended capacity. In Colombia, over the same time period, the prison population has risen from 52,000 to 122,000—51 percent more people than the country’s prison infrastructure was designed to handle. And in Venezuela, the number of prisoners has gone from 14,000 to 57,000, an excess population of 54 percent.

Because governments have long neglected health care and basic sanitary conditions in prisons in many Latin American countries, the coronavirus pandemic gives criminal organizations even more leverage than they already had. clothing, toothbrushes, and blankets, as well as physical protection from the worst that prison has to offer. Indeed, some of the region’s strongest criminal organizations have acquired large memberships precisely because they fill these gaps.

The First Capital Command (PCC), Brazil’s largest and most powerful prison gang, is a case in point. In 1992, a riot erupted in the Carandiru penitentiary in the city of São Paulo. With 8,000 inmates, the prison was Latin America’s largest. To quell the fighting among the prisoners, the government sent in the military police, who killed 111 inmates.

The PCC was created in 1993 in response to that incident and grew steadily afterward, because it satisfied prisoners’ basic needs and established order where the state could not.

According to Karina Biondi’s book Sharing This Walk, rape in PCC-controlled prisons dropped to near zero percent. “Many prisoners today see the creation of the PCC To prevent the spread of the coronavirus throughout the re- as having extinguished the climate of constant war, of ‘all gion’s prisons, several Latin American justice departments against all,’” Biondi writes. have announced their intentions to take low-level offenders out of minimum-security penitentiaries and place them The organization also provided for members’ families, colunder house arrest. Some have also considered refashion- lecting money from its rank and file to pay for relatives to ing the large, educational spaces inside prisons to house the travel long distances in buses and stay in houses or hotels sick or the vulnerable. These measures may temporarily near the prisons on the weekends so that they could visit reduce the system’s immediate pressures. But as cases of their loved ones. The PCC supplied lawyers. It negotiated COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, better health and living conditions with prison authorities. continue to mount, the reforms may prove to be too little, And it protected its own on the outside. too late.

The PCC cadres were no angels, of course. When the govNASTY, BRUTISH, AND SHORT ernment challenged them, they organized riots inside the prisons. In May 2006, such disturbances spilled onto the Prisoners in Latin America rely mostly on friends, family, streets. PCC members burned buses, attacked police staand their fellow inmates to deliver essential goods and ser- tions, assassinated police officers, and effectively paralyzed vices that the state does not provide. These include food, São Paulo, a city of 20 million. Schools and businesses

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were closed for days until the government negotiated a settlement.

The PCC amassed power through these actions, and it soon spread far and wide. By 2017, the organization had reached nearly every state in Brazil. It even established outposts in Bolivia and Paraguay. Today, the group controls many of the drug distribution points and regulates much of the crime in its areas of operation. Homicide rates in São Paulo state, for example, went from among the highest in the country to among the lowest, due in part to this criminal governance.

The PCC has as many as 30,000 members and is steadily taking over the burgeoning international drug trade in Brazil.

Particularly within the prisons, the PCC has taken on the role of the state, guaranteeing security and critical services to its members. Other criminal gangs in the region have assumed similar roles. The MS-13 and 18th Street gangs are among the main suppliers and protectors of gang members inside Guatemalan, Honduran, and Salvadoran prisons. Colombian criminal organizations provide the same supplyline and protection services to their members in detention.

Even extremely predatory prison gangs—such as those in Venezuela—understand that their role is to fill gaps when the state is absent.

LOCKED UP, LOCKED DOWN That absence has never been more palpable than now. Prisons in Latin America, as elsewhere, are natural incubators, so it is probably only a matter of time before the coronavi-

If Latin American governments cannot effectively address the pandemic within their prisons, gangs will step in to exploit their failings. In so doing, the gangs will fortify their power both inside and outside prison walls.

rus spreads in their confines. Health conditions in Mexican and Venezuelan prisons were particularly poor before the crisis struck. And because governments have long neglected health care and basic sanitary conditions in the region’s prisons, the pandemic gives criminal organizations—now perceived as the first line of defense against the pandemic— even more leverage than they already had.

The deluge may have already begun. On April 8, officials registered Brazil’s first prison-based case of COVID-19 at a jail in the north of the country. A week later, the government reported cases in three other prisons. Then–Justice Minister Sérgio Moro insisted the situation was “under con-

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Relatives of inmates pray as they wait for information in front of the Puraquequara prison where inamtes rebelled to demand better conditions inside the prison and during which seven prison guards were taken hostage, in Manaus, Amazona State, Brazil, on May 2020 ,2, during the novel coronavirus COVID19- pandemic.

(Getty)

trol.” On April 11, Colombia confirmed coronavirus-related deaths inside a prison.

Governments are scrambling. In Brazil, the National Justice Council, an advisory body of the country’s justice department, issued a statement recommending that low-level offenders be removed from minimum-security prisons and placed under house arrest as “a way to avoid conflicts, riots, and rebellions.” Other countries are contemplating similar measures, but they will not be able to lower the prison population at the speed necessary to mitigate the virus’s spread, especially given the terrible sanitary conditions within the facilities.

If Latin American governments cannot effectively address

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the pandemic within their prisons, gangs will step in to exploit their failings. In so doing, the gangs will fortify their power both inside and outside prison walls. Mass quarantine, after all, is not an aberration or a hindrance to their operations: it is already a way of life, making them readier for the economic and social effects of the virus. Gangs, for instance, will be the ones trying to contain the virus’s spread inside the prisons and the ones choosing who among the infected gets treatment and who does not. When supply lines are cut, the gangs will decide which prisoners get provisions and which get none. When riots erupt, the gangs will determine which prisoners are armed.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Finding a Vaccine Is Only the First Step No One Will Be Safe Until the Whole World Is Safe

by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala It is now abundantly clear that the world cannot fully emerge from its current state of novel coronavirus lockdown until a vaccine is found. Never before have so many lives, livelihoods, and economies depended so much on a single health intervention. But as scientists race to develop potential vaccine candidates, the international community must remember that the ultimate goal is not only to produce a safe and effective inocula-

tion but to bring the pandemic to an end. And that can happen only after billions of doses are produced affordably and made available to everyone, particularly those in low-income countries.

An enterprise on this scale requires a new perspective: vaccines must be recognized as global public goods.

Neither domestic agendas nor profit can be allowed to drive the effort for the largest vaccine deployment in history. Governments, pharmaceutical companies, and

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It is now abundantly clear that the world cannot fully emerge from its current state of novel coronavirus lockdown until a vaccine is found. ternational effort is needed to avoid similar vaccine shortages and to prevent large numbers of people from going unvaccinated. Unfortunately, equitable vaccine distribution has frequently been a problem in the past.

Increased demand for the HPV vaccine in developed countries, for example, has recently impeded access for vulnerable adolescent girls in developing countries.

And during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, a small number of countries placed large advance orders for the vaccine before it became available, effectively buying up most of the global supply and leaving little for the rest of the world.

Scientists should of course aim to develop more than one vaccine. But even the existence of several effective ones won’t guarantee that hoarding won’t take place, as supplies will initially be limited. It is the duty of every government to put its citizens first, but during a pandemic this duty also requires thinking and acting globally. If manufacturing agreements or export restrictions impede the deployment of vaccines and allow the virus to survive anywhere, nowhere can be safe from reinfection.

A nurse prepares a vaccine against Ebola in Goma on August ,7 2019. (Getty)

multilateral organizations must work together to develop, produce, and deliver the vaccine. Producing and distributing billions of doses of a new vaccine would be challenging at the best of times. Doing so during a pandemic will require an unprecedented global effort.

PREVENTING SHORTAGES Just consider the recent global shortages of personal protective equipment and test kits. A coordinated in-

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One way to ensure the adequate supply and equitable distribution of vaccines is to remove some of the barriers created by intellectual property and technology transfer laws and to encourage manufacturers and research groups to work together toward a common goal. That way, when the first safe and effective vaccines emerge, multiple manufacturers can immediately start producing them simultaneously.

The pharmaceutical industry has already shown some willingness to allow this: the Serum Institute of India has announced that it will not retain the intellectual property on its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, the pharmaceutical giants GSK and Sanofi have formed an unprecedented partnership to pool their resources, and several manufacturers have agreed to not profit from COVID-19 vaccines. This bodes well for the new Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT) initiative launched by global leaders and the World Health Organization (WHO) to expedite the develop-

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ment, production, and equitable distribution of new COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines.

Ensuring that a vaccine can be manufactured quickly once it is developed also poses significant challenges.

Many of the most promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates are being developed by organizations that lack large-scale manufacturing capabilities. Since some of these organizations will inevitably fail to discover a viable vaccine, mechanisms must be put in place to reduce the risks of investing in development and manufacturing capabilities. Doing so will mean that the best vaccine candidates can be rapidly produced at scale and made available to everyone who needs them regardless of where they live.

A RADICAL NEW APPROACH That may sound like a tall order, but there is actually a precedent: Gavi, a global health partnership dedicated to increasing immunization access where I serve as Board Chair, launched its Advance Market Commitment pilot in 2009. This innovative financing mechanism has already helped to accelerate the rollout of vaccines. Prior to this it could take more than a decade for the price of new vaccines, like the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV), to come down enough for poorer countries to afford them. The AMC was a game changer, making vaccines affordable in

Ensuring that a vaccine can be manufactured quickly once it is developed also poses significant challenges. Many of the most promising COVID19- vaccine candidates are being developed by organizations that lack large-scale manufacturing capabilities.

these countries by providing incentives for manufacturers that effectively created a market where previously there was none. It worked on the principle of committing funds to guarantee the price of vaccines, once they had been licensed, thereby helping to remove some of the risk associated with investing in increasing manufacturing capacity, essentially ensuring that there will be a market if they do so. Gavi used a similar approach to accelerate Ebola vaccine production in time to help prevent the most recent epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from spiraling out of control. Although COVID-19 is a very different disease, similar financing mechanisms could help ensure that vaccines are made available in an accelerated fashion. And because such mechanisms would involve legally-binding agreements with manufacturers, they would also help to prevent hoarding and to promote equal access.

Then there is the challenge of delivering the vaccines.

That will not be straightforward either. Even under normal conditions, transport and supply chain issues, regulatory regimes, civil unrest, conflict, and natural dis-

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A general view of a sign outside of the University of Oxford Old Road Campus, which houses the Jenner Institute and is where the first human trials of a coronavirus vaccine developed by researchers at the University of Oxford is taking place in Oxford, England on April ,29 2020. (Getty)

A viable vaccine is still unlikely to be licensed for at least another 12 months. breaks, either during or immediately after lockdowns, will inevitably put more pressure on weak national health systems.

Coronavirus-related disruptions to immunization have already caused at least 13.5 million people in Gavisupported countries to go unvaccinated. It is crucial that low- and middle-income countries resume vaccination campaigns as soon as possible and that they keep routine immunization programs going throughout the pandemic. The supply chains, cold chain equipment, trained health-care workers, data systems, and diseasesurveillance efforts that make up these existing programs will ultimately form the backbone of the delivery network that brings COVID-19 vaccines to the people who need them.

asters can all potentially undermine vaccine delivery.

But in the midst of a global crisis, the logistical hurdles are likely to be even more daunting, particularly in the world’s poorest countries.

Health systems in these countries were already weak before the coronavirus. Now they are under severe stress—and not only because of the pandemic. COVID-19 has increased the risk of outbreaks of other deadly diseases, such as measles, polio, and yellow fever. This is because even though the WHO recommends that routine immunization programs continue where possible during the pandemic, it has also had to recommend that vaccination campaigns against some diseases, which are used to fill immunization gaps, be suspended in many countries in order to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 and to preserve scarce public health resources.

This is extremely worrying. Not only could suspending other routine immunization programs lead to countless preventable deaths; doing so could impede the world’s ability to end the coronavirus pandemic. Major out-

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To this end, Gavi is working with countries to bolster their health systems and keep routine immunization running. It has made a first tranche of $200 million available to protect health-care workers with personal protective equipment, perform vital surveillance and training, and fund diagnostic tests. But this sum is marginal compared to the billions of dollars that will be needed to develop and deliver a vaccine or vaccines that can end the pandemic. These are vaccines for all of humanity. That means they not only need to be made available to everyone but ideally, they also need to be tested and manufactured around the world.

A viable vaccine is still unlikely to be licensed for at least another 12 months. But some of the focus does now need to shift from the race to develop a vaccine to preparing for its arrival (including trying to find therapeutics until the vaccine is ready). In recent years, multilateralism and globalism have come under attack. The pandemic crisis is an opportunity to push societies to adapt and evolve from shareholder capitalism to stakeholder capitalism, mobilizing all contributors around a common goal: one world, protected. Because no one will be safe until everyone is safe.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Public Health Calls for Solidarity, Not Warfare Policing Is the Wrong Tactic for a Disease That Preys on Inequality

by Natalia Linos, Mary T. Bassett

Trump has called himself a “wartime president,” and in New York, the current epicenter of the panPoliticians all over the world have embraced war demic, Governor Andrew Cuomo has referred to metaphors to describe the global pandemic. COV- health-care workers as “troops,” even though many ID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, frontline health workers object to the characterizais the enemy. In the United States, President Donald tion. With deaths growing at an exponential rate,

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and millions having lost jobs and livelihoods, the metaphor may seem to fit: disease, like war, calls for sacrifice and battle.

Language has consequences, however, and war is a loaded term. Metaphors of war prove useful to authoritarian regimes that clamp down on dissent and exploit public fear to consolidate power. They also support the use of police and military forces to impose quarantines, curfews, and other public health measures. Most governments have mobilized such forces, and many have concluded that a punitive approach—using arrests, fines, and intimidation— is necessary to protect public health. But is it?

Physical-distancing measures—such as staying home, wearing masks, washing hands, and closing non-essential businesses—are necessary, but their enforcement can be humane, may allow for exceptions, and should not unnecessarily involve armed personnel. After all, the war with COVID-19 is likely to be protracted. Researchers have warned that social-distancing measures such as stay-athome orders may be necessary—intermittently, one hopes—well into 2022. And these orders are not easy for everyone to obey. Some people don’t have homes. For others, home is not a safe place, and for many, staying home is an unaffordable luxury.

NYPD police officers from the 112 Precinct stand alert at the Astoria Park as temperatures rose amid the coronavirus pandemic in New York City. (Getty)

Saving lives during this pandemic will require a different approach from simply “policing bad behavior.” Individual failures are not driving high rates of infection—rather, the infection reveals structural failures in the manner in which societies are organized. Those whose employment is precarious and who cannot afford to stay home—because they lack paid sick leave or because they have been designated “essential workers” but nonetheless lack protective equipment—struggle to protect themselves and their families. Those in congregate settings, such as nursing homes, prisons, and homeless shelters, depend on others to reduce their risk of infection.

UNEQUAL TOLL The data in the United States, although incomplete, tell a clear story. Death and illness are concentrated among people of colour and in neighbourhoods where a large majority are poor. African Americans account for 13 per cent of the country’s population

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Researchers have warned that social-distancing measures such as stay-at-home orders may be necessary—intermittently, one hopes—well into 2022. but fully 30 per cent of confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Hispanics and Latinos account for 18 per cent of the population and 24 per cent of confirmed cases.

The United States is not alone in recording such health inequities. In the United Kingdom, only 14 per cent of the population identifies as black, Asian, or minority ethnic, but so far this population accounts for more than a third of the country’s cases of COVID-19. Even in Sweden, with its egalitarian reputation, poor neighbourhoods where the vast majority of residents are immigrants have the highest rates of infection and death.

The militarization of the COVID-19 response is particularly troubling in light of these disparities— and in light of the experience many communities of colour and immigrants have had of excessive surveillance and violence at the hands of police. In a recent letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray, Democratic lawmakers called on police departments to build trust with communities of colour and undergo antibias training, especially as people are being told to wear masks in public. They warn: “If communities of colour—especially African American communities—feel at risk of disproportionate or selective enforcement, they may avoid seeking help or adopting precautionary measures recommended by the CDC. This, in turn, could have dire public health consequences.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests that disproportionate and selective enforcement is already a problem in the United States. Some reports suggest that police use excessive force to enforce social-distancing

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measures and that they disproportionately single out people of colour. A video has circulated of black men followed by police and then expelled from a Walmart outside St. Louis for wearing masks. Another shows police dragging a black man off a bus in Philadelphia for failing to wear a mask. Such reports may or may not be representative of enforcement practices, but they are widely circulated because they reflect a tragic reality: compared with white Americans, black Americans die at the hands of police, and people of colour are stopped, arrested, and incarcerated, at much higher rates.

Because law enforcement is so differentially received among Americans, its use as a tool of public health could have the unintended consequence of undermining health policy and provoking noncompliance. Police violence has been shown to increase legal cynicism, or the public belief that the system is incompetent, unresponsive, and illegitimate. In a Pew Research Centre poll just this month, U.S. citizens ranked ten government agencies for favourability. The CDC emerged almost at the top, second only to the U.S. Postal Service. The Department of Justice and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency ranked at the very bottom, although Republicans were more favourable toward them than Democrats. Public trust in the federal gov-

Anecdotal evidence suggests that disproportionate and selective enforcement is already a problem in the United States.

Some reports suggest that police use excessive force to enforce social-distancing measures and that they disproportionately single out people of colour.

ernment has dropped to almost historic lows, most dramatically among black Americans, only nine per cent of whom reported in 2019 that they trusted the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time.” Such attitudes can have serious public health implications. Research from the Ebola epidemic in Liberia showed that those who distrusted government took fewer precautions against the disease and were less compliant with government-mandated social-distancing policies.

A CIVILIAN SOLUTION On April 23, the United Nations issued a report underlining the importance of respecting human rights in the global struggle against the novel coronavirus.

Citing widespread recent incidents of discrimination and excessive use of force, the report warned that emergency measures, especially if applied with a heavy hand or disproportionately, could undermine the entire pandemic response.

So what is the alternative to the armed enforcement

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A South African Police Service (SAPS) officer commands a man to wear a face mask in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, on May 2020 ,1, during a joint patrol by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD). (Getty)

According to Tom Frieden, the former director of the CDC, countries will need to follow certain steps if they are to “box the virus in” and reopen their economies without putting lives at risk: test widely, isolate safely, contact and find everyone exposed, and quarantine comfortably. tracers, following a program the state devised in partnership with Partners in Health, a health nonprofit with long global experience working with community health workers.

If the United States is to design a civilian health workforce, it must do so with the aim of not only containing COVID-19 but also addressing the inequality the disease has so starkly exposed, with its divergent toll in death and suffering. The new workof public health measures? A civilian, unarmed re- force should help millions in hard-hit communities sponse. Imagine that police are not patrolling streets to sign up for government benefits, from unemployto fine or arrest those breaking curfew or to pull ment to supplemental nutritional assistance. Health people without masks from public buses—but that a workers should be representative of the communicivilian public health workforce instead distributes ties they serve, and their governments should pay masks, food, and other essentials, while monitor- them well and provide them with adequate personal ing compliance with quarantine orders. The police protective equipment. would step in only under extraordinary circumstances.

As the United States moves slowly toward reopening its economy, it should enforce public health The idea is hardly novel. Community health work- measures with unarmed personnel. New York City ers have functioned successfully all over the world did exactly that in response to Ebola in 2014, Lefor decades. In the United States, there is a new call gionnaires’ disease in 2015, and measles in 2018. for such a public health workforce.

Behind this less militarized response will perhaps be political talk not of war and conflict but of postAccording to Tom Frieden, the former director of war reconstruction and social solidarity, in which the CDC, countries will need to follow certain steps the government’s response creates economic opporif they are to “box the virus in” and reopen their tunities—while the public demands a radical overeconomies without putting lives at risk: test widely, haul of the health-care, social security, and employisolate safely, contact and find everyone exposed, ment systems that have proven so disastrous for so and quarantine comfortably. A significant expan- many. sion in the public health workforce will be needed to support these actions. Massachusetts has already This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com. begun training and deploying hundreds of contact

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The Coronavirus Won’t Usher in an American Welfare State Progressive Sentiments Subside as Crises Are Forgotten

by Lane Kenworthy The Great Depression of the 1930s led to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which created some of the United States’ most important public insurance programs. Social Security, unemployment insurance, and aid to low-income families with children all came out of the New Deal, as did labour union protections, reformed banking, enhanced public infrastructure, increased public employment, and support for homeownership.

The Great Recession of 2008–9 heralded a similar, albeit much

less dramatic, expansion of social programs. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff to U.S. President Barack Obama, famously said in November 2008. Less than 18 months later, Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the biggest expansion of public health insurance in nearly half a century.

Will the novel coronavirus crisis lead to similarly lasting advances in U.S. social policy? The pandemic has laid bare the financial precarity of millions of U.S. households. Prior to the

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crisis, nearly one in ten Americans had no health insurance, one in four workers got zero days of paid sick leave, and 40 per cent of adults said in a survey conducted by the Federal Reserve that they didn’t have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency expense. Now, in a matter of weeks, more than 30 million Americans have lost their jobs.

The federal government has responded with extraordinary relief measures, including bailouts for small and large corporations, expanded sick leave, increased unemployment benefits, and direct cash transfers to individuals. The spending amounts to more than ten per cent of GDP, a historic high—and there is almost certainly more to come.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., conduct an event to introduce the «Medicare for All Act of 2019» in Dirksen Building on Wednesday, April 2019 ,10. (Getty)

It is possible that some of these measures will become permanent or that prolonged economic pain will move the electorate far enough to the left to produce lasting change. But neither outcome is likely. The lesson of past crises, Emanuel’s memorable quip notwithstanding, is that support for new public social programs quickly dissipates. When the welfare state has been enlarged for good, as it was during the New Deal and at the beginning of Obama’s presidency, the impetus has not been a crisis-induced wave of popular progressivism. Rather, it has been Democratic control of the White House and Congress. Crises help whichever party is out of power, and once in power, Democrats have often passed progressive legislation despite a public mood that is ambivalent toward such policies. If the coronavirus crisis tips the scales toward a bigger social safety net, it will be by pushing Democrats over the top in November, not by stoking sustained popular demand for more generous social policies.

A CRISIS QUICKLY FORGOTTEN Over the past hundred years, the United States has gradually come to embrace government programs that mitigate risks and facilitate employment, even while preserving a mostly marketdriven economy. But progress toward social democracy has been slow and uneven, and U.S. social programs remain less generous and comprehensive than those of most other rich democratic nations.

The United States has no nationwide public early childhood education, paid parental leave, or sickness insurance. Health insurance coverage isn’t universal, and the government does little to control health-care costs. The U.S. version of cash assistance for children is a small tax credit for which many families aren’t eligible. Relatively few low-income people receive adequate support in the form of grants or food stamps. The federal government offers only limited funding for job retraining, housing, and eldercare. Public college is expensive for families with modest incomes. All told, the United States spends about 20 per cent of GDP on government social programs, whereas Denmark and Sweden spend close to 30 per cent.

While it is possible that the coronavirus pandemic will boost

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When the welfare state has been enlarged for good, as it was during the New Deal and at the beginning of Obama’s presidency, the impetus has not been a crisis-induced wave of popular progressivism. Rather, it has been Democratic control of the White House and Congress. public support for an expanded social safety net, such an outcome is unlikely. Fifty years of public opinion data show that economic downturns don’t typically produce sustained rises in progressive sentiment. The same appears to be true for political and health crises. Polling data from earlier eras are limited, so it is unclear whether the Great Depression produced a meaningful shift in Americans’ attitudes toward government. But if the New Deal was the product of a popular shift to the left, it was the exception, not the rule. The 1918 flu pandemic was followed by the “Roaring Twenties” and a turn away from the progressive reforms of the two previous decades. Likewise, the economic, political, and foreign policy crises of the 1970s and early 1980s— the oil embargoes, stagflation, Watergate, the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, the Iranian Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—ushered in not a new progressive era but rather the age of Ronald Reagan.

The main reason crises don’t produce lasting change in social policy seems to be that people quickly forget or turn their attention elsewhere, so their beliefs and preferences snap back to where they were before the emergency. Examining public opinion data going back to the early 1970s, the sociologist Lindsay Owens and I have found that recessions tend to have only temporary effects on Americans’ attitudes on a wide range of economic, social, and political issues. In addition, economic downturns cause some people to worry about their own financial well being rather than the welfare of others, as the political scientist Ronald Inglehart has documented. And welfare state opponents and deficit hawks invariably warn against new public spending, arguing that the country can’t afford to take on additional debt.

Temporary expansions of the safety net thus rarely become permanent. Time and again during downturns, the federal government has intervened to help people who lose their jobs and to rejuvenate the economy—by extending access to unemployment benefits, making stimulus payments, and declaring payroll tax

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holidays, loan payment delays, and more. But these temporary measures nearly always end once the economy recovers. For instance, the federal government gave many Americans a $600 check in 2008 and a $400 tax cut in 2009, both one-time relief measures that weren’t made permanent. Congress also extended eligibility for unemployment compensation from six to 12 months during the 2008–9 recession, as it had done in previous recessions, but eliminated the extension once the economy began growing again.

PARTISAN POLITICS, NOT POPULAR PASSIONS When public social programs have been enlarged for good, it has tended to happen via the ballot box: progressive parties in government, not crises, make lasting social policy. That was the story of the 1930s, when voters punished the Republican Party for its management of the economy and ushered in a decade of Democratic control of the presidency and Congress. Big Democratic majorities in Congress also made possible the passage of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs in 1965 and 1966. In a careful examination of the politics of these periods, the sociologist Katherine Newman and economist Elisabeth Jacobs found considerable ambivalence and even opposition to proposed social programs among ordinary Americans. Progressive policy advance in both periods owed mainly to the efforts of political leaders, particularly Roosevelt and Johnson, who, Newman and Jacobs write, “moved boldly into a policy vacuum or forged on against growing antagonism. They pushed and pulled legislators into creating and then sustaining the progressive history of the 1930s and 1960s we now—mistakenly—see as a sea change in popular political culture.”

The United States has no nationwide public early childhood education, paid parental leave, or sickness insurance. Health insurance coverage isn’t universal, and the government does little to control health-care costs.

The Great Recession similarly contributed to passage of the Affordable Care Act not by causing a leftward shift in public opinion but by helping to dislodge Republicans from the White House and the Senate in the 2008 elections. Democrats won the presidency, a majority in the House, and 60 seats in the Senate—enabling the passage of the ACA. But their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate disappeared soon thereafter: Senator Ted Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, died in August 2009 and a Republican won the special election to replace him.

Republican lawmakers were determined to oppose any and all Democratic policy initiatives, including any additional enlargement of the welfare state, and the window of opportunity closed for good when Democrats lost control of the House in the 2010-midterm elections.

This year, Democrats appear to have a reasonably good shot at winning the presidency and retaining their majority in the House. The Senate math is less favourable for Democrats, but the party could end up with a narrow Senate majority, given the damage the pandemic has done to the economy. Like all of the Democratic presidential candidates, former Vice President Joe Biden, the now all-but-certain nominee, was already proposing sizable expansions in the scope and generosity of the social safety net long before the coronavirus appeared. If Democrats control the presidency, the House, and the Senate in January 2021, they may well enact one or more of the social programs the United States currently lacks, such as sickness insurance, paid parental leave, or universal preschool. They might also

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U.S. military medical personnel, including U.S. Army reserve and Connecticut National Guard work in Stamford Hospital on April ,24 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut. (Getty)

expand already existing programs, such as Medicare, the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and housing vouchers. But any such change will be difficult to legislate. Unless a new Democratic majority in the Senate is willing to do away with the filibuster, new social spending likely would have to be passed via the reconciliation procedure, which per Senate rules can be used only once a year.

In the coming decades, the United States will likely continue on its long, slow path toward a more social democratic version of capitalism. It is tempting to presume that the coronavirus crisis will hasten this process—that with their eyes newly opened to the precarious circumstances of frontline service workers, African Americans, people with preexisting medical conditions, the homeless, small-business owners, and an array of other vulnerable groups, more Americans will demand that policymakers broaden the size and scope of the country’s public social programs. Maybe that will happen. But the experience of past crises suggests it probably won’t. If the pandemic pushes us closer to social democracy, it will be because it boosts the electoral fortunes of the political party currently out of power, which happens to be one that’s already inclined to expand the social safety net.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

Seated portrait of Franklin D. -1882( Roosevelt president of ,)1945 the United States ,)1945-1933( who developed government reforms known as the New Deal, secured establishment of Securities and Exchange ,)1934( Commission and the Social Security system )Getty( .)1935(

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The Pandemic Won’t Save the Climate Don’t Expect the Clear Skies to Last

by David G. Victor The economic free fall accompanying the coronavirus pandemic has, by some measures, made the world a cleaner place. Air pollution in Chinese, Indian, and U.S.

cities is way down. In Chinaalone, lower air pollution may have saved more lives than the virus has killed so far.

In New York City, some pollutants dropped by more than half in just a week. Global emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief long-term cause of climate warming, are on

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track to drop by eight percent this year. All that cleaner air has come at a huge, unacceptable cost. But could the pandemic lay the foundation for more serious action to protect the environment—including on the greatest of all environmental problems, climate change?

The short answer is: Probably not. Some observers hope that the post-pandemic world will be more inclined to heed scientists’ calls for climate action. Others predict that the enormous cost of stimulus programs—the top ten economies have already committed 7$ trillion in recovery spending, with more on the way—might make it easier politically for governments to introduce new and higher carbon taxes and climate-friendly fiscal policies, perhaps even a global Green New Deal to right past wrongs. But these hopes don’t stack up against the politics unfolding in the real world. Most of the evidence points the other way. Keeping emissions down permanently would require what climate scientists call “deep decarbonization”: a massive, long-term investment to shift industry and agriculture away from conventional fossil fuels and production methods. That was always a monumental, though achievable, task. The pandemic will make it much harder.

INERTIA

An aerial view shows Marathon Petroleum Corp›s Los Angeles Refinery, the state›s largest producer of gasoline, as oil prices have cratered with the spread of the coronavirus pandemic on April 2020 ,22 in Carson, California. (Getty)

The historical pattern of carbon dioxide emissions is not encouraging. Ever since the oil crisis of the early 1970s, emissions have sloped steadily upward, despite periodic recessions that temporarily sapped global energy demand.

The first oil crisis spurred major advances in energy efficiency, which helped lower emissions, but it also encouraged many countries to rely more on coal (which most governments saw as more secure in supply), a source of energy so polluting as to cancel out many of the gains from increased efficiency. The second oil crisis, in 1979, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s both played out similarly: emissions plateaued or sank for a while after each shock, only to rise again afterward. In some cases, such as after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, emissions roared back even faster than before. As long as the global economy remains dependent on conventional fossil fuels and high-emission industrial processes, and as long as powerful structural forces drive up demand, the pattern will persist. The economic recovery that follows the current pandemic looks to be no different.

People’s imagination and optimism tend to get in the way of good forecasting. The conditions of today— with everyone stuck at home and holding meetings on Zoom—make it easy to imagine a future with much less high-emission air travel. But history suggests that once incomes start growing again and lockdowns are lifted, people will not remain hunkered down. The higher their incomes, the more mobile people are and the more emissions they cause as a result. The superwealthy don’t

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Publics won’t sign on to lofty climate goals in the middle of an economic crisis—but they may well support more pragmatic green initiatives tied directly to economic recovery. stay at home even if they can visit the Uffizi virtually using HD video. They fly to Florence in person. At the height of the first oil shock, U.S. President Richard Nixon told Americans: “We will not have to stop air travel, but we will have to plan for it more carefully.” Little careful planning happened. After the shock subsided, air travel bounced back. Later, the sector was deregulated in ways that created more competition and lower prices, and demand grew even faster.

Now the global economy has plunged into a deep recession. Hard economic times rarely inspire support for aspirational missions with seemingly abstract benefits.

The best polling data show that the public does want clean energy—but it also wants cheap energy, and the difficulty of marrying clean and cheap will force policymakers, in the short term, to prioritize one over the other. Before the pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis, public opinion was already polarized, with few voters outside a narrow band on the left naming climate change as a top priority.

The pandemic will further winnow that community of supporters.

Governments around the world are pumping money into their slumping economies, but so far they are not spending it in ways that will lead to cleaner energy. In the United States, the current plans stand in stark contrast to those of the 2009 stimulus, which nearly tripled U.S. federal spending on energy-related research and development— most of it focused on making the energy system greener—for more than a year. The single most important innovation program at the U.S. Department of Energy (the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, best known as ARPA-E) got its start with the 2009 stimulus funds, as did many other effective programs to deploy new, efficient technology in the economy. Innovation spending of this kind is essential to cutting emissions, because none of the technologies needed for deep decarbonization yet exist. This year’s government stimulus programs are much larger than their predecessors, but to date, their investment in innovation is practically zero. (Analysts have outlined some pragmatic ways to use stimulus funds to boost innovation, and their proposals might gain traction in the next rounds of stimulus.)

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The United States could not in any case make much of a difference on its own. Global climate change is, fundamentally, a problem that requires international action. The countries that are most motivated to act account for a declining share of global emissions, meaning that they cannot fix the problem by themselves. Instead, they need frameworks that encourage other countries to follow their lead. Yet even before the pandemic caused countries to turn inward, the rise of populism had made building and sustaining such globe-spanning institutions increasingly difficult. The 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, for instance, was already fragile. Later this year, its signatory states are supposed to offer updated plans for more ambitious national efforts to cut emissions. Some countries may still go ahead with this even after the macroeconomic blow of the pandemic, notably in Europe, where commitment to climate action remains robust. But in most other regions, such plans will likely be tabled. The pandemic, put simply, will not do much to help the climate other than temporarily reduce emissions. If anything, the signals point in the opposite direction.

NEW POLITICS, OLD BOTTLES Political realism is not the same as defeatism. Those who advocate decarbonization have envisioned better futures.

Making those visions real will be a matter not of evoking dreamy scenarios but of aligning the opportunities for deep decarbonization with the new politics of the pandemic.

Debates around decarbonization often focus on technological innovation and big-picture policies, such as carbon pricing, and elide the realities of governance, as though one could assume leaders who are skilled,

Keeping emissions down permanently would require what climate scientists call “deep decarbonization”: a massive, long-term investment to shift industry and agriculture away from conventional fossil fuels and production methods.

motivated, and endowed with public trust. The pandemic has put such assumptions to the test. In some places— South Korea, New Zealand, Norway, and California, among others—officials have been decisive and relatively effective, at least so far. In much of the rest of the world—including in Italy, in the United Kingdom, and at the national level in the United States—governments have shown themselves less competent than imagined.

The same governments that are flailing now would likely struggle to muster the resources and public trust that ambitious climate action would demand after the pandemic. They will have to carefully to align any steps toward decarbonization with what is on the public’s mind: green stimulus must be measured, first and foremost, against the ability to generate quick and meaningful employment. Stimulus proposals also can’t ignore the constraints of working during a pandemic—for example, retrofitting homes with energy-efficient appliances would require workers to enter private homes at a time when people have suddenly become wary of proximity. (That wariness probably won’t abate quickly.)

The most effective programs will be those that center on

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A lone climate change protester sits outside of the Swedish parliament building as Stockholm closes down because of the ongoing Covid19- outbreak on March 2020 ,20 in Stockholm, Sweden.

(Getty)

millions of families in dire straits, investment in new cars is about to drop further. And without any incentives for efficiency, what new cars people do purchase will guzzle gas. (Last month, for the first time in history, trucks outsold cars in the United States.) A cash-for-clunkers program could offer some reprieve, both by softening the blow to the auto industry and by getting cleaner vehicles into the streets. The same can be done for old, inefficient airplanes. So far, however, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has gone the other way and announced a plan to relax fuel economy standards for cars. Lots of other governments are introducing similar regulatory rollbacks, designed to boost industrial activity but liable only to produce unhelpful confusion as firms rebuild their production lines.

One of the hardest tests for politicians will concern the most polluting fuel—coal. Because renewables and nuclear energy plants have low operating costs, they can ride out temporary drops in energy demand. The same is not true for the coal industry, which is poised for big layoffs. Here, the demands of politics and climate action will clash head-on—and leaders must find ways to resist calls for an environmentally disastrous bailout of conventional coal.

LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS

industries that already exist, already deliver low-carbon energy services, and are currently stumbling because supply chains have faltered. The solar and wind industries are good examples, as are nuclear plants, which are also emission-free. These well-established sectors can respond quickly if pulsed with cash. Keeping renewable energy incentives in place (and offering something similar to keep nuclear plants open) will help stabilize low-emission industries while reliably employing workers. Washington should also turn tax credits for zero-emission technologies into simple cash payments, as it did during the 9–2008 financial crisis. (A tax credit is useful when firms are making taxable profits but not when the whole economy is in the red.) Such measures are easy to deploy and can help shore up the economy while keeping emissions from spiking, as has often happened during recoveries in the past.

Governments should look further down the line to consider how stimulus money can generate jobs while also putting entire economies on a greener track. One step is to pull dirtier equipment out of service while spurring demand for new gear. After the 9–2008 financial crisis, households cut back on buying new (and thus more fuel-efficient) cars, a slump whose effects can still be seen today. With

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Publics won’t sign on to lofty climate goals in the middle of an economic crisis—but they may well support more pragmatic green initiatives tied directly to economic recovery. If governments are successful on this front, they will gain the credibility they need for more ambitious and effective climate action. So far, the U.S. federal government is performing poorly. Some individual U.S. states are doing better, as are a few governments in Europe and Asia.

The pandemic has exposed a fragmented world, with some governments earning trust and spending resources effectively while others are floundering. And it drives home what has been clear for a long time: serious international action on climate change will not arise from some grand “Kumbaya” moment, in which leaders around the world come together because the novel coronavirus has forced them to shed the scales from their eyes and realize the value of science and cooperation. Rather, the countries that have the wherewithal to steer and rebuild their economies through this crisis will be the ones to lead the coming efforts at environmental reform. They must use their skills wisely to meet a challenge that will not have disappeared. And they must succeed in what could prove the hardest task: getting the rest of the world to follow.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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A New Tense Decade

by: Elie Fawaz

Will the Coronavirus usher in a new bipolar world order reminiscent of that of the Cold War

The second decade of the third millennium has kicked off with a global crisis in the form of COVID-19.

The virus started in China and has since caused the entire world to go into lockdown. Every day life has come to a sudden halt, and huge metropolises such as New York, London, Paris and Milan have become quiet ghost towns.

The virus has exposed the weakness of human civilisation and mankind as people have been forced to cower inside their homes. Countries that we consider to be the most scientifically, politically, culturally and economically advanced were unable to prevent their citizens from becoming infected. Taxpaying citizens will demand a massive change to the current state of public services and naturally the Coronavirus will also have massive implications on other issues as well.

It can be said that during the 2020s, many states will witness multiple changes to their respective political and economic structures.

We can expect to see a number of changes in Europe. With the exception of Germany and the Scandinavian countries, no other European country handled the crisis particularly well. Furthermore, the virus has exposed the weaknesses of many European public health systems. The European Union’s inability to help the countries worst affected by the virus has left a vacuum, which the Chinese and the Russians quickly filled with their own aid. This saga will cause a resurgence of far-right Eurosceptic politics in the countries that were badly hit by the virus such as Italy and Spain. In spite of the taxes that European citizens pay to the EU, the organization left many of said citizens stranded. The EU’s failure to deal with this crisis will push its politicians towards re-evaluating the European experiment.

The second global change will affect the current economic/industrial infrastructure in relation to the existing global supply and demand chain. It is clear that the West needs to seriously think about China’s role as the hub of industry. This is especially vital considering China’s lies regarding the Coronavirus and its abstention from sharing research on the disease with global partners.

Japan has already started policies to relocate its factories based in China back home. The Japanese government is offering its businesses up to 2 billion dollars worth of aid to persuade them to relocate factories out of China. This is a massive development considering the fact that China is Japan’s largest economic partner. Japan isn’t the only government that is trying to move away from China’s influence. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is not known for nationalistic rhetoric, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Nevertheless, even she indirectly criticized China for its lack of transparency on the rapid spread of the virus. Sweden recently closed all its Chinese government funded schools and halted the educational exchange programmes it has with China. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, recently said that China would pay the price for its negligence. US lawyers have filed lawsuits demanding compensation worth twenty trillion dollars for the damages China caused by concealing the severity of the virus.

The world is heading towards radical changes that will have major repercussions on the global industrial and political orders. China, which has been working long and hard to become the number one industrial nation, won’t subside any time soon considering its vast capabilities. China currently competes in many sectors with the US, as it strives to become the global superpower. On that basis, it has started expanding its influence in Africa and it is striving to expand further as its Silk Road strategy has given it a foothold in Europe. US President Donald Trump was among the first politicians to seriously address the danger China poses and has sought to counter its rise on the global stage. As such, he started a trade war with Beijing in hopes that tariffs on Chinese goods would shift the trade balance which was heavily in China’s favour.

To alleviate its current position at the global stage, China will increase its financial temptations to many countries that will suffer from economic stagnation due to the global pandemic. It will also seek to expand its trade relations, especially in Africa, Europe and some Middle Eastern countries.

However, the US will not sit idly by, rather it will use its arsenal of economic sanctions and threats to counter China.

Will the Coronavirus usher in a new bipolar world order reminiscent of that of the Cold War? What we know for sure is that we will witness a tense decade in which major changes might even affect the Middle East.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1799- May - 08/05/2020

Fairuz: The Charming Voice of Lebanon www.majalla.com

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Documentary Production Thrives In Spite of Coronavirus Restrictions Film Production is Shut Down but Documentaries Are Still Being Made. Here’s How.

by Amy Kaufman

documentary has yet to cease.

Dawn Porter has been sequestered at her home on Martha’s Vineyard since mid-March. But even though she can’t leave the small Massachusetts island, production on her next

Porter was about three-fourths of the way through filming her nonfiction film about Pete Souza, the former chief official White House photographer, when COVID19- started to

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proliferate across the United States. But the project remains set for theatrical release by Focus Features this fall, so the director decided to take an unconventional step to get her final interview with Souza: Have him shoot it himself.

After convening with her cinematographer, Porter decided to put together a gear package for Souza. She sent him a Blackmagic camera with lenses “that look similar enough to the ones we’ve been using, so it’s not jarring, like an iPhone video.” He already has a professional microphone and a tripod, and the director intends to have him set it all up so that he can self-film while she asks him questions over Zoom.

“It’s going to look different, but we’re trying to lean into that difference, contextualize it and make it part of the scene rather than make it something it’s not,” Porter said from Martha’s Vineyard, where there are currently 16 cases of the coronavirus. “It’s a little nerve-racking, but it’s also a little bit exciting. I think if it works, we will be able to get some surprising things, having his contemporaneous feelings instead of someone looking back on this time.”

While there are still no clear answers on when and how production could resume on Hollywood’s scripted movies, many documentary filmmakers have been able to continue working. Some, like Porter, have been able to forge ahead by equipping their subjects with the proper technology.

Others have shifted gears, diving into research and archival footage until they can return to the field. And a scant few are still outside filming, working with tiny crews and risking consequences for breaking stay-at-home guidelines.

US former White House photographer Pete Souza poses in front of one of his photographs during the launch of the German edition of his book: «Obama: An Intimate Portrait», in Berlin on April 2018 ,16.

Souza is the subject of an upcoming documentary.

(John Macdougall/AFP/ Getty Images/TNS)

There’s also demand for new films. Porter says she’s received four calls “from great places” about whether or not she’s able to prepare to start shooting a new documentary as soon as the national lockdown eases.

“Generally, we’re trying to be optimistic that there will be a point where we can get back in the field, even if it looks different,” said Courtney Sexton, senior vice president for CNN Films, which plans to air another of Porter’s documentaries — this one about U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat — after Magnolia handles the initial theatrical/on-demand release in July. Working from a camper van in her L.A. driveway, Sexton has been taking virtual pitch meetings with documentarians and said she’s been surprised by “how many people are still out there pitching.”

“So the discussions with potential partners are: ‘If we’re gonna do this together, what does the production timeline look like if you’re not able to shoot until the fall?’” she continued. “Instead of five people going to shoot an interview, maybe there are two. Vérité filmmaking is going to be harder — it’s probably the version of the form that is the hardest to speculate about how you would make it work. But using

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While there are still no clear answers on when and how production could resume on Hollywood’s scripted movies, many documentary filmmakers have been able to continue working. archive, or something that’s more interview-driven — all of those things are being weighed.”

Erin Lee Carr, who last year made two documentaries for HBO, said she’s received more calls from production companies hoping to work with her in the last month than ever before. But just before she went into quarantine in a friend’s Connecticut home, she sold a documentary to a streaming outlet. She’s also in the process of pitching a three-part episodic docuseries on a famous criminal case — something she’s done entirely via video conference. In both cases, Carr said, she’s found that emphasizing the potential of archival footage has been a big selling point.

“I think in a post-COVID environment, the amount of archive material that exists on a subject is going to be really significant,” said the director, whose “How to Fix a Drug Scandal” series debuted on Netflix this month. “I think documentaries become an escape hatch — ‘we’ll have this ready because it’s so much less expensive to make.’ Yes, I want to do original reporting — and I will — but I can build a lot without it.”

Betsy West and Julie Cohen, the directors behind 2018’s hit Ruth Bader Ginsberg documentary, have also been fielding a slew of new work calls. Though they’re working on completing their next film about Julia Child — which Sony Pictures Classics recently acquired for worldwide release in 2021 — they’re weighing how feasible launching a fresh project would be.

“Often, we spend a year or longer gathering research and planning, so unless there’s an urgent reason to get out there and shoot, you can get a lot of work done in the next six months or a year,” said West.

From different parts of New York City — she’s in Morningside Heights, Cohen is in Brooklyn — the filmmakers have continued to work remotely on the Child documentary.

Each morning, they gather virtually with their team to discuss the edits that need to be accomplished that day. As the hours progress, editors will upload different segments for the

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directors to review and offer feedback on.

“Five years ago, I don’t know how possible this would have been, but between the conference call and video platforms, it’s doable remotely,” said Cohen. “Overall, documentary filmmaking is more flexible than narrative filmmaking. To get a narrative film within budget, everything has to be planned out to the minute. We’re used to changing things up, and coronavirus is probably stretching that to the limit.”

Dawn Porter is open to adapting too. While she’s renting the camera equipment she sent to Pete Souza, she’s thought about ultimately purchasing the kit should the COVID19restrictions continue long into the future. “Sadly,” she said, “it seems with things so uncertain, this won’t be the only time to use it.”

Porter is open to adapting too. While she’s renting the camera equipment she sent to Souza, she’s thought about ultimately purchasing the kit should the COVID19- restrictions continue long into the future. “Sadly,” she said, “it seems with things so uncertain, this won’t be the only time to use it.”

One change Carr is considering? More audio interviews.

While her filmmaking partners urged her to send her interview subjects camera equipment — like Porter did — the director felt it would be too stress-inducing.

“One network was like, ‘We have to send a little bit of lighting,’ and I said, ‘I don’t know how you send lighting to someone in the midst of COVID and ask them to set it up.’

Because we’re at the center of the epidemic, I just want to do what’s easiest. I think there will be room to do video later.

And with audio, sometimes people forget you’re there. I guess I’m just trying to push myself as a filmmaker and react to this moment in time as gracefully as I can.”

One filmmaker who has been reluctant to stay locked inside is Feras Fayyad, whose “The Cave” was nominated for an Oscar in February. Though he wasn’t intending to start a new film mid-quarantine, his plans changed when he learned that a Syrian police officer whom he alleges nearly killed him was going on trial.

In March 2011 — days after Syrians took to the street calling for President Bashar Assad’s ouster, Fayyad was arrested

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Director Dawn Porter accepts the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking, for the film Trapped, onstage at the Sundance Film Festival Awards Ceremony during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival at Basin Recreation Field House on January 2016 ,30 in Park City, Utah. (Getty)

Filmmaker Feras Fayyad attends Oscars Week: Documentaries at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater on February 2020 ,04 in Beverly Hills, California.

(Getty)

outside of his apartment. In prison, he was brutally tortured for 18 months — beaten, electrocuted and cut.

One of Fayyad’s supposed torturers sought asylum in Germany, where he is now on trial and stands accused of crimes against humanity. When Fayyad learned that the case was moving forward, he reached out to a German cinematographer and sound mixer about filming the court proceedings.

In Berlin, a ban on public gatherings of more than two people is still in place, and citizens are required to keep a five-foot distance from others. Face masks were recommended but not required, and nonessential shops and schools were preparing to open in May. Still, Fayyad and his two-man crew took to the streets, filming B-roll and interviews with lawyers working on the case.

“We’ve worked in other extreme, dangerous situations before,” Fayyad said, referring to “The Cave,” which was filmed in an underground Syrian hospital besieged by bombs.

“We know it’s high-risk — especially traveling outside of Berlin and visiting people in their offices. But we believe we have to tell this story.”

On the street, Fayyad admitted, passersby treated him like “an alien.” “Their eyes were wide open and they were staring at us like we were doing something wrong or crossing the line,” he said. “But we didn’t face a police situation. The police are

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One filmmaker who has been reluctant to stay locked inside is Feras Fayyad, whose “The Cave” was nominated for an Oscar in February. stopping people now and writing up fines, but maybe because we had a camera they didn’t.”

Fayyad is currently self-financing the documentary and used his cinematographer’s car and camera equipment to save money. In Koblenz, the German city where the trial is taking place, they opted for three separate hotel rooms instead of an Airbnb in case one of them falls ill with the coronavirus.

“I posted a picture of us filming on Instagram and you have no idea how many messages I got asking me what I was doing,” said Fayyad, who has already testified as a witness.

“They say, ‘You’re gonna die.’ I say: ‘I’ve survived more than this.’ I’m not saying it’s not scary — it’s really scary.

But I’m excited about making this and I think I need to take the risk.”

Originally published in the LA Times

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Fairuz: The Charming Voice of Lebanon Majalla – London Labanese singer and actress Fairuz is widely considered to be one of the most celebrated Arab singers of the 20th century. Fairuz was born Nuhad al-Haddad, in 1935, the eldest child of Wadih Haddad and Liza Bustani. Her father was a print-shop technician who moved his family to Beirut from the village of Dbayeh in the Chouf region with the goal of making a better living.

In 1947, at age 14, she was discovered by Mohammad Fleifel, one of the founders of the National Conservatory of Music in Beirut, who was in search of talent for a newly formed choral group. Fleifel was instrumental in Fairuz›s admission to the National Conservatory, where she spent five years training. She adopted her stage name, Fairouz, meaning “Turquoise,” after her first performances on Radio Lebanon in the 1940s. While singing at the national radio station she studied the voices and techniques of the other singers. There, too, Fairuz›s relationship with her composer ‹Assi Rahbani and his brother Mansour developed. Through their compositions and arrangements she was soon singing tunes influenced by the many western dance bands popular in Beirut at the period. But Fairuz›s first big success came with a song full of melancholy, ‹ Itab (Blame), which lifted her to recognition across the Arab world through the excellent recording made in Damascus in 1952.

Fairuz married ‹Assi Rahbani in 1954 in a church wedding attended by a large crowd of adoring fans. In 1955, Fairuz and Assi traveled to Egypt for the first time. Cairo, which was then the center of the Arab theater, cinema, and song, was conquered by the young Lebanese singer.

Fairuz›s triumph in Egypt led to many offers by celebrated Egyptian composers and filmmakers, but by then she was expecting her first child.

She returned to Lebanon and gave birth to her son Ziad on January 1957 ,1. She was later to have four more children, three girls and one boy.

But it was Ziad who remained closest to her of all her children and who in later years wrote and composed the music for many of her songs.

In the summer of 1957 Fairuz appeared for the first time before a live audience. Until then she had been restricted to the recording studios. She sang in a musical review («Ayam el Hissad,» or «Harvest Days») before a large spellbound audience seated in the Roman ruins of the Temple of Jupiter in Baalback. This was her first appearance at the Baalback International Festival where she performed for many successive years, and she was awarded the highest medal for artistic achievement there, the Cavalier, by the president of Lebanon, Camille Chamoun.

The 1967 play Hālah wa al-Malik (Hālah and the King) marked a transition away from the group’s typical rural folkloric subject matter and setting, with Fairouz playing an urban character for the first time. It was also the first time that her son Ziad was involved in one of her projects, stepping in at the age of 17 after Assi suffered a stroke.

During the war and with her husband’s health declining, Fairouz began to collaborate more exclusively with her son, who in albums such as Maʿriftī Fīk (1987; “My Knowledge of You”) and Kīfak Inta (1991; “How Are You”) seemed intent on helping to free her from the iconic pedestal she had been put upon by various factions in the country, in no small part as a

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result of the chaste characters she embodied in her earlier songs and musical theatrical plays. He often incorporated jazz in some songs and Eastern themes (manipulating maqam masterfully) in others, proving his skill in both. Songs like “Kīfak Inta” scandalized her fans with its more colloquial style and content, thus reinventing her music for a new generation.

When her husband died in 1986, factions in Beirut declared a cease-fire to allow the funeral to process from the Muslim side of the city to the burial site on the Christian side. In the 1990s, after the Civil War, she staged a comeback in Lebanon with a concert in Beirut and a new album that appealed to a new generation of listeners. Fairouz remained active well into the 21st century, performing at concerts and recording new studio albums, including Ayh Fī Amal (“Yes, There Is Hope”) in 2010 and Bibālī (“On My Mind”) in 2017. By 2018 Fairouz had sold more than 80 million albums worldwide.

Fairuz›s fame spread throughout the Arab world and beyond. She sang in Damascus, Amman, Cairo, Rabat, Algiers, and Tunis as well as Beirut. King Hussein of Jordan decorated her in 1977 ,1963, and 1999. On the occasion of a performance in Morocco, King Hassan II of Morocco received her personally at the airport.

She also traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montreal, London, and Paris, and made concert tours of the United States, where she was frequently awarded the keys to the cities in which she performed. During her concert in Las Vegas in 1999, the mayor of the city officially proclaimed May 1999 ,15 as «Fairuz Day.» She also performed a series of songs for all the major Arab capitals -- each became a

celebrated piece of popular art.

During a period of three decades, she produced a repertoire of more than 800 songs, three feature films, and 400 LP recordings. Her repertoire on

recordings and in performance offered a broad spectrum of material unmatched by virtually any other vocalist. From classical language tomes, pop and dance music, Eastern tarab, and Western classical (including a Mozart tune with Arabic

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lyrics) to art, children›s, and patriotic songs, she excelled. Fairuz’s songs tackled various universal and national themes such as the Palestinian political plight, adolescence, Christmas hymns, pastoral Lebanese, love and family.

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Quick-start guide to an anti inflammation diet There are No Complicated Rules to Follow.

Just Be Mindful of General Dos and Don’ts

by Harvard Health Letter Chronic inflammation -- a state of persistent activation of the immune system -- is an important part of many diseases, and diet is a big contributor to inflammation. It would make sense, then, to follow what’s becoming known as the “anti-inflammation diet.”

Just one problem: “There isn’t ‘one’ diet, although

many people love to throw that term around. The diet in general is almost as much about what you don’t eat as what you do eat,” says Eric Rimm, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

For a quick start, let’s boil it down to some dos and don’ts.

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Stay away from “ultra-processed” foods, which include just about anything that comes in a package -- like microwaveable dinners, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, dehydrated soups, baked goods, sugary cereals, processed meats, biscuits, and sauces. your blood sugar), and saturated fat (which can increase your “bad” LDL cholesterol). All of these ingredients are associated with promoting inflammation in the body. “The biggest offender is anything with added sweeteners, whether that means cane sugar or any compounds used to add sweetness,” Rimm says.

A report published in December 2019 in Nature Medicine notes that sugars, grains, and extra salt in ultra-processed foods can change the bacteria in your gut, damage the gut’s lining, and switch on inflammatory genes in cells. Other studies have linked ultra-processed foods to shorter life spans, cancer, heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes.

Inflammation-promoting foods include white breads, cereals, white pasta, and other products made with refined flours, as well as white rice. “White flour leads directly to a pro-inflammatory state,” Rimm says.

Other offenders include soda, juices, cookies and other baked goods, butter, cheese, ice cream, coconut products, candy, salad dressings, jarred tomato sauces, and processed and cured meats.

DO EAT THESE DON’T EAT THESE Stay away from “ultra-processed” foods, which include just about anything that comes in a package -like microwaveable dinners, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, dehydrated soups, baked goods, sugary cereals, processed meats, biscuits, and sauces.

These foods have little nutritional value. Worse, they’re high in salt, added sugars (which can spike

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To fight inflammation, go for whole, unprocessed foods with no added sugar: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes (beans, lentils), fish, poultry, nuts, seeds, a little bit of low-fat dairy, and olive oil. “To these, many people add herbs and spices like cinnamon, ginger, and turmeric. There are a few studies that suggest modest benefits,” Rimm says.

How do they help? “It’s believed that antioxidants in brightly colored fruits and vegetables [cooked tomatoes, carrots, squash, and broccoli] may lessen

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the effect of free radicals, which damage cells,” says Liz Moore, a registered dietitian at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Other food components that may help fight inflammation include • fiber found in fruits, vegetables, and especially legumes and whole grains such as barley, oats, and bran • omega-3 fatty acids found in fish (such as salmon, mackerel, sardines, tuna), vegetable oils (flaxseed and canola), walnuts, flaxseeds, and leafy green vegetables (spinach and kale) • polyphenols (plant chemicals) found in berries, dark chocolate, tea, apples, citrus, onions, soybeans, and coffee • unsaturated fats found in almonds, pecans, walnuts, flaxseeds, pumpkin and sesame seeds, and plant oils

The more colour and variety you add to a meal, the more natural inflammation-fighting compounds you’ll consume.

(olive, peanut, canola).

The evidence that trying to minimize inflammation through dietary changes reduces the risk of diseases “is strongest for arthritis, gastrointestinal and heart health, and possibly auto¬immune diseases,” Moore says.

MAKING THE SHIFT Don’t try to suddenly switch to a new eating style.

“Start by slowly making changes so that these become more of a lifestyle shift rather than ‘going on a diet,’” Moore says. “Try to eat fewer foods that come from packages and more that come from the ground.”

Apply that approach to each meal. For breakfast, you might have a fruit smoothie or oatmeal with a few berries; for lunch, a salad of dark leafy greens with colorful vegetables topped with beans, nuts, and seeds; for dinner, a lean protein and more colorful vegetables, with fruit for dessert. The more colour and variety you add to a meal, the more natural inflammation-fighting compounds you’ll consume.

If you’re more comfortable following a particular diet plan, consider a Mediterranean diet or the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet; they follow lots of the dos and don’ts we’ve outlined.

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Bashar al-Assad v. Rami Makhlouf: A Spat Between Cousins Takes Dramatic Turn

by Alia Mansour

Syrian regime leader Bashar al-Assad is once again conflicting with his businessman cousin Rami Makhlouf. Spats between both men are a regular occurrence, however now new conflicting information has been resurfacing and, as a result, the family affair has become more exciting to watch and for a lot of observers it has transformed into a Hollywood drama teeming with twists and turns.

Recently, Rami Makhlouf recorded two video messages intended for his cousin Bashar al-Assad. In the videos, Makhlouf wanted to portray himself as a good charitable philanthropist, and even went as far as to play Quranic recordings in the background. In spite of this Good Samaritan charade, he still admitted that he financed Assad’s war efforts against the Syrian people. What’s strange about this is that while Makhlouf had clashed with his cousin before, he never opposed him politically, in fact, for the past two decades Makhlouf’s clashes with his cousin happened on the economic front. The political clash did not happen because Makhlouf saw the error of his ways, and decided to do what was right for the people of Syria, rather this spat happened because Assad unscrupulously took money out of Makhlouf’s fortune and estate to help pay off debts he accumulated during the civil war.

Hostilities started to come under public scrutiny late last year when Assad seized a large portion of Makhlouf’s fortune. In September 2019, Syrian authorities decided to put precautionary seizures of Makhlouf’s fortune, however the decision wasn’t confined to his cousin as several other of Makhlouf’s business associates and their wives suffered the same fate. Syrian customs would go on to state that this decision was made because the businessmen had violatied import regulations and thus had fines which needed to be paid to the public treasury. However, a few days before this decision some Russian websites leaked news about Russia demanding a payment of two billion to three billion dollars from the Assad regime in exchange for the services it provided for him during the war. These services ranged from restructuring armed forces and guarding oil refineries.

Ever since Bashar al-Assad ascended to power, Rami Makhlouf has played an instrumental role in the Syrian economy. According to a 2011 Financial Times article, Rami Makhlouf’s family controlled 60 per cent of Syria’s economic sector as they controlled most of the country’s capital, companies and vital projects. Moreover, as previously mentioned he was one of the biggest finacers of Assad’s war on Syrians, however the regime now needs much more from him.

Today, the Syrian regime and Iran are struggling with the US economic sanctions. Additionally, the US has increased its forces in eastern Syria to protect the oil fields and prevent Russia from reaching them. Finally, in a matter of weeks the Caeser Act will come into effect and the Assad regime will be in an even tighter spot. Now Russia is trying to race the clock and obtaining all that it can from Syria to make up for its own losses in the proxy war, as well as the losses it is facing from the unprecedented decline in oil prices. Furthermore, the Coronavirus crisis has forced Russia to postpone financing the Syrian reconstruction project, and has instead asked Syria to pay war service fees.

The only way out for Assad was to rely on the currupt state structure he had created himself. So he chased after allies and associates who became wealthy because of their connections with the regime, and asked them to pay for his debts and needs. If they paid then they would be removed from the list of people who would get their assets seized. But, Makhlouf couldn’t pay the fees the regime wanted from him, and saw this whole process as a violation.

Rami Makhlouf was the “bank” of the Assad regime, but even he was never susceptable from being replaced. Through the years, Makhlouf was able to garner popularity through of his charity organization, Al- Bustan Charity (which the regime confiscated) and because of the fact that he employed many people in his companies. However, that did not make him a strong member of the regime, since he would sometimes come at odds with Bashar.

There are talks that Russia is trying to replace Bashar al-Assad with Makhlouf, but that is a nonsensical notion because Moscow would never place someone who repeatedly spoke ill of one of its closest allies in the region. Furthermore, the fact that Makhlouf has US and EU sanctions placed on him means that he would not be a popular replacement both at home and abroad.

Leaked news about Russia abandoning Assad and his corrupt cronies is nothing new, rather similar news stories have leaked all the time. The videos that the Russians leaked showing Bashar at the Khmeimim air base or at the Russian embassy in Damascus are evidence that both parties are still allies. However, what Russia is doing now is pressuring Assad to secure financial resources, and Makhlouf’s assets is a huge financial reservoir in the country.

The dispute between Assad and Makhlouf is the latest episode of the spiralling drama within the Assad regime. We can expect much more developments once the Caeser Act kicks in, and the regime sees itself in much more financial burden.

While the Assad regime, Russia and Iran may have won the military battle in Syria, the situation they find themselves in makes it clear that they have not won the war. Furthermore, Russia might have made the wrong cost-benefit calculation, as it seems that sticking by Assad’s side was a much more costly decision than it had anticipated.

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08/05/20