The U.S.-Venezuela Aid Convoy Story Is Clearly Bogus, but No One Wants to Say It

Adam H. Johnson

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-u-s-venezuela-aid-convoy-story-is-clearly-bogus-but-no-one-wants-to-say-it/

No one actually thinks the same Donald Trump who kicked off his run for the White House by calling Mexicans rapists, and subsequently, as president, left Puerto Rico for dead after Hurricane Maria, cares at all about the Venezuelan poor. No one actually thinks the murderers row of Cold Warriors—led by two of the most extreme right-wingers in American politics, Venezuela envoy Elliott Abrams and national security adviser John Bolton—cares at all about the starving people in Venezuela or their plight. No one reading this, be they right, left, center, libertarian or communist, actually buys the prevailing narrative that the U.S. is sending “aid” to Venezuela as a humanitarian gesture.

So why is everyone pretending otherwise?

There are a number of reasons why these superficial narratives take hold, but I’d like to speculate on two of them.

First, the crisis in Venezuela is very real and very daunting. Without litigating who’s responsible for what, whether U.S.-led sanctions and economic sabotage are more to blame or the economic policies of Nicolás Maduro, one simple fact is true: The status quo is untenable. Perhaps, then, the instinct to “do something” is understandable. But as with previous crises, both organic and contrived, what that “something” is remains unclear. Liberals—as they did in the build-up to the invasions of Iraq and Libya—are easily pressured into this “do something” posture.

The way these things work, however, is that this vague moral directive often involves a combination of CIA and U.S. military intervention. During the Syrian conflict, for example, it meant U.S.- and NATO-led bombings of Syrian forces and a tacit declaration of war under the guise of “no-fly zones.” What’s never considered is a reduction or cessation of U.S. involvement, be it CIA weapons running, wide-scale bombing campaigns, or the imposition of sanctions—all of which prolong a given conflict or simply make it more violent.

Because a core tenet of American liberalism is to avoid assigning blame—at worst, its adherents believe, the U.S. is run by a bunch of bumbling do-gooders—what the American empire is actually doing to fuel a conflict cannot be debated, much less censured. And so the notion that we could simply cease our crippling sanctions, which even the pro-opposition Economist acknowledges are designed to “starve” the Venezuelan people, is simply not an option.

The current “something” in Venezuela we’re all compelled to “do” is ensure the arrival of a humanitarian aid convoy. The fact that the bulk of the international aid community has either distanced itself from this PR stunt or outright opposes it has been widely ignored by the mainstream media. One exception is NPR, which recently reported this inconvenient truth:

The U.S. effort to distribute tons of food and medicine to needy Venezuelans is more than just a humanitarian mission. The operation is also designed to foment regime change in Venezuela — which is why much of the international aid community wants nothing to do with it. Humanitarian operations are supposed to be neutral.

That’s why the International Committee of the Red Cross, United Nations agencies and other relief organizations have refused to collaborate with the U.S. and its allies in the Venezuelan opposition who are trying to force President Nicolás Maduro from power.

“Humanitarian action needs to be independent of political, military or any other objectives,” Stéphane Dujarric, the U.N. spokesman, told a press briefing last week in New York. “The needs of the people should lead in terms of when and how humanitarian assistance is used.”

In fact, no neutral observer of international aid thinks Bolton and Abrams’ convoy is anything but a mechanism to foment civil war and regime change. We know this because high-level administration officials and their allies on the right keep telling us that’s the case. As the New York Post recently proclaimed, “U.S. delivers aid to town bordering Venezuela to undermine President Nicolas Maduro.”

Donald Trump delivered a long and rambling speech in Miami last week and didn’t once mention human rights, instead railing against the evils of socialism. Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe reflects in his new book that Trump has openly fantasized about overthrowing Maduro, something he has discussed in White House meetings. “That’s the country we should be going to war with,” Trump said, according to McCabe. “They have all that oil, and they’re right on our back door.”

Determined to maintain U.S. hegemony and control over the world’s largest-known oil reserves, the Trump officials plotting this latest coup aren’t even bothering to take its humanitarian pretext seriously. Why, then, are purportedly centrist and liberal media outlets?

A second matter to consider is how our government has weaponized the public’s sense of morality. Since the Spanish-American War, the U.S. has used humanitarian concerns as a shield against criticism or skepticism, and it has more or less worked every time. It’s why “aid” organizations like Air America used food transports to ship guns to anti-Communists in Indochina in the 1960s and ’70s. (Weapons were code-named “hard rice.”) And it’s why Elliott Abrams—the current quarterback of this latest affair in Venezuela—used humanitarian aid shipments to smuggle weapons to the Nicaragua’s Contras in the ’80s. Ultimately, these shipments allow for massive military buildups, without anyone in the media or Congress asking too many questions. After all, what kind of monster is opposed to helping starving people?

It’s impossible to know if the current shipments to Venezuela are being used to transport weapons, although Venezuelan authorities say they have intercepted American arms shipments. But given the history of the U.S. (to say nothing of Abrams’), and the fact that the Trump administration is openly calling for Maduro’s ouster while amassing forces along the Colombian border, it’s not exactly a long shot. Still, our political press dismisses the possibility as tin-foil hat stuff, at least in part because mocking wacky Latin American “conspiracy theories” is a mark of one’s seriousness in foreign policy circles.

Unlike a lot of U.S. regime change activities, reports indicate that this latest stunt was exceptionally rushed and slapdash. The Wall Street Journal paints a picture of a U.S. operation its architects believed would work in a day or two:

“The people who devised it in Caracas and sold it here [in Washington], sold it with the promise that if Guaidó made a move and [South American countries] and the U.S. came in behind, the military would flip and Maduro would go,” said a former senior U.S. official. “They thought it was a 24-hour operation.”

Because the large-scale military defections expected never took place (as they almost never do), the U.S. has had to resort to its Plan B for promoting conflict and galvanizing the Venezuelan opposition: On Sat., Feb. 23, President of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó will carry out a “humanitarian avalanche” at the Venezuelan border with Colombia and Brazil that, when one reads the fine print, sounds a lot like a U.S.-led invasion. Billionaire Richard Branson is reportedly organizing a “humanitarian aid” concert the night before. But we know this is a fig leaf, and we know this because those running this operation say so again and again. Bolton himself has speculated that Maduro could end up in a “beach area like Guantanamo.”

Despite all the evidence before them, MSNBC, CNN and countless other networks and publications across the ideological spectrum refuse to frame this humanitarian gambit as an act of hostility. Instead, knowing what they know and who they are covering, they have largely portrayed Trump, Bolton and Abrams as champions of the Venezuelan people.

It goes without saying that hundreds of thousands are suffering in Venezuela, and the instinct to alleviate that suffering is a healthy one. But a craven marketing stunt by far-right Cold Warriors—without any buy-in from actual aid organizations—cannot be taken at face value.

Just as the U.S. military has made calls to high-ranking Venezuelan officials, I am writing directly to the editors, television producers and reporters of our most prominent news outlets. I’m asking you to defect and come to the side of the patently obvious. Unlike the Pentagon, I can’t bribe you or promise you amnesty, but I can appeal to your basic sense of integrity and intellectual honesty: At best, you are helping provide cover for a campaign designed to starve the Venezuelan people; at worst, you are enabling a military conflict that will drag on for years.

One does not need to hold any normative opinions about the fate of Venezuela to be able to identify a naked PR campaign when they see one. Journalists with blue checkmarks on Twitter must say so before this gets any further out of hand.

How Stupid Do They Think We Are? - Plutocrats Using Logical Fallacies to Defend the Health Care Status Quo

 Roy M. Poses MD 

https://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-stupid-do-they-think-we-are.html

In the early 21st century, the debate about health care reform in the US ramped up.  The result ultimately was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, ACA, "Obamacare"), which arguably improved access to health care, made some reforms in the regulation of health care insurance, but did not affect the fundamental reliance of the US on employer-paid, for-profit health care insurance to finance health care for many patients.  Nor did it really affect the issues we discuss on Health Care Renewal (look here for details).

After the tumultuous election of President Donald Trump, the debate started up again with his and his party's attempt to "repeal and replace" Obamacare.  Arguably, Obamacare ended up damaged but not repealed.  Once again, the issues we discuss on Health Care Renewal were ignored, including threats ot the integrity of the clinical evidence base, deceptive marketing, distortion of health care regulation and policy making, bad leadership and governance, concentration of power, abandonment of health care as a calling, perverse incentives, the cult of leadership, managerialism, impunity enabling corrupt leadership, and taboos, or the anechoic effect.  (Look here for a detailed discussion. )

It is time once again to discuss health care reform in the US.  Now the push is from the Democrats and the left, with the stated goals of making care more universal, and perhaps decreasing or even ending the role of for-profit commercial health care insurance companies.

It is no surprise that those who benefit the most from the current system (even as modified by Obamacare) are rushing to its defense. 

Dark Money to Defend Commercial Health Insurance

We already discussed  how large health care corporations, including pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, have been using dark money to funnel money for distinctly partisan purposes, to defeat whom they perceive as too left-leaning politicians, almost all Democrats.  They seem to fear such politicians might promote health care reform efforts that would be based on "anti-free-market, anti-business ideology," that is efforts to decrease the role of commercial, for-profit health insurance in financing health care.

More recently, the focus has shifted to Democratic proposals for government run single-payer, or "Medicare for all" health insurance. In early January, 2019, the Hill reported

Thomas Donohue, the president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, on Thursday vowed to use all of the Chamber's resources to fight single-payer health care proposals.

'We also have to respond to calls for government-run, single-payer health care, because it just doesn't work,' Donohue said during his annual 'State of American Business' address.

The US Chamber of Commerce historically has had many executives of big health care corporations on its board.  We listed 10 such members in 2015.   It also historically has received financial support from some corporations.  We listed 17 in 2018.


Then later in January, The Hill reported that a group called Partnership for America's Health Future started digital ads attacking "Medicare for All."  The Hill stated its members include major industry players such as America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

So here we have the leaders of big health care corporations funneling corporate money into propaganda campaigns to defeat government run single payer health insurance, an old policy idea that suddenly is looking politically credible.  Current US regulation and practice allows them to hide the exact amounts spent on such campaigns by processing them through dark money organizations.

Such stealth health policy advocacy is now not new.  What is surprising now is how some top leaders are willing to jump into the debate themselves, rather than just trying to manipulate public opinion through public relations/ propaganda proxies.  Here are some telling examples. in chronological order.

Quest Diagnostics CEO Attacks "Medicare-for-All" Using an Appeal to Authority, an Argument by Gibberish, the Non Sequitur Fallacy, (and an Incomplete Comparison) 

On January 24, 2019, Yahoo Finance reported

A top health care CEO is sounding the alarm on 'Medicare for All,' an idea gaining steam in political circles, including from newly-elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

'Most people don’t understand the basics of health-care economics in the United States,' said Steve Rusckowski, chairman & CEO Quest Diagnostics (DGX), in an interview with Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Andy Serwer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland....

Mr Rusckowski implied that he knows a lot more about health care economics than most people, so most people should listen to him.  Thus, he began with an implied logical fallacy, the appeal to authority.

He then presented the justification for his argument.

'The majority of people get their health care from their employers, and the majority of healthcare costs are paid by employers and employees,' he said. 'If you look at the $3.5 trillion spent on healthcare costs, that portion is actually funding the Medicare and Medicaid programs throughout this country.'

The syntax was fractured, and so this was incoherent and confusing. In particular, it was not clear to what "this portion" referred.  $3.5 trillion? Health care costs paid by employers and employees?

The context of his use of that phrase did not help.  Note that US total health spending was reported to be approximately $3.5 trillion in 2017 by the US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  However, that was total health spending, not just the amount spent by Medicare and Medicaid.  Furthermore, Medicare and Medicaid are funded by sources other than employers and their employees.  While employers and employees pay tax on employee income to fund Medicare, general funds from the federal government, and from state governments funds Medicaid. Furthermore, many employers pay parts of their employees' private health insurance premiums, while the employees make up the difference in premiums. Self-employed people may may for their own insurance, etc, etc.

Mr Ruskcowski, not to put to fine a point on it, seemed to speaking gibberish, and would use this gibberish to justify his next point.  So in formal terms, he used the logical fallacy of an argument by gibberish.

When incomprehensible jargon or plain incoherent gibberish is used to give the appearance of a strong argument, in place of evidence or valid reasons to accept the argument.

In any case, Mr Rusckowski went on to argue that he

remained skeptical of a Medicare-for-all plan funded by corporations and employees. 'I don’t think [corporations and employees] can afford to provide that access as described.'

However, not only were his earlier statement gibberish, they were not clearly arguments in support of his contention that corporations and employees cannot "afford to provide that access as described."  So this appeared to be an example of the logical fallacy of the non-sequitur.

Mr Rusckowski's total compensation as CEO of Quest was over $10 million in 2017, as estimated by Bloomberg News.  So it is perhaps not surprising that is self-interest in preserving the status quo was strong enough to motivate him to jump into the debate.  One would think, however, that someone who managed to become a rich CEO of a medical diagnostic company could manage to be a bit more logical.

Anyway, he has some strange bed-fellows in this cause, including two billionaires who are not directly involved in health care corporations, but who have obviously benefited from the current economic status quo.

Michael Bloomberg and Howard Schultz Used the Incomplete Comparison Fallacy

Two billionaires provided striking examples of one logical fallacy. 

First, from the New York Times, January 29, 2019:

Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is considering a 2020 bid on a centrist Democratic platform, rejected the idea of 'Medicare for all,' which has been gaining traction among Democrats.

'I think you could never afford that. You’re talking about trillions of dollars,' Mr. Bloomberg said during a political swing in New Hampshire, which holds the nation’s first primary in 2020.

'I think you can have ‘Medicare for all’ for people that are uncovered,' he added, 'but to replace the entire private system where companies provide health care for their employees would bankrupt us for a very long time.'

Second, from CNN on January 30, 2019:

'Why do you think Medicare-for-all, in your words, is not American?' CNN's Poppy Harlow asked Schultz on Tuesday.

'It's not that it's not American,' Schultz said. 'It's unaffordable.'

'What I believe is that every American has the right to affordable health care as a statement,' Schultz said, lauding the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, as 'the right thing to do.'

He added, 'But now that we look back on it, the premiums have skyrocketed and we need to go back to the Affordable Care Act, refine it and fix it.'

He argued that the Democratic progressive platform of providing Medicare, free college education and jobs for everyone is costly and as 'false as President Trump telling the American people when he was running for president that the Mexicans were going to pay for the wall.'

So both billionaire Bloomberg and billionaire Schultz stated that Medicare-for-all would cost too much.  Yet neither addressed how much our current health care system costs.  However, as a subsequent op-ed in the Washington Post by Paul Waldman pointed out, it only makes sense to talk about affordability in the context of a comparison with a reasonable alternative, say, the current health care system:

there is one thing you absolutely, positively must do whenever you talk about the cost of a universal system — and that journalists almost never do when they’re asking questions. You have to compare what a universal system would cost to what we’re paying now.

There have been some recent attempts to estimate what it would cost to implement, for instance, the single-payer system that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) advocates; one widely cited study, from a source not favorably inclined toward government solutions to complex problems, came up with a figure of $32.6 trillion over 10 years.

That’s a lot of money. But you can’t understand what it means until you realize that last year we spent about $3.5 trillion on health care, and under current projections, if we keep the system as it is now, we’ll spend $50 trillion over the next decade.

Again, you can criticize any particular universal plan on any number of grounds. But if it costs less than $50 trillion over 10 years — which every universal plan does — you can’t say it’s 'unaffordable' or it would 'bankrupt' us, because the truth is just the opposite.

These are text-book examples of the fallacy of incomplete comparison.

By the way, buried amongst his use of gibberish and non-sequiturs, Quest Diagnostics CEO Rusckowski also opined that Medicare-for-all would be unaffordable without any reference to the costs of the status quo, and hence also provided an example of an incomplete comparison.

The Waldman op-ed noted

The fact that these two highly successful businessmen — whose understanding of investments, costs and benefits helped them become billionaires — can say something so completely mistaken and even idiotic is a tribute to the human capacity to take our ideological biases and convince ourselves that they’re not biases at all but are instead inescapable rationality.

Maybe.  However, it may also be a tribute to their arrogance bred by decades of public relations (which Bernays thought sounded better than "propaganda") and disinformation meant to soften up the minds of the public so that they will follow the lead of the rich and powerful.  

Schultz Also Added an Appeal to Tradition (or to Common Practice)

Also on January 29, the Washington Post reported that

Schultz referred to a town hall hosted Monday night by CNN in which Harris embraced a 'Medicare-for-all' single-payer health insurance system and said she would be willing to end private insurance to make it happen.

'That is the kind of extreme policy that is not a policy that I agree with,' Schultz said on 'The View,' adding that doing away with private insurers would lead to major job losses.

'That’s not correct. That’s not American,' Schultz said on CBS. 'What’s next? What industry are we going to abolish next? The coffee industry?'

Presumably, by saying "that's not American," Schultz means that is not what we have always done, that is not what has been traditional American practice, begging the question of whether that practice could be ill-advised.  Thus Schultz appeared to ladle on an appeal to common practice, otherwise known as an appeal to tradition. 

As an aside, the quote also suggests that Schultz's real concern is not with the affordability of Medicare-for-all, particularly in comparison with that of the current system, but with the financial health of the insurance industry.  But that is for another day....

Summary

So, to protect against the dread "Medicare for all," that is, proposals for a government single-payer health insurance system to replace our current practice of financing health care through large, mainly for-profit insurance companies, we see an acceleration of public relations/ propaganda paid by undisclosed donors, that is, via dark money.  We also see prominent multi-millionaire and billionaire executives laying down a barrage of logical fallacies to support the status quo.

It is hard to believe that the defenders of the current system are not mostly self-interested.  That status quo has made some people very rich.  

It is also hard to believe they are stupid.  However, a close reading of their arguments suggests they may think we are stupid, or at least befuddled by repeated public relations/ propaganda/ disinformation campaigns.

In 2011, we wrote,

Wendell Potter, author of Deadly Spin, has provided a chilling picture of health care corporate disinformation campaigns and the tactics used therein.

In particular,

Mr Potter recounted how deceptive PR campaigns subverted the health care reform plans of US President Bill Clinton, reduced the impact of Michael Moore's movie, 'Sicko,' and helped to remodel the recent health care reform bill to reduce its threat to commercial health insurers.  He further noted how PR distracted public attention from the growing faults of a health care system based on commercial health insurance, and how practical and legal safeguards against abuses by insurance companies were eroded.

Furthermore, Mr Potter described 'charm offensives;' the deliberate creation of distractions, including the planting of memes for short-term goals that went on to have long-term adverse effects; fear mongering; the use of front groups, including 'astroturf,' (faux disease advocacy and/or grass roots organizations), public policy advocacy groups, and tame (and conflicted) scientific/professional groups; and intelligence gathering.  He provided some practical advice for detecting such tactics. For example, be very suspicious of policy advocacy by groups with no apparent address or an address identical to that of a PR firm, or with anonymous leaders and/or anonymous financial backing.

Now it is 2019, once again health care reform is in the air, and once again the defenders of the status quo are hard at work.  Now, they are even wealthier than they were 10 years ago, and have even more sophisticated tools, like social media and its hacks, at their disposal.  Still, however, their arguments are ultimately built on sand.

As I did in 2011, it makes sense to quote Wendell Potter

onslaught drastically weakened health-care reform and how it plays an insidious and often invisible role in our political process anywhere that corporate profits are at stake, from climate change to defense policy.
[Potter, Huffington Post]

So,

The onslaughts of spin will not stop, the distortions will not diminish, and the spin will not slow down. To the contrary, spin begets spin, as the successes of corporate PR functionaries increase the revenues of their employers, further funding their employers' efforts to create a more hospitable climate for their business interests. Americans are thus being faced with increasingly subtle but effective assaults on their beliefs and perceptions. Their best defense right now is to understand and to recognize the sophisticated tactics of the spinners trying to manipulate them.

Most important is a singular mandate: Be skeptical.
[Potter, Huffington Post]

I still hope that summarizing some of Mr Potter's amazing points will help us all to be much more skeptical.

You heard it here first.

Posted by Roy M. Poses MD 

Dorotcaia: the Moldova village caught between Russia and Europe

On the eve of a historic deal with the EU, residents of Dorotcaia are lobbying to join their neighbour - the breakaway Russian enclave of Transnistria. Transitions Online reports

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/26/moldova-russia-europe-transnistria-dobrinski

On an early spring day in Dorotcaia in eastern Moldova, about 100 people gather in the central square, in front of the renovated House of Culture. Behind them, a monument dedicated to the Red Army soldiers who liberated the village in 1944 shines in the sun. Mostly, the crowd is made up of elderly men and women. The worried faces of the women are framed by the headscarves so ubiquitous in this part of the world.

The group listens intently.

“They don’t invite you into Europe. They invite you into Europe’s ass,” a man on stage shouts into a microphone. Piotr Dobrinski is the leader of the so-called local soviet, a ghost institution left over from communist times and recognised only by the authorities in Transnistria, the breakaway region of Moldova that sits across the road from Dorotcaia.

Dobrinski, who considers himself the real leader of the village, is trying to mobilise support for a referendum on joining Transnistria, essentially a client territory of Russia.

Meanwhile behind the crowd an anxious mayor, Andrei Lesco, takes small, nervous steps. He sizes up the audience, looks at Dobrinski, and decides to make a move. He mounts the steps and addresses the people.

“My duty, as the legitimate mayor, is to ensure public order, to make sure that there are representatives of the government who can hear you and your demands,” he tells them. “We all want the Republic of Moldova to listen to our pain and our heart.” He pauses. “But if you don’t want that, go to Transnistria.”

Suddenly, the men and women start cheering happily. “Transnistria! We want to be in Transnistria!”

Lesco stands frozen. At the end, an old woman shouts, “You can stay in Moldova if you want to.”

EU deal

Moldova is preparing to sign a trade and association agreement with the EU on Friday 27 June, but only a few who went to listen to Dobrinski are likely to care whether the country is headed for EU membership, or whether Transnistria gets its wish to be internationally recognised as an independent state. For them, Russians or Romanians are the same.

What they really care about is the land problem, and they hope Dobrinski can solve it.

When Transnistria declared itself separate from Moldova, some in this village of 3,500 people owned farmland on the other side of the road, and relied on it for subsistence. In 2003 authorities in the breakaway territory started limiting villagers’ access to the land, but international negotiators helped broker an agreement to resolve the impasse.

That pact expired in December, and the parties have not been able to agree on a new one. The only subsequent offer the farmers have received would effectively force them to lease land they once owned. Some have agreed.

Thus, some 2,600 hectares – about 85% of Dorotcaia’s farmland – is now off-limits to its residents unless they sign the new agreement.

The government of Moldova is working on a compensation plan for those who lost their land, according to Alexandru Zubco, a lawyer and member of Promo-LEX, a human rights group in Chisinau that mainly works on issues in Transdniester.

A week after the crowds came to hear Dobrinski, deputy ministers from the Moldovan capital, Chisinau, came to the village to talk about the land situation. They used words such as “complicated”, “patience”, and “political insecurity” and gave the residents little comfort. Across the road in Transnistria, some villagers said, people have a better life.

“The pensions are higher, the utilities are cheaper,” 71-year-old Ana Ivanovna said.

A few weeks later, Dorotcaia seems quiet. On the main street, amid the post office, the House of Culture, and the monument to Soviet heroes, is a tiny history museum crammed into a shack.

Its director, Andrei Berzan, said the village has long been caught between the east and west. It was on the front line in the second world war from 1941 to 1944, and again in 1992 when Transnistria fought a war to split from Moldova. On its streets have walked German, Soviet, Moldovan, and Transnistrian soldiers. The Red Army monument lists 700 Russian soldiers who liberated the village in 1944.

“Those were the real heroes,” Berzan says.

The quiet is only an illusion. In reality, the village is divided: some of its people have Transnistrian passports and dream of a glorious future when Dorotcaia will join the separatist region. Younger villagers, who don’t have nostalgic memories of Soviet times, count the days until 27 June, when Moldova is to sign an agreement on closer ties with the EU. They believe the pact will open the borders and make it easier for them to travel and work in Europe. Only recently Moldovans won the right to travel into the EU without a visa.

School wars

While the villagers in Dorotcaia look fretfully across the road at the plots they used to till, some students in a neighbouring village in Transnistria make a daily trip in the other direction; heading to Dorotcaia to learn in a way not permitted by the separatist authorities.

Stefan cel Mare si Sfant school in Grigoriopol was one of only eight schools in Transnistria that obeyed an order from the Moldovan government in 1989 to switch from the Cyrillic to Latin script. A subsequent order from the separatist authorities forced them to adopt the Cyrillic alphabet, and all schools in Transnistria were required to teach in Russian, Ukrainian, or Moldovan, an ungainly hybrid of Romanian and Russian using Cyrillic characters.

In 1996, when administrators at Stefan cel Mare repeatedly asked for permission to switch back to the Latin alphabet, the school came under intense pressure. Three teachers and administrators, including principal Eleonora Cercavschi, were arrested and held for a week. In a 2008 lecture she gave upon receiving a top international human rights award, Cercavschi said she was threatened with never seeing her children again if she persisted in teaching the Romanian language.

The educators were called “enemies of the state” in the local press, and in 2002 police in Transnistria “stormed the school and evicted the teachers, the pupils, and their parents who were inside it,” according to a summary of a case Promo-LEX argued before the European Court of Human Rights in 2009 on behalf of Cercavschi, her colleagues, and other plaintiffs. In an October 2012 ruling the court held Russia liable for violating the educators’ rights and ordered it to pay 1.02 million euros ($1.4 million) in damages. To date the award has not been paid.

The principal and teachers decided to move operations. They rented a couple of buses and – after reaching a tacit agreement with Tiraspol, the de factocapital of Transnistria – they started to teach “abroad” in Dorotcaia.

Every day, three buses filled with kids of all ages cross the border and park at the gates of a school in Dorotcaia. Three hundred pupils pour out of the buses with huge backpacks filled with books in Romanian.

In the building, some of the classrooms have filled up with Romanian-speaking children, while some have only one or two pupils.

“Most of the parents who send their children to our school keep it a secret. It’s a brave and risky decision, but they fight for their right,” Cercavschi says.

Even with the unspoken agreement, the school’s accounts in Tiraspol were temporarily frozen in January 2013, and the teachers could be stopped and arrested at the border at any time.

Ukraine comparison

Not far away, Ana Ivanovna is hoeing weeds outside the broken wooden fence around her front garden. The flowers on her blue headscarf match the tulips on her robe.

She’s cheerful and polite at first but starts crying when asked about the land problem.

“The situation is very bad. People are prohibited from crossing the border to sow seeds, but it’s the right time now. We have nothing else to live off of. What are we supposed to do?”

Ivanovna remembers the war in 1992. She points out the spot in her yard where Moldovan soldiers made camp. “They shot and destroyed my house. The windows, the armchairs, the fridge,” she says.

She leans on the hoe and whispers that she’s afraid of a new war. Asked about recent events in Ukraine, she blames the clashes on “Ukrainian fascist nationalists”. She has nephews working in Moscow and all her television channels are in Russian. For her, Ukraine is a land of chaos and anarchy.

“I keep hearing on TV that Moldova will join the EU, then Romania, and all those fascists will come to make us pay taxes on each cow and each chicken. I don’t want that. I’d rather live with Russians,” she says.

In a little shop on the main street, a shopkeeper explains how some people have negotiated the divide.

Valentina, who declines to give her last name, says her husband has a veteran’s pension from fighting on the side of Moldova during the separatist conflict. But it wasn’t enough for the couple to live on, so she took Transnistrian “citizenship” and brings home a pension three times higher.

That math is more or less confirmed by Lesco, the mayor, who says the minimum monthly pension in Moldova is 800 lei ($57), compared with 1,800 lei on the Transnistrian side.

Such largess is possible thanks largely to money and subsidies from Russia. For years Transnistria has not paid for its natural gas. The state-owned Russian energy giant Gazprom, which supplies the territory, has not collected on a bill that is nearing $4bn. It also gets $27m annually from Moscow for pensions.

Surrounded by candies, sausages, napkins, and cheap cigarettes, Valentina uses an old abacus to calculate. “If Moldova joined Romania and all these villages remained with Transnistria, we would be very happy,” she says.

Referendums, petitions and independence

Back in his office, Lesco seems angry. Or perhaps he just hates journalists.

“You write about this and the story gets bigger and bigger, while in reality there were only a couple of drunks in the square, demanding something that they don’t even understand,” he declares.

The Moldovan flag is everywhere in this empty room: on the pink wall, on the desk, next to the window.

“The newspapers said I’m the one who doesn’t want to join Transnistria, that I’m the one who doesn’t want to organise the referendum. But that’s a lie,” he says. “If they, the people, want that, I’ll do it tomorrow. But I’m telling you, I can’t let a couple of drunks decide the future of the village. What happens if Moldova joins the EU tomorrow, Ukraine blocks the border with Transnistria, and the region is strangled?”

Lesco, in his third term as mayor, dismisses Dobrinski as a “charlatan".

 “He has no office, no secretary, no legislative or executive power whatsoever. He only jerks people around, promising them a good future,” he exclaims.

Going outside for a much-needed cigarette, Lesco warns that Dobrinski doesn’t give interviews.

It is easy to find Dobrinski – or anyone – in such a small village. Helpful residents lead the way, insisting that he is a good man.

His house is a small, square building with green walls and little white hearts on the gates, which open only when his daughter emerges to explain that he talks only with journalists from Transnistria.

“He will give interviews to anyone else when he gets an actual office and recognition. You’re invited to talk to him on that day. He works a lot to help people,” she says before turning around and walking away from the muddy road.

According to lawyers from Promo-LEX, that help includes drawing up petitions supporting recognition of Transnistria’s independence, to be sent to the separatist authorities. One teacher from the Stefan cel Mare school says she saw her name on one such list – although she had not signed anything.

In tiny Moldova, voters choose between Russia and Europe

Anatol Golea

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/tiny-moldova-voters-choose-between-russia-europe-030529454.html

Voters in Moldova head to the polls on Sunday for a parliamentary election reflecting the tiny ex-Soviet republic's long-standing division between pro-Russians and pro-Europeans.

Wedged between Ukraine and Romania, Moldova has struggled to find its place since gaining independence with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

While many in the country of 3.5 million want to maintain close ties with Moscow, others want to follow the example of Romania -- with which Moldova shares a language and long history -- and look west to the European Union.

Sunday's vote is shaping up as a three-way race between the pro-Russian Socialist party of President Igor Dodon, the ruling Democratic party and a pro-European alliance.

It will be held under a new electoral system that divides the 101-seat parliament into seats elected by party lists and by individual constituencies.

Dodon's pro-Moscow party is leading in the polls, advocating for Moldova to join Russia's Eurasian Economic Union over the EU.

The alliance of pro-European parties, which favours joining the EU and NATO, comes second.

In third place is the centre-left Democratic Party led by powerful oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc, which holds a majority in the current parliament and leads the government. It has pursued a balanced approach between Moscow and Brussels.

Campaign posters in Russian and Romanian hang over a flea market in the capital Chisinau, where volunteers from all parties were handing out leaflets to passersby this week.

At a stand of the pro-EU ACUM alliance of parties, campaigner Ruslan Verbitchi told AFP that Moldova has two major problems: "Endemic corruption and the violation of human rights."

Voters, however, showed little enthusiasm for the polls. With corruption widespread and the country among the poorest in Europe, few have much trust in Moldova's politicians.

- 'All liars and thieves' -

"They are all liars and thieves," said Tatiana, a 60-year-old former factory worker, complaining of a pension of less than 50 euros per month.

"How can you live on that?"

Macar Naghirnaec, a 23-year-old NGO worker, said it has hardly surprising that voters had little faith.

"Moldova's democracy is getting worse. People who were convicted by a court will get to parliament," said Naghirnaec.

Many cited the example of businessman Ilan Shor, who was convicted in a billion-dollar fraud case dubbed Moldova's "crime of the century" and is likely to make it into parliament.

Shor remains free pending an appeal, but critics say the fact that he is allowed to stand despite his conviction is a damning indictment of Moldova's political system.

Analysts fear a new period of instability for the country after the vote, with no party likely to gain the majority needed to form a government.

"With political apathy and distrust of politicians, there is a risk of weak participation," said Igor Botan, the director of the ADEPT think tank.

Moldova signed an association agreement with the EU in 2014, but last year Brussels reduced its financial aid to the country citing a "deterioration of the rule of law".

Russia has meanwhile rallied Dodon, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.

"Of course, Russia is not indifferent to the formation of the Moldovan parliament," Putin said after a meeting with Dodon in Moscow last month.

As well as seeking to keep Moldova in its sphere of influence, Moscow has long backed separatists in the country's Russian-speaking breakaway region of Transnistria.

Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev has warned that the West could be seeking to stoke divisions in Moldova, pointing to the pro-EU revolution in Ukraine that ousted a Moscow-backed leader.

The West, he said, could "push Moldovan society towards division and conflict.... We have already seen this in Ukraine in 2014."

US Housing Market In Freefall As New Buyers Can't Afford A Home

by Tyler Durden

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-21/existing-home-sales-crash-accelerates-buyers-cant-afford-house

After NAHB's optimism rebounded sharply earlier this week, all eyes are on this morning's existing home sales data for any signs of optimism. Alas, with consensus expecting a tiny rebounding in January following December's sharp drop, the deterioration in the US home market continued continued, and January existing home unexpectedly dropped 1.2% (exp. +0.2%), to 4.94 million, missing expectations of a rebound to 5.00 million.

After December's revision higher to 5.00 million, the January SAAR of 4.94 million was the first sub-5MM print since 2015, while the parallel pending home sales series confirms even more weakness is in store.

Needless to say, it is very troubling that Americans are unable to afford home purchases with the 30% mortgage at just 4.5%, and suggests that even if inflation picks up, the Fed may have no choice but to keep rates flat to avoid a housing market crash.

As usual, NAR chief economist Larry Yun was optimistic, saying that he does not expect the numbers to decline further going forward. "Existing home sales in January were weak compared to historical norms; however, they are likely to have reached a cyclical low. Moderating home prices combined with gains in household income will boost housing affordability, bringing more buyers to the market in the coming months."

One wonders what "gains in household income" he is talking about.

Meanwhile, properties are failing to sell as the slowdown spreads: Properties remained on the market for an average of 49 days in January, up from 46 days in December and 42 days a year ago. Thirty-eight percent of homes sold in January were on the market for less than a month.

Still, despite the ongoing slowdown, or perhaps adding to it, the median existing-home price rose once again, hitting $247,500, up 2.8% from January 2018 ($240,800). January’s price increase marks the 83rd straight month of year-over-year gains.

Even so, Yun noted that this median home price growth was the slowest since February 2012, and is cautions that the figures do not yet tell the full story for the month of January. “Lower mortgage rates from December 2018 had little impact on January sales, however, the lower rates will inevitably lead to more home sales.”

Regional breakdown:

January existing-home sales in the Northeast increased 2.9 percent to an annual rate of 700,000, 1.4 percent below a year ago. The median price in the Northeast was $270,000, which is up 0.4 percent from January 2018.

the Midwest, existing-home sales fell 2.5 percent from last month to an annual rate of 1.16 million in January, down 7.9 percent overall from a year ago. The median price in the Midwest was $189,700, which is up 1.4 percent from last year.

Existing-home sales in the South dropped 1.0 percent to an annual rate of 2.08 million in January, down 8.4 percent from last year. The median price in the South was $214,800, up 2.5 percent from a year ago.

Existing-home sales in the West dipped 2.9 percent to an annual rate of 1.00 million in January, 13.8 percent below a year ago. The median price in the West was $374,600, up 2.9 percent from January 2018.

While total inventory grew for the sixth straight month, Yun says the market is still suffering from an inventory shortage. “In particular, the lower end of the market is experiencing a greater shortage, and more home construction is needed,” says Yun.

“Taking steps to lower construction costs would be a tremendous help. Local zoning ordinances should also be reformed, while the housing permitting process must be expedited; these simple acts would immediately increase homeownership opportunities and boost local economies.”

With existing-home sales accounting for about 90% of U.S. housing, it would seem Jay Powell's dovish tilt just got more support, but at what point does bad news flip to being 'bad news' as growth hopes get hammered.

World's food supply under 'severe threat' from loss of biodiversity

Plants, insects and organisms crucial to food production in steep decline, says UN

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/feb/21/worlds-food-supply-under-severe-threat-from-loss-of-biodiversity

The world’s capacity to produce food is being undermined by humanity’s failure to protect biodiversity, according to the first UN study of the plants, animals and micro-organisms that help to put meals on our plates.

The stark warning was issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation after scientists found evidence the natural support systems that underpin the human diet are deteriorating around the world as farms, cities and factories gobble up land and pump out chemicals.

Over the last two decades, approximately 20% of the earth’s vegetated surface has become less productive, said the report, launched on Friday.

It noted a “debilitating” loss of soil biodiversity, forests, grasslands, coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds and genetic diversity in crop and livestock species. In the oceans, a third of fishing areas are being overharvested.

Many species that are indirectly involved in food production, such as birds that eat crop pests and mangrove trees that help to purify water, are less abundant than in the past, noted the study, which collated global data, academic papers and reports by the governments of 91 countries.

It found 63% of plants, 11% of birds, and 5% of fish and fungi were in decline. Pollinators, which provide essential services to three-quarters of the world’s crops, are under threat. As well as the well-documented decline of bees and other insects, the report noted that 17% of vertebrate pollinators, such as bats and birds, were threatened with extinction.

Once lost, the species that are critical to our food systems cannot be recovered, it said. “This places the future of our food and the environment under severe threat.”

“The foundations of our food systems are being undermined,” wrote Graziano da Silva, the director general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, in an introduction to the study. “Parts of the global report make sombre reading. It is deeply concerning that in so many production systems in so many countries, biodiversity for food and agriculture and the ecosystem services it provides are reported to be in decline.”

Agriculture was often to blame, he said, due to land-use changes and unsustainable management practices, such as over-exploitation of the soil and a reliance on pesticides, herbicides and other agro-chemicals.

Most countries said the main driver for biodiversity loss was land conversion, as forests were cut down for farm fields, and meadows covered in concrete for cities, factories and roads. Other causes include overexploitation of water supplies, pollution, over-harvesting, the spread of invasive species and climate change.

The trend is towards uniformity. Although the world is producing more food than in the past, it is relying on ever-expanding monocultures.

Two-thirds of crop production comes from just nine species (sugar cane, maize, rice, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, oil-palm fruit, sugar beet and cassava), while many of the remaining 6,000 cultivated plant species are in decline and wild food sources are becoming harder to find.

Although consumers did not yet notice any impact when they went shopping, the authors of the report said that could change.

“The supermarkets are full of food, but it is mostly imports from other countries and there are not many varieties. The reliance on a small number of species means they are more susceptible to disease outbreaks and climate change. It renders food production less resilient,” warned Julie Bélanger, the coordinator of the report.

As examples, the report noted how overdependence on a narrow range of species was a major factor in the famine caused by potato blight in Ireland in the 1840s, cereal crop failures in the US in the 20th century, and losses of taro production in Samoa in the 1990s.

“There is an urgent need to change the way food is produced and ensure that biodiversity is not something that is swept aside but is treated as an irreplaceable resource and a key part of management strategies,” said Bélanger.

The report found evidence that attitudes and practices were slowly changing. In recent years, there has been a greater uptake in sustainable forest management, ecosystem approaches to fisheries, aquaponics and polyculture. But the authors said there had been insufficient progress. Organic agriculture, for example, now covers 58m hectares (143m acres) worldwide, but this is only 1% of global farmland.

The report signalled a heightened interest by governments in biodiversity, a subject that rarely gets the same attention as climate change. Many states reported economic losses caused by disappearing or shifting ecosystems. Ireland, Norway, Poland and Switzerland noted shrinking bumblebee populations. Egypt was concerned that its fishing industry would suffer because fish were migrating northwards due to rising ocean temperatures. Gambia said communities were being forced to buy expensive industrially-produced products because free wild food sources were becoming scarcer.

The biodiversity crisis is set to rise up the global agenda, with discussion on the topic at the next G7 in April, a World Conservation Congress in June, and then a major UN conference in Beijing next year.

“Around the world, the library of life that has evolved over billions of years – our biodiversity – is being destroyed, poisoned, polluted, invaded, fragmented, plundered, drained and burned at a rate not seen in human history,” Ireland’s president, Michael Higgins, said at a biodiversity conference in Dublin on Thursday. “If we were coal miners we’d be up to our waists in dead canaries.”