Aversion to facts is endemic among the right-wing. However, even among certain quarters of the left-wing, mostly neo-Trotskyists and affiliated anarchists, there is an increasing rejection of Covid-19 pandemic public health restrictions. The present-day rejection of vaccinations, social distancing, personal protective equipment, common sense sanitation steps, and other measures designed to protect the public from the raging Covid virus was not even seen in past pandemics, including the 1918 influenza, the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, and the 2009 H1N1 novel virus (“swine flu”) pandemic. Unlike the 1918 influenza and Covid-19, the SARS outbreak was contained as that – an outbreak – and never reached the pandemic stage. Quick reaction by governments and the World Health Organization (WHO) ensured that the mortality from H1N1, which spread from Mexico, did not exceed 12,500 deaths worldwide.

It seems mind boggling that from 1918 to 1919, people around the world and with only newspapers as their major source of information, were more willing to accept the recommendations of doctors, nurses, the Red Cross, and government public health officials than today, with 24-hour satellite news, the Internet, and smart phones and smart watches.

In 1918 and 1919, Americans, who were used to following government directions during World War I, did not pitch fits and engage in mass protest actions when the U.S. Surgeon-General, Dr. Rupert Blue, who served in his post from 1912 to 1920, mandated quarantines to stop the spread of the 1918 influenza. Dr. Blue, a past president of the American Medical Association, cooperated with the American Red Cross and state boards of health to deal with the 1918-19 global pandemic. No one of any importance questioned the motives of Dr. Blue, the Red Cross, or state public health directors as some conspiracy theorists and far right-wing armed gangs have done during Covid-19 with regard to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and various state governors, mayors, and their respective public health directors.

In 1918, after the cities of San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, Sacramento, Denver, Indianapolis, and Pasadena, California imposed mandatory mask laws, only a few odd balls and crackpots, including members of the small Anti-Mask League, opposed the ordinances. Masks were then made from gauze and cheesecloth and their effectiveness was better than using nothing. That said, most people did not object to wearing the masks. Nor was the public tolerant of public sneezers, coughers, and spitters. The average member of the public in 1918 and 1919 had much more common sense than does his or her grandchildren and great grandchildren have today. In many cities, people waited in line to receive masks at distribution centers. With world mortality from the “Great Influenza” topping between 50 million and 100 million people, the men and women of 1918 did not have to be coerced into the truth about the threat they were dealing with. People had to store corpses of flu victims in closets, basements, and on front porches until they could be collected to be buried in mass graves. Calls went out for volunteer gravediggers. School teachers, idled by canceled classes, volunteered as nurse assistants.

Red Cross workers and volunteers were enlisted by government authorities to order slackers to don masks. Mask violators in San Francisco faced fines of up to $10 a day or ten days in jail. Most churches canceled services on their own and did not have to be pressured by local government authorities to do so.

The anti-public health influenza naysayers and village idiots of 1918 and 1919 were ostracized by society and certainly not given quarter by President Woodrow Wilson, Dr. Blue, state governors, or any member of the U.S. Congress valuing his seat. The present-day nitwittery about Covid-19 mandatory health measures, including Covid vaccines, exhibited by those on television and the radio, as well as those serving in public office, would have thoroughly bewildered the politicians and journalists of the post-World War I era.

In 1918, when colleges called off football games to stop the flu’s spread, President Wilson did not carry on like a three-year old baby, as did Donald Trump in reacting to football cancellations. Unlike his present-day medical professional namesakes – Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, an ophthalmologist, and his father, one-time Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, a gynecologist, Salt Lake City’s health commissioner, Dr. Samuel G. Paul, called the wearing of face masks “the most certain preventive measure against infection that can be taken.” In 1918, Dr. Paul of Salt Lake City was more knowledgeable about infectious diseases than the father-son Dr. Pauls are today. A very sad commentary on what passes as legitimate discourse in the Party of Trump.

Today, irresponsible purveyors of information to the public have suggested that Covid-19 is caused by 5G wireless networks, a Chinese government bio-warfare laboratory, Microsoft founder Bill Gates in collusion with George Soros, and genetically-modified crops. Compare such bunkum to the informed news report about the origins of the 1918 flu in the July 13, 1918 “Salt Lake Telegram”:

“Epidemic of Influenza Threatens Whole World — LONDON July 13 — Is the world face to face with another International epidemic of influenza commonly known in America as ‘the grippe?’ The obnoxious disease first became epidemic in Spain a few months ago. Even King Alfonso fell a victim to it. Hardly a city or town in Spain escaped.

Then it spread to Germany and the German army became infected. So widespread was the epidemic in Hunland that the delay in resuming the German drive on the western front has been ascribed to it.

Now the influenza has spread to England and whole counties are suffering-from it. The epidemic has reached the midlands, schools have been closed to prevent its further spread and many mines and factories are in danger of shutting down.

It seems likely that the epidemic will soon assume the proportions of a pandemic – as in Spain and Germany. Will the disease spread to the United States and cripple that country’s war industries also?

The present prevalence of the disease is the most widespread since the worldwide epidemic of 1889, when every country on the globe was affected. There were recurring epidemics in 1893, 1894 and 1895, but they were viewed as of the persisting epidemic of several years before.

The grippe plague seems to have no system in spreading itself. It jumps from one country to another over seas and mountains. That was the case in 1889. In the present epidemic it has jumped France and the English channel to England.

Of course, there is always more or less of la grippe in America, both winter and summer. But English physicians are warning their brothers in the United States to be on the lookout for a real epidemic.

Influenza is extremely infectious and is caused by a microbe known to scientists as ‘Pfeiffer’s bacillus.’ The fact that that it has a German name Is no guaranty that its present spread is due to a German plot to make the whole world sick, for Germany was one of the first nations attacked.

Everybody knows – to his sorrow – the symptoms of the disease and it is important, if the spread is to be checked, to consult a physician and dose up with quinine immediately they are felt coming on.”

Even during wartime in 1918, when anti-German propaganda was at a fever’s pitch in the United States, the newspapers were warning Americans not to engage in senseless conspiracy theories about the influenza being some sort of German biological warfare attack, merely because the virus was called Pfeiffer’s bacillus. And, although the 1918 influenza was erroneously called the “Spanish flu,” it was realized by many that it received that name because the newspapers in non-belligerent Spain, which were not under the type of wartime censorship of the press existing in France, Germany, and Britain, were the first to extensively report on the virus and its rapid spread. Some newspapers accurately reported that Spain was not the point of origin of the influenza but a recipient nation. Dr. William R. Brown, the City Physician of Ogden, Utah, stated that although it was known as the “Spanish Influenza,” there was “no reason to believe that this particular epidemic originated in Spain.” Dr. Brown’s advice resembled that of public health authorities today: “Wash the hands often. Avoid over crowded places. Keep plenty of fresh air circulating through your rooms from open windows.”

Compare that reaction to present-day irresponsible conspiracies, including those spread by Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, and other politicians of the far-right – all in connivance with conservative media outlets — that Covid-19 was developed in secret by Chinese scientists as some sort of bio-weapon. The virus has even been given names like the “Wuhan flu,” “China virus,” and other, more racist, monikers.

It is shameful that the people of 1918 were far more responsible in dealing with a pandemic – with their relatively limited information resources – than people are today with a wealth of information gadgetry at their disposal.

As the “Yellow Vest,” or Gilet Jaunes, protest in France continues to perplex and concern the French government and European elites, a new “counter-protest” has emerged in response to the popular protest movement now entering its 12^th week.

Protesters branding themselves as the “Red Scarves,” or Foulards Rouge, descended on Paris this past Sunday in order to protest the “violence” of some Gilet Jaunes protesters and a desire to see the country return to “normalcy.” The French government, which has sought to weaken and disperse the Yellow Vests movement since its inception, stated that the Red Scarves numbered around 10,500 in Paris, while other reports claimed that the demonstration was significantly smaller than the government-supplied figure.

The group has been described as “diverse” — much like the Yellow Vests, who have drawn support from across the French political spectrum — and “apolitical,” as its leadership have stated that the Red Scarves are not necessarily supportive of French President Emmanuel Macron, whose ouster is being sought by Yellow Vests demonstrators. Some participants who were interviewed on Sunday stated that they were not protesting against the Yellow Vests but instead in favor of protecting the integrity of France’s political institutions. This has led the Red Scarves themselves, as well as subsequent media reports, to portray the group as representing France’s “silent majority” that – until now – had refrained from demonstrating.

According to reports from mainstream outlets, the Red Scarves movement – which was joined by another pro-government counter-protest group, the “Blue Vests” — was a direct response to violence from some members of the large Yellow Vests protest movement that has resulted in the destruction of property and clashes with police. Yellow Vest organizers have disavowed the use of violence and have blamed “black bloc” groups for using the movement as a pretext for committing violent acts.

Notably, reports of such clashes largely declined to mention the role of French police in causing and fomenting violence, despite the abundance of video evidence documenting hundreds of instances of police brutality against unarmed and even prone protesters, as well as innocent bystanders. The Red Scarves themselves have also overlooked this aspect, both by “urging respect for French authorities” and by chanting pro-police slogans, as well as by asserting that French policemen have acted responsibly in response to the Yellow Vests despite the fact that the vast majority of injuries suffered since the protests first began last November were caused by the actions of militarized riot police. Over 2,000 have been injured and 10 have been killed since the protests began.

Given their relatively sudden appearance and sympathetic media coverage within France and throughout the Western world, the Red Scarves have drawn skeptical scrutiny from Yellow Vest members, some of whom have described them as “pro-Macron stooges.” While it is difficult to know if the origins of the Red Scarves are as organic as has been portrayed in mainstream reports, there are certain aspects of the movement that have raised suspicion among journalists reporting from France and other observers.

For instance, evidence reported on by French media and journalists who have been closely covering the protests has shown thatat least half of the Red Scarves who participated in Sunday’s demonstrations had been bused into Paris for the demonstration. This has led to speculation about the movement’s actual extent of popular support, both in Paris and nationwide, as well as speculation that some Red Scarves had been paid to travel to Paris to participate in the demonstration.

There is also the fact that the Red Scarves is a formal, state-recognized association, as opposed to the Yellow Vest movement, which is a grassroots entity. According to investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, who lives in France, the fact that the Red Scarves is a formal association shows that it was planned long before the Yellow Vest movement was accused of fomenting violence. Beeley told MintPress News that, because of the length of the process needed to navigate French bureaucracy, in order for the Red Scarves to have been created on December 21st, the three directors of the group would have had to have initiated the process soon after the Yellow Vests protests began in mid-November.

A red scarf protester stands next to a police van in Paris, France, Jan. 27, 2019. Kamil Zihnioglu | AP

If this is the case, it greatly undercuts the prevailing narrative that the Red Scarves movement is a response to recent acts of violence associated with the Yellow Vests protests. Indeed, even the founder of the Red Scarves – Fabien Homenor, a computer scientist – told French media that he would have “donned a Yellow Vest” during the first weeks of the protest because he agreed with their initial concerns — i.e., the controversial fuel tax that Macron’s government has since scrapped following the success of the protests. This raises the question, why would Homenor create an association to counter the Yellow Vests at a time when he claims he supported their efforts?

Playing up, playing down, the numbers

An examination of mainstream reports on Sunday’s demonstration suggests an effort to inflate the Red Scarves’ importance and to build their image as “non-violent” and diminish the comparative significance of the Yellow Vests movement. For instance, the Washington Post stated that “Approximately 10,500 people marched in Paris [as part of the Red Scarves demonstration] on Sunday, according to police figures. That was more than twice the number that donned yellow vests in the capital the day before, when about 4,000 marched in Paris and 69,000 marched nationwide, according to the Interior Ministry.”

Thus, while the Post notes the available statistics, it claims that the Red Scarves demonstrations, which occurred only in Paris, were larger than Yellow Vests protests a day prior in the same city — but conflates Saturday’s Paris protest with the nationwide Yellow Vests protest in which a combined 73,000 people participated. A more accurate portrayal of the situation may have noted that, when both are examined from the national perspective, the Yellow Vests in their 11th week saw nearly seven times more participation than the Red Scarves in their first demonstration. The Post also failed to mention that the Red Scarves protesters were largely bused into Paris from other French cities.

The Post also called the demonstration “the long-awaited intervention in a story line that, until now, had featured just one side of a national conversation on social inequality,” even though the Red Scarves were not explicitly protesting against the Yellow Vests’ demands relating to inequality, but instead focusing on the alleged methods of some of their members.

Notably, the Post’s article barely mentions the horrific wounding of Jerome Rodrigues, a key figure in the Yellow Vest movement, whom witnesses have said was deliberately targeted by French police with a flashball grenade launcher at close range. As a consequence, Rodrigues suffered a horrific injury to his right eye and will now be disabled for the rest of his life, according to his lawyer. Other mainstream reports similarly focused on the Red Scarves movement and relegated mention of Rodriques’ injuries to the final paragraphs.

Exploiting, or manufacturing, the backlash

Whether or not the Red Scarves movement is an establishment-backed effort to divide the highly successful Yellow Vest protests remains to be seen. However, it ultimately matters little if the Red Scarves’ motives are genuine or not, as the French government and a sympathetic international press have already shown they are all too eager to push to divide the Yellow Vests movement, or at least weaken it, by playing the two groups off of each other.

While the French government and well-known media outlets had already been busy demonizing the group despite strong popular support across France, with a new group having emerged as its apparent antithesis, the pressure will now grow to disperse the Yellow Vest movement while also attempting to use the Red Scarves to manufacture support for draconian government policies and police crackdowns aimed at finally ending the establishment-threatening protests.

mintpressnews.com

A Eurostat press release states that without an adequate policy that could completely alter trends in the current fight against poverty, Europe will achieve nothing. When presenting the experts’ report to the public, the head of Eurostat, Walter Radermacher, chose to avoid answering the question, is the European Union capable of defeating poverty at all? 

In the European Union, it is generally accepted that the biggest threat to the well-being of Europeans is what is referred to as monetary poverty, which covers almost 84 million people. The monetary poverty indicator reflects the number of citizens whose real earnings are less than 60 percent of the national average. In Europe it is believed that this level of poverty ensures physiological survival. 

According to the German statistical office DESTATIS, for example, 15.8 percent of Germans were living below the poverty line in 2011, which in Germany is equal to 60 percent of the average income, or 940 euro per month. Someone living in Ukraine or Belarus would probably say, «Good grief, if only we could have such poverty!» They would say it… but they would be wrong, since prices in Germany are incomparably higher than in CIS countries. At the beginning of November, for example, a litre of 95 petrol cost 1.51 euro in Germany, bread cost between 1 and 5 euro, and a kilogramme of beef tenderloin cost between 18 and 25 euro. 

As well as monetary poverty there is also material deprivation, which primarily manifests itself in unsatisfactory living conditions and a lack of good-quality food. 43 million people in the European Union are suffering as a result of material deprivation.

In addition, nearly 39 million are recognised as «socially marginalised». This group includes members of households in which the intensity of labour is less than 20 percent of what is potentially possible. Almost 14 million of these are not exposed to either monetary poverty or material deprivation, but official statistics count them as «poor». That is probably justified, however, since a sense of one’s own irrelevance is sometimes more traumatising than material difficulties.

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With the increase in the scale of poverty in Europe, the problem of food that is more or less decent is becoming increasingly important. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies recently published a report suggesting that millions of Europeans cannot afford to feed themselves and are being forced to ask for charitable donations. 

The Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Yves Daccord, says that there has not been such a large-scale operation to provide food aid in Europe since the Second World War. According to Daccord, Europe is currently facing its «worst humanitarian crisis in six decades». 

Statistics indicate that in 22 European countries between 2009 and 2012, the number of people asking for charitable donations grew from 2 million to 3.5 million (by 75 percent). Even in relatively affluent Germany, there are 600,000 people who would not be able to manage without food aid or free meals. 

People sometimes have to choose between paying for housing and paying for food, like in France. Under threat of eviction, three quarters of the French population living in need chose to ask for free soup and keep the roof over their heads. 

Nobody is talking about a mass famine in relatively prosperous Germany, Benelux, Scandinavia and France, of course. But there is an alarming situation developing in southern Europe, however. The most serious situations are in Spain, Greece and Italy, as well as the poorest EU member countries such as Romania, for example.

The number of people living in absolute poverty in Spain has doubled since 2008 and now stands at 3 million people. Italy was also faced with an extremely serious situation when, as a result of the financial and economic crisis, more than 100,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises closed, resulting in a jump in unemployment and an increase in the impoverishment of the population.

Two thirds of the Red Cross branches in EU countries are now having to hand out food to Europeans in need. Red Cross staff are being kept particularly busy in Spain. In 2012, the Red Cross handed out more than 33,000 tons of food aid to hungry Spaniards, where 3 million people in the country asked for help. Furthermore, in a number of cases the Red Cross also helped to pay for electricity, water and housing. More than 20,000 Spanish families received financial aid.

Every 7th Romanian – more than 3 million people – is living in poverty. The relative level of poverty in Romania has grown in recent years to 40 percent. This is already the fourth year that the Romanian Red Cross has been distributing food aid. In 2012, food aid was given to more than 80,000 families.

* * *

At the end of April this year, The New York Times published a report from Greece which told the story of Leonidas Nikos, the principal of an elementary school. He says that children no longer play during their breaks, but spend whole days hanging around the school and even spend their breaks rummaging around in rubbish bins in search of food. The school is in Piraeus, a working-class suburb of Athens. The children’s parents often admit that they have been unable to find work for many months. All their savings have gone and the only food they have is a limited amount of pasta and ketchup.

Then there is the situation in Poland, where 2.5 million people live below the minimum subsistence level. Every 3rd child in Poland knows firsthand what poverty is, and every 10th child in the country is underfed. For 70,000 children, meanwhile, lunch in the school canteen will be their only meal of the day, reported Dzennik – Gazeta pravna in March of this year.

«Nearly 8 percent of children do not eat breakfast in the morning and do not take food to school with them», the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita wrote at the end of February. «The most undernourished children are those between the ages of 6 and 12». This could mean that a total of 800,000 children throughout the country are going without food, according to the report The Hunger and Undernourishment of Children in Poland, prepared by the Research House Maison. 

More than 14 percent of the population in Poland is unemployed. Incidentally, unemployment in the EU reached a record 12.2 percent in September, covering 19.5 million people. Youth unemployment, meanwhile, is at a staggering 23%. It is interesting that these figures are better in Ukraine – 8 percent and 19 percent respectively.

A clear correlation can be seen between the level of unemployment and the problems being experienced by children. In Spain, unemployment stands at 21 percent, while 25 percent of children are undernourished. Spain, Italy and Greece are the most typical examples in this regard. School leavers and even university graduates are preferring to live with their parents. If there is no work, where are they going to go? 

The financial catastrophe in Greece has completely destroyed the «European» consumer conscience of the middle class. First their wages were cut and their job security was taken away, then they began to be dismissed without any redundancy pay. The vast majority of children (55 percent) in Greek families like these are also unemployed. Families fall into poverty then fall apart. School attendance falls while unemployment prospects disappear, and the ghost of lifelong unemployment becomes increasingly apparent. Many young people have still not found work by the age of 30. No work means no opportunity to start a family, to have children. The informal solidarity of random street groups is coming more and more to the fore, and the sons of the poor are siding with the anarchists. By no means all of these are responding with the Neo-Nazi slogans of the Golden Dawn party, but they are getting ready to fight against the influx of immigrants, especially Balkan and Middle Eastern drug dealers and pimps.

* * *

These are just some of the features of a united Europe’s social fabric, but they are not mentioned that often in the dressed-up reports of EU leaders. In Brussels, they are hoping that their forced entry into the markets of the Eastern Partnership’s post-Soviet countries (primarily Ukraine), through the creation of free trade zones with these countries and a restriction of their economic sovereignty, will enable Europeans if not to save their worsening situation, then at least to postpone the social misfortunes drawing nearer the countries of the European Union…