Bombs, Missiles and Drones Cause Widespread Death and Destruction

Israel may have pulled the trigger first – but I blame US President Donald Trump! He, himself suggested on Tuesday that he may have “forced Israel’s hand” into a war with Iranian "lunatics" (The Times of Israel, March 03, 2026). 

It sure has been a very busy week so far for all parties involved. Yesterday, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth touted as evidence of America's global reach in its war on Iran when he confirmed a US fast attack submarine had sunk an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean – the Pentagon released footage of the strike. FYI, the IRIS Dena, had participated in a naval exercise in India just weeks ago. And according to Sri Lankan authorities, 32 sailors have been rescued, 61 are still missing and 87 bodies have so far been found. 

Iran's navy are already almost decimated, if you believe the Americans. Trump declared Monday that the US sank 10 Iranian battleships. But, on the same day, CENTCOM had stated that in two days, the Iranian regime had 11 ships in the Gulf of Oman and now they have none left. 

Whether 10 or 11, that hadn't stopped Trump from gloating: “They’re at the bottom of the sea”. 

Oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has plunged by 90 percent since the outbreak of the Middle East war, energy market intelligence firm Kpler said on X. Iranian forces, meanwhile, claimed "complete control" of the strait, a vital route for world oil and gas supplies, after Trump said Tuesday the US Navy were ready to escort oil tankers through the channel. 

The British are joining in. Their F-35s shot down Iranian drones over Jordan, marking the first time that one of the Royal Air Force's stealth fighter jets had destroyed a target in combat, the UK defense ministry shouted out on Tuesday.

The Israel Defense Forces said they dropped more than 4,000 bombs on Iranian targets in just four days and on Tuesday, even hit “Minzadehei”, a secret underground site on the outskirts of Tehran where Iran transferred much of its nuclear program after the 12-day war with Israel in June. 

The commander of CENTCOM – the forward headquarters of United States Central Command in Qatar – Admiral Brad Cooper claimed the US has struck more than 2,000 targets with more than 2,000 munitions and severely degraded Iran's air defences.

It's not all one-sided though. Three US fighter jets were downed over Kuwait. The Americans explained on Monday that the F-15s were "mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defences" and all six crew ejected safely. If you ask me, I don't believe this excuse of a "friendly fire incident".

A day earlier, Iran pounded a base housing US troops in Kuwait on Sunday, killing three service members. Since then, the death toll has risen to six, CENTCOM confirmed on Monday, an uptick that was forecasted by Trump and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine. 

Still, Iran maintained that more than 650 US military personnel were killed and wounded in the first two days of Operation True Promise 4, while its military say they fired over 700 drones and hundreds of ballistic missiles in 48 hours exceeding the total firepower of the June 2025 war. 

Also, on Monday, Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refinery at Ras Tanura halted operations after a drone strike in the area. Iran accused Israel of carrying out the attack, describing it as a “false flag” operation.

And on the same day too, a Shahed-type unmanned aerial vehicle struck a runway at a UK military base in Akrotiri, Cyprus. Consequently, Greece is sending two frigates and a pair of F-16 fighter jets to Aphrodite's Isle.

Amazon Web Services reported Monday that two data centers in the United Arab Emirates were “directly struck” and another facility in Bahrain was also damaged after a drone landed nearby. 

On Tuesday, two ballistic missiles were aimed at Qatar's Al Udeid Air Base. Air defenses intercepted one, while the second struck the base southwest of Doha without causing casualties. Al Udeid is the backbone of US military airpower in the Middle East, housing the Combined Air Operations Center that direct American and coalition missions across the region. The strike marks a direct hit on one of Washington’s most critical strategic assets there. 

There's been so many claims made by all sides; it's been difficult to establish the veracity of every claim. What is certain is the trail of death and destruction left behind! 

And then there's this widely-circulated story which according to Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, Trump through Italy had sought an immediate ceasefire upon seeing that the Iranian government did not collapse after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with senior figures in the country’s leadership – but Iran rejected it outright.

They should fear Khamenei as a martyr, more than Khamenei alive!

This ambitious American-Israeli project targeting Iran envisioned a massive bombing campaign to last only 4-5 days and expecting Iran to surrender thereafter. 

Today is Day 6! 

IRAN HAS NOT SURRENDERED! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

And on Tuesday, parents in Minab, Iran held a mass funeral for the 165 students – most of them girls aged between 7 and 12 – as well as staff killed in the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh all girls' school by the evil Israel-US axis. 

The IRNA news agency had cited a local prosecutor as saying that 96 people had been wounded in Saturday’s strike. 

Ali Farhadi, spokesperson for Iran’s Education Ministry, said Sunday that three attacks struck the school, which he said had 264 students. 

Some social media accounts linked to Israel claimed the site was “part of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base”. However, an analysis by Al Jazeera’s digital investigations unit of satellite imagery compiled over more than a decade, as well as recent video clips, published news reports and statements from official Iranian sources, tells a very different story. 

The findings reveal that the school had been clearly separate from an adjacent military site for at least 10 years. The investigation also shows that the strike pattern raises fundamental questions about the accuracy of intelligence information on which the bombing was based.

The Minab massacre is a war crime.

Iran's official IRNA news agency said Wednesday Israel and US had killed 1,045 military personnel and civilians since the start of the war. Elsewhere, Al Jazeera reported at least 11 dead in Israel as well as six US soldiers and eight civilians killed in the Gulf states. And the death toll from Israeli military action in Lebanon has risen to 72, with 437 injured since this front of the war ignited on Monday.

The US Crisis That Cannot Be Ignored

The United States national debt that now stands at $38.4 trillion will very soon be growing faster than the economy itself.

Indeed, it has reached a precarious milestone, hitting 100% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and placing the nation on a trajectory that could trigger six distinct types of fiscal crises, according to an ominous new warning issued Thursday by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).

With the national debt now effectively equal to the size of the entire US economy, the non-partisan watchdog’s latest report, “What Would a Fiscal Crisis Look Like?” outlined a dangerous future ahead. 

“If the national debt continues to grow faster than the economy”, the report said, “the country could ultimately experience a financial crisis, an inflation crisis, an austerity crisis, a currency crisis, a default crisis, a gradual crisis, or some combination of crises. Any of these would cause massive disruption and substantially reduce living standards for Americans and people across the world”. 

The report warned that unless policymakers enact a “thoughtful pro-growth deficit reduction package”, disaster likely lies ahead.

”The United States is deeply indebted, and its finances are on an unsustainable long-term trajectory”, the report concluded. While it’s “impossible” to know when disaster will strike, “some form of crisis is almost inevitable” without a course correction, the CRFB said.

Among the most alarming scenarios detailed is the “Austerity Crisis”. In this potential future, a loss of market confidence would force lawmakers to enact abrupt, massive spending cuts or tax hikes to quell panic. While deficit reduction is necessary, the CRFB warned that rapid implementation of such austerity measures during a weak economy could trigger the worst economic contraction in nearly a century. 

As an example of such an austerity crisis, the CRFB pointed to Greece in the 2010s during the Great Recession, when economic weakness led to an “untenable spike” in borrowing and bond yields, prompting a painful set of austerity measures that decimated the economy and pushed the unemployment rate to record levels. Portugal and Spain had similar, less severe crises during this period. 

Beyond forced austerity, the watchdog identified five other crisis scenarios:

1. Financial Crisis: If investors lose confidence in the US Treasury market, interest rates could spike uncontrollably. This would devalue existing bonds, potentially triggering cascading failures at banks and financial institutions.

The report cited the 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank as a “small-scale” preview of how rapid rate increases can destabilize the banking sector. More broadly, though, it pointed to 2007 as a famous example of a financial crisis, driven by collapsing valuations of subprime mortgage-backed securities, leading to a Global Financial Crisis where hundreds of financial institutions closed, housing values declined by one-quarter, output shrank 4%, unemployment rose to 10%, and the economy took years to recover.

2. Inflation Crisis: To avoid default or bank failures, the Federal Reserve might be pressured to “monetize” the debt – printing money to buy Treasury bonds. This could spark spiraling inflation, eroding savings and purchasing power, similar to historical crises in Argentina or the Weimar Republic (Germany during the 1919–1933 period).

3. Currency Crisis: Reckless fiscal policy could lead to a sudden depreciation of the US Dollar, undermining its status as the world’s dominant reserve currency. A weakened dollar would erode American geopolitical power and make imports significantly more expensive. 

4. Default Crisis: Although considered “very unlikely”, a failure to pay interest or principal on the approximately $31 trillion in debt held by the public would be “catastrophic”. A default would freeze global credit markets, crash stock markets, and likely plunge the world into a deep recession.

5. Gradual Crisis: Perhaps the most insidious scenario is a slow decline where no acute event occurs. Instead, high debt crowds out investment, slowing growth over decades. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) models suggest this trajectory could leave real income per person 8% lower by 2050 than it would be otherwise. 

Japan is the classic example of a gradual crisis, with the CRFB noting that it has sustained extremely high levels of debt for several decades, avoiding an acute crisis but with real GDP only growing 10% (0.5% per year) over the past two decades.

The report noted that a crisis does not require a single “tipping point” but can be sparked by various catalysts, including a recession, a “poor” Treasury auction in which demand for US debt falters, or a breach of the debt limit. 

The warning comes as the fiscal situation deteriorates. Interest costs on the debt surged to roughly $1 trillion last year, consuming a near-record 18% of federal revenue – an amount comparable to the entire Medicare budget. “With debt at 100% of GDP”, the report argued, “the US has less fiscal space than any time in history in case of another war, pandemic, or recession”.

Ukraine Launches Long-range Missiles Into Russia Proper

On Monday, The New York Times reported that the administration of US President Joe Biden had granted Ukraine permission to fire American-made long-range rockets at targets in Russia. 

 

“Missiles will speak for themselves”, Ukrainian President [V]olodymyr [Z]elensky had stated after the news broke. 

 

Ukraine didn't waste any time and on early Tuesday morning, ATACMS missiles were fired into western Russia’s Bryansk Oblast, sixty miles from the border with Ukraine.

 

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said of the six projectiles, air defence systems had intercepted five and damaged one. Reuters, however, claimed the Russians shot down just two of the missiles.

 

“This is, of course, a signal that they want to escalate”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking at a Group of 20 news conference in Brazil, said of the attack.

 

“We will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia. And we will react accordingly”, he added, accusing Washington of helping Kiev operate the missiles. [Note: Russia has long asserted that the ATACMS is programmed by United States specialists and requires guidance from US satellites].

 

A day later, a second strike. It was lapdog UK's turn to give its consent. And the Ukrainian regime launched Storm Shadow missiles into Russia for the first time, according to a Russian military blog and Reuters. 

 

A Russian military blogger on Wednesday posted photos on Telegram of a Storm Shadow missile fragment, claiming that up to 12 of the UK-supplied missiles were fired on Russia’s Kursk region. The fragment was photographed in the Russian village of Marino, which is about 35 miles from the Ukrainian border. The fragment has engravings that say “Storm Shadow”. 

 

The fragments in the photo were confirmed to be from a Storm Shadow missile by weapons expert Trevor Ball, a former senior explosive ordnance technician for the US Army, according to CNN today. 

 

And I would not be surprised if Germany decides to arm Ukraine with Taurus missiles. I betcha German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is tempted.

 

FYI, the Taurus KEPD-350 is a German-Swedish air-launched cruise missile that can travel at speeds of up to 1,170 kilometers per hour (727 miles per hour) – that's almost the speed of sound – to find a target that can be as far as 500 kilometers (310 miles) away. The long-range missile flies at an altitude of only 35 meters, which makes it almost impossible for radar systems to detect.

 

In any case, it would seem that Ukraine is asking to be annihilated. And I have no doubt Russia will retaliate. It's payback time.

 

And if you ask me, Russia should nuke Kiev. It will serve as a timely warning to US, UK and other belligerents.

 

The Americans must have known they've overstepped their boundaries because they quickly shuttered their embassy there. Greece, Italy and Spain embassies followed suit.

In a clash of Malaysians, world No. 9 Sivasangari Subramaniam cruised into the $120,000 Singapore Squash Open quarter-finals with a comfortable win over compatriot Aifa Azman today. 

 

The Asian champion, who received a first-round bye, won the second round match 3-0: 11-6, 11-8, 11-8 in 26 minutes. 

 

The fourth seeded Sivasangari will face world No. 13 Fayrouz Aboelkheir of Egypt for a place in the semi-finals. 

 

There's no two ways about it – she must win!

The 3 Unhappiest Countries in the EU

Bulgaria is the unhappiest country in the EU, according to statistics published by the bloc’s official agency, Eurostat. With an overall life satisfaction score of 5.6 out of 10, it was the only one of the 27 member nations polled where residents, on average, rated themselves as dissatisfied rather than satisfied. 

 

Germany is the second-most miserable on the continent, with a rating of 6.5 – a sharp drop from its score last year of 7.1. While the survey did not ask respondents to give specific reasons for their self-evaluation, multiple polls conducted this month showed widespread dissatisfaction with the German government, which are facing a financial crisis and a crisis of confidence, problems many believe are entirely of the government’s own making.

 

Greece rounded out the top three unhappiest nations, with an average life satisfaction rating of 6.7. 

 

And the happiest country on the continent is Austria, where residents rated their happiness at 7.9. Finland, Poland, and Romania are tied for second happiest with scores of 7.7. 

 

The ratings appeared to support the cliche that money cannot buy happiness, as neither of second-place scorers Romania or Poland enjoyed a high average per capita income in 2022, and Romanians even made less on average than their much more miserable neighbors in Bulgaria. 

 

While five out of the ten top finishers in the 2023 World Happiness Report, published in March, were EU member countries, only Finland, which came in at number one, was among the high scorers on both lists. 

 

Denmark, the second-happiest nation in the world in that report, was also the only European country that managed to decrease its consumption of antidepressants(!) in the last decade. It ranked seventh on life satisfaction in Eurostat’s report.

 

My two cents:

 

 

Brits Won't Be Denied Their Summer Holidays

If you can believe UK’s Resolution Foundation, a think-tank focused on improving living standards for those on low to middle incomes, the country’s cost of living crisis should ease in 2024. 

 

But it won't fully be over until wages catch up. So, brace yourself: real wages compared to prices are not expected to return to 2021 levels until 2027! 

 

Still, Brits won’t be denied their summer holidays – even as plane ticket prices are skyrocketing at three times the rate of inflation. It appears Brits have an impetuous longing to jet off on holiday, come what may. 

 

Already, summer getaway bookings are surging with hotspots in Spain and Greece almost at capacity amid a rush of pent-up demand. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the Office for National Statistics, air fares from the UK surged by 31.4% in the year to May – more than treble the 8.7% rate of inflation. Trips to Malaga in Spain have risen 38% from £146 to £202, fares to Mallorca are 21% more than this time last year, and flights to Alicante are up £17. 

 

Despite soaring fares, spending on airlines rose 34% year-on-year during May, according to Barclays. And the bank’s customers spent 10% more with travel agents. 

 

Ryanair, which revealed profits of £1.2 billion in May, expect bumper earnings this summer at they run 3,000 daily flights – their largest-ever schedule. 

 

Experts claimed people were desperate to hang on to their summer holiday after Covid restrictions, in spite of rising inflation and mortgage rates. Laura Harden, of the Mindful Travel Company, said: “Everyone is fed-up and I think people just want to escape the misery for a couple of weeks”. 

 

I don’t know about that, to be honest – but it is plain to me that not everybody is impacted by the cost of living crisis. Have money can travel!

Ukraine Wants NATO Countries to Pledge 1% of GDP

Ukraine has never been coy about asking, even demanding money and arms from other countries in order to sponsor its war against Russia.

 

Since Russia's Special Military Operation began, the US alone has directed more than $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial, and military support, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute (Council on Foreign Relations, February 22, 2023). 

 

As NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressed the importance of continued support for Ukraine, the country's Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Melnyk (left) now wants NATO countries to pledge 1% of their GDP to meet Ukraine’s weapon needs. 

 

A fool’s errand, that is what it is. 

 

Already NATO want their members to spend at least two percent of their GDP on defence – and yet, just seven of NATO’s 30 member states – not counting Finland which only joined NATO on April 04 – met the defense spending target in 2022. The US, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the United Kingdom, all achieved the standard with Croatia and France among those falling just short. Others, e.g. Canada and Germany were further behind. 

 

It is claimed that Ukraine is running out of anti-aircraft missiles, an apparent leak of Pentagon documents dating from February suggests. 

 

The New York Times already reported that Ukraine’s Buk air defence systems, which it relies on along with the S-300 to protest vital sites from Russian air power, and air defences protecting troops on the front line could be “completely reduced” by May 23! 

 

I hope this is true because if it is, we can expect the war to wind down. Enough of deaths and destruction.

Countries as Supervillains

Start from the premise that there's no such thing as a guiltless country. 

 

We must admit that as human beings, we're some of the foulest and most violent specimens roaming the surface of the Earth. History is mostly filled with villains and monsters – and the truth is that no country is a goody two shoes. 

 

If the world were a wrestling promotion, everyone would be a heel. And so, Lucas Freitas decided to make AI art that personified countries as supervillains. 

 

Here’s a selection: 

 

 

Extreme Weather and Climate Change

Climate change is changing our weather. 

Emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels have been trapping heat in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial era. This extra heat isn't evenly distributed across the globe, and bursts out extreme weather events. 

Unless global emissions are cut, this cycle will persist.

Here are four outcomes resulting from climate change: 

1. Hotter, longer heatwaves 

To understand the impact of small changes to average temperatures, think of them as a bell curve with extreme cold and hot at either end, and the bulk of temperatures in the middle. 

A small shift in the centre means more of the curve touches the extremes – and so heatwaves become more frequent and extreme. 

And heatwaves are not just hotter – they're also lasting longer. Warm spells have more than doubled in length in the past 50 years. 

That’s not the end of it – heatwaves can be made longer and more intense by another weather phenomenon – a heat dome. 

In an area of high pressure, hot air is pushed down and trapped in place, causing temperatures to soar over an entire continent even. 

When a storm distorts the jet stream, which is made of currents of fast-flowing air, it is a bit like yanking a skipping rope at one end and seeing the ripples move along it.

These waves cause everything to slow drastically and weather systems can become stuck over the same areas for days on end – as was seen in India earlier this year.

India and Pakistan have already faced five successive heatwaves this year, with Jacobabad, in Pakistan, registering 49C at one point in May. 

In the Southern Hemisphere, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil all saw an historic heatwave in January – many areas reported their hottest day on record. 

In the same month, Onslow in Western Australia hit 50.7C, the joint-highest temperature ever reliably recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Last year, North America was also hit by long heatwaves. The western Canadian town of Lytton burnt down when temperatures hit 49.6C, breaking the previous record by almost 5C. 

Such an intense heatwave would have been virtually impossible without climate change, says the World Weather Attribution network, a collaboration between international climate scientists. 

One theory suggests higher temperatures in the Arctic are causing the jet stream to slow, increasing the likelihood of heat domes. 

2. More persistent droughts 

As heatwaves become more intense and longer, droughts are expected to worsen. 

Less rain falls between heatwaves, so ground moisture and water supplies run dry more quickly. This means the ground takes less time to heat up, warming the air above and leading to more intense heat. 

3. More fuel for wildfires 

Wildfires can be sparked by direct human involvement – but natural factors can also play a huge part. 

The cycle of extreme and long-lasting heat caused by climate change draws more and more moisture out of the ground and vegetation. 

These tinder-dry conditions provide fuel for fires, which can spread at an incredible speed. 

Most recently severe wildfires have been reported in France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Croatia and Albania – with thousands of residents evacuated and hundreds reported to have died. 

In Canada last summer, heatwaves led to fires which developed so rapidly and explosively that they created their own weather system, forming pyrocumulonimbus clouds. These colossal clouds then produced lightning, igniting more fires. 

4. More extreme rainfall events 

In the usual weather cycle, hot weather creates moisture and water vapour in the air, which turns into droplets to create rain. 

The warmer it becomes, however, the more vapour there is in the atmosphere. This results in more droplets and heavier rainfall, sometimes in a shorter space of time and over a smaller area. 

Already this year, floods have drowned parts of eastern Australia. In a period of just six days Brisbane saw almost 80% of its annual rainfall, while Sydney recorded more than its average annual rainfall in little over three months.

These rainfall events are connected to the effects of climate change elsewhere, according to Peter Gleick (left), a water specialist from the US National Academy of Sciences. 

"When areas of drought grow, like in Siberia [Russia] and western US, that water falls elsewhere, in a smaller area, worsening flooding", he claims. 

The weather across the globe will always be highly variable – but climate c hange is making those variations more extreme. 

And the challenge now is not only limiting the further impact people have on the atmosphere but also adapting to and tackling the extremes we are already facing.    

AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine is Not for Older People

The Pfizer Covid vaccine is not the only one facing some challenges. 

The European Medicines Agency’s approval of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine last week for all adults is also not being 100% embraced by every country. Just like the Pfizer Covid vaccine, there are doubts about its use among older people. 

The German vaccines authority had come out to advise against using the said vaccine for the over 65s, judging that there was "not enough data" on its efficacy in this age group. 

France followed suit on Tuesday and Austria, Belgium, Poland, Sweden and the Netherlands had taken similar steps. 

Italy approved the jab – but it recommended using an alternative vaccine for the over-55s. 

Greece on Friday joined these countries in limiting use of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine to those in the 18-64 age group. 

And Spain has said it will limit use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to people under 55. 

The AstraZeneca jab is the third vaccine to be approved by the EU after those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. 

Methinks, Europe should also consider the Russian and Chinese vaccines.

US Police Strike Back

#GeorgeFloyd may have sparked mass protests – but it’s not only about him. 

It’s about police brutality. It’s about systemic racism. It’s about black lives matter. 

And as the protests burgeon, it would seem that a significant section of US law enforcement respond with more police brutality! 

A wee sample of tweets that show the police are striking back:

“NYPD officer just called a female protester a “stupid fucking bitch” and threw her to the ground” (Jason Lemon @JasonLemon video posted May 30, 2020, 08:38 AM). 

“In New York City, police officers plowed through protesters with their vehicles” (Pierre G @pgarapon video posted May 31, 2020, 08:13 AM).

“In Queens, NY, a young black protester had his hands up and an NYPD officer pulled down his mask and pepper sprayed him” (Ms. Anju J. Rupchandani @AJRupchandani video posted May 31, 2020, 08:27 AM). 

“In Atlanta, the APD broke car windows, slashed tires, tazed both passengers and arrested both passengers in the vehicle for nothing” (black lives matter @imactuallynina video posted May 31, 2020, 10:01 AM). 

“In Minneapolis, the National Guard and the city police department fired paint canisters at residents standing on their porches” (Tanya Kerssen @tkerssen video posted May 31, 2020, 10:37 AM). 

“In Seattle, a police officer maced a child; then refused to give his badge number” (zellie @zellieimani posted May 31, 2020, 07:35 PM).

“Philly police attempt to disperse crowd after hundreds mased/gassed on Parkway. This was @ 5:30 as curfew nears. Dude w/ white shirt provokes scuffle, shoves baton into civilian’s throat. #phillyprotest #blacklivesmatter #GeorgeFloydprotests #protests2020” (Peopledelphia @Peopledelphia video posted June 02, 2020, 06:49 AM). Note: The Temple University student suffered "serious bodily injury, including a large head wound that required treatment in a Philadelphia hospital, including approximately 10 staples and approximately 10 sutures.

“In Orlando, police deliberately box in protestors *before* curfew, forcing them to stay in place until after curfew so they can be arrested” (T Greg Doucette @greg_doucette shared video posted June 04, 2020, 11:44 AM). 

“In Buffalo, police officers shove man in Niagara Square to the ground (WARNING: Graphic)” (WBFO @WBFO video posted June 05, 2020, 09:13 AM). Note: The 75-year-old man suffered a serious injury and is now at ECMC in Buffalo, NY.

The US is becoming a failed state. 

In the meantime, more protests in more cities in more countries around the world. Besides Canada, Denmark, Germany and UK, demonstrations have popped up in Australia, Austria, France, Greece, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa and the list goes on.

China to the Rescue

Beijing was widely criticized for mishandling the SARS outbreak back then in 2003. This time around with Covid-19, China was quicker and more responsive. And draconian measures were taken. 

After it contained the pandemic, it turned its attention to countries who are going through this painful period of contagion. 

On March 20, 2020, China announced it is offering help to 82 countries, the World Health Organization and the African Union in the fight against the coronavirus. Malaysia was one of those countries which benefited. 

The medical supplies China has sent and is sending include test kits, masks and protective clothing.

Masks destined for Daegu, South Korea, February 27, 2020. Image credit: Xinhua 


A planeload of medical supplies arrived in Athens on March 21, 2020 from China – at the urgent request of the Greek government – via Air China flight CA 863. Image credit: Greek City Times 

Medical supplies for Malaysia donated by China, March 24, 2020. Image credit: Yusof Mat Isa

In terms of medical technology cooperation, it has shared diagnosis and treatment plans, held video conferences with health experts, and dispatched medical specialists to Iran, Iraq and Italy, among others.

Medics from China at a local hospital in Bergamo, Italy, March 20, 2020. Image credit: Li Yaoyang/CMG 

Chinese medical team set off for Serbia, March 21, 2020. Image credit: Global Times, China 

Medics and medical equipment arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, March 23, 2020. Image credit: CGTN, China

Ireland is taking one step further. The country’s flag carrier will fly to China 60 times to collect medical supplies. 

The purpose is to prepare for and fight the Covid-19 pandemic. The plan is simply “Fly, get the gear, and come home”.

The above pic shows Dr. Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer at Ireland’s Department of Health, pointing to a graph during a Covid-19 briefing on March 23, 2020 showing where Ireland was as the coronavirus pandemic rages on throughout the world. 

Five days on, the situation has decidedly turned grave. In fact, this morning itself, citizens of the Republic of Ireland woke up to herald in their country's version of the Movement Control Order.

It's understood Aer Lingus will make the first trip from Dublin Airport to Beijing today, with the airline's chiefs hoping to begin five daily return journeys from Tuesday onwards. 

The passenger planes to be deployed are Airbus A330s where the seats will carry medical equipment such as ventilators, PPE, masks, goggles, testing kits and more. 

Their pilots won't even get off the aircraft or else they'll be put into quarantine. 

Anyway, the point I'm making is that we should be thankful that China is demonstrating global aid response leadership since the US prefers to bury its head in the sand. China knows that action speaks louder than words. 

It’s good to see China turning the tables on Donald Trump and his sickening splurge of bloated self-importance. 

Thumbs-up for China!