The Palme Assassination, Sweden’s JFK Complex: A Coda?

Posted on August 31, 2020December 30, 2020 by E Curb Nottus

Biographical, Comparative politics, International Relations, Media & Communications, National politics, Regional History

The modern history of Sweden has been one of continuous, peaceful state existence. Non-participation in any war since 1814, no political assassinations in the country for nearly two centuries (following the murder of King Gustav III in an aristocratic coup attempt in 1792). This remarkable run, free of political violence, was shattered on the night of 28th February 1986 with the seemingly unfathomable murder of Sweden’s incumbent democratic socialist prime minister, Olof Palme＊.

Sveavägen murder scene 🔻
(Photo: Anders Holmström/Svenskt Pressfoto)

‘Clouseauesque’ policing
The Swedish PM’s shooting in Sveavägen, one of Stockholm’s busiest streets, by a single assassin, was followed by an amateurish investigation that was a complete shambles from the start. An initial mix-up over phone calls meant the police were slow to respond to the crime, losing precious minutes while the murderer made good his escape. On arrival, they failed to cordon off the murder scene properly, allowing onlookers to contaminate potential forensic evidence; key witnesses were allowed to leave the scene without being questioned. Established crime protocol—a street-by-street search of the area (a dragnet)—was not implemented [“Olof Palme: Sweden believes it knows who killed PM in 1986’, BBC News, 100-Jun-2020, www.bbc.com/].

🔺Head of investigation, H Holmér
(Image: www.news.sky.com)

The police investigation was headed by Hans Holmér who assumed more or less from day one that the crime was politically motivated, eventually becoming fixated on the Kurdish militant group the PKK as the likely perpetrators, to the neglect of other leads (injudiciously, witnesses with key information were ignored). After a haul of locally-based Kurdish immigrants were arrested and then released for lack of solid evidence, the prosecutors and media turned against Holmér’s handling of the case, forcing him to resign [‘“Murder Most Foul” – the Death of Olof Palme’, (Jan Lundius), Inter Press Service, 30-Jun-2020, www.ipsnews.net; BBC News]⦿.

The suspects and the conspiracy theories◘
In the 34 years since the Palme shooting the police have conducted 10,000+ interviews and 134 people have confessed to the murder. Aside from the PKK, another international suspect was the white South African regime. Palme was a charismatic figure in world politics but also a controversial and polarising one, as a foreign policy-minded social democrat he elicited criticism from both left and right, including from both the superpowers. In addition, his high-profile anti-apartheid stance was a thorn in the side of the Pretoria government. One theory suggests a conspiracy between South Africa’s security and intelligence forces and right-wing extremist mercenaries within Sweden to execute Palme. The view gained some traction but Swedish investigators have never satisfactorily connected the dots between these elements.

🔺 Stockholm: Intersection of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan

Palme’s economic reforms, especially those geared towards promoting worker control, did not endear him to the capitalist class in Sweden. More specifically there was Palme’s strong stance against the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors who was illegally selling weapons to several proscribed nations. When Iran was blocked from receiving a shipment one scenario advanced is that an Iranian hitman liquidated the Swedish PM [‘Sweden’s Bofors Arms Scandal’, Directorate of Intelligence, 04-Mar-1988, www.cia.gov/].

Political pressure for “a result”
Refocusing domestically on individuals, the spotlight turned to Christer Pettersson who had a criminal record including manslaughter. Pettersson was dubiously convicted of Palme’s murder in 1989, in part because Palme’s widow, prompted by police officers, picked him out in a police lineup. The seriously compromised verdict was easily overturned on appeal (lack of a murder weapon or motive) [‘Who killed Sweden’s prime minister? 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe’, (Andrew Nestingen), The Conversation, 11-Jun-2020, www.theconversation.com]. The investigation team’s eagerness to ‘fit’ Pettersson for the crime despite being bereft of hard evidence, reflects the pressure exerted by the ruling Social Democratic Party on the police to secure a quick resolution of the crime “acceptable to the public” [‘Who killed the prime minister? The unsolved murder that still haunts Sweden’, (Imogen West-Knights), The Guardian, 16-May-2019, www.theguardian.com].

Another, more ‘political’ suspect to attract the police’s interest early on was Victor Gunnarsson. Gunnarsson was an activist with connexions to various right-wing groups, especially the European Workers Party which held grudges against Palme. Gunnarsson was briefly detained by Holmér but the case against him however dissolved when witnesses failed to locate him at the murder scene at the time of the crime. Gunnarsson later emigrated to the US where he himself ironically became a homicide victim [‘Victor Gunnarsson’, People Pill, www.peoplepill.com].

‘Skandiamannen’✪
Another name on the person of interest list of police was Stig Engström. Engström willingly offered himself up to police as a ‘witness’ at the time of the assassination and though questioned, the police eventually discounted him as a serious suspect. But some 20 years after the murder, a new theory, originating in a book by Lars Larsson and developed by journalist Thomas Pettersson, gained traction. The case put by Pettersson that Engström was the killer rested on a conjunction of factors—the “right timing, the right clothing, (he had) unique information, he had close access to guns of the right type, he was right wing and Palme unfriendly” [‘After 34 Years, Sweden Says It Knows the Killer of Olof Palme’, (Thomas Erdbrink & Christina Anderson), New York Times, 10-Jun-2020, www.nytimes.com]. Petersson handed over his findings to the police in 2016, leading to a reopening of the investigation.

Palme, then Swedish communications minister, (with actress Lena Nyman), appeared in the controversial 1960s “erotic-drama” ‘I am Curious – Yellow’ 🔻

‘Resolved’ but left up in the air?
Earlier this year the state prosecutor announced that he had come to the conclusion that Engström was probably Palme’s killer, but, given that Engström himself died in 2000, he promptly closed the case. Not everyone in Sweden is satisfied by the conclusion to the Palme case, many questions remain unanswered about the inconclusiveness of the evidence…eg, no DNA match, where is the missing murder weapon and what was the motive? (BBC). To paraphrase one antagonistic perspective on the case resolution: “it settles none of the unanswered questions”, instead it “underlines the determination of powerful political forces to continue the cover-up surrounding Palme’s murder” [‘Decades-long cover-up continues of assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme’, (Jordan Shilton), World Socialist Web Site, 13-Jun-2000, www.wsws.org/].

(Source: www.latimes.com)

Endnote: Palmology and parallels with the JFK conspiracy saga
The collective trauma felt by Swedes with Olof Palme’s 1986 assassination—many expressing a sense of lost national innocence, no longer immune from political violence◘—recalls the devastating effect the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had on the American psyche (Lundius). Both leaders’ violent deaths triggered a runaway train of conspiracy theories, some plausible and some highly implausible◕. In the years since 1986 Sweden’s national obsession with the unsolved murder, labelled Palmessjukdom (“Palme sickness”) has inspired a raft of plays, films, television and musical works on the topic. It has even been cited as a contributing “factor in the worldwide explosion of Scandinavian (noirish) crime fiction”. ‘Palmology’ has spawned a veritable Swedish industry of privatspanarna – a legion of private investigators (such as Thomas Pettersson) conducting independent inquiries into the baffling crime…some have been serious researchers, others espousing “crackpot theories” (West-Knights).

(Source: www.cnbc.com/)

𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪——𝄪
＊ not however the country’s last political murder, in 2003 Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was assassinated by another “lone wolf” assassin
⦿ marginalising SÄPO (Säkerhetspolisen – the state secret police) from the investigation didn’t make the task any easier
✪ Engström was dubbed “Skandia Man” by Lars Larsson because he worked in the Skandia Insurance Co tower building which fronts on to Sveavägen-Tunnelgatan
◘ and perhaps in some measure jolting Swedes out of a lingering outlier complacency
◕ among the multitude ‘fingered’ for the hit on the Swedish PM, was the Swedish police, the Yugoslav secret service, even Palme’s own wife, Lisbet

The Moral Guardians’ War on ‘Pernicious’ Comic Books

Posted on August 21, 2020August 22, 2020 by funambulator@live.com

Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Media & Communications, Performing arts, Popular Culture, Regional History, Social History, Society & Culture, Visual Arts

As all of us are only too aware, COVID-19 has cut a swathe through public gatherings, large aggregations of people are a “no-no” in 2020. Across the globe all manner of events have been on the receiving end of a different sort of cancel culture treatment. The superhero-studded world of comic book conventions has not been immune to this contagion. Comic-cons everywhere, including the San Diego Comic-Con International, America’s oldest comic book convention, have been red pencilled in this year of the plague. But if we turn the clock back some 70 years we might observe a time when the existential threat was directed at the product itself, the actual comic books.

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(Photo source: www.theverge.com/)

There were no organised comic-cons in the more cautious and conformist 1940s and 50s, but this in no way equated with a lack of popularity of comic books. In fact the Forties had been a Golden Age, especially for American comic books, Comic strip creators were riding high with a slew of superhero characters—including Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Captain America, the Avengers and Captain Marvel—proving lucrative for companies like Detective Comics (DC Comics), Entertaining Comics (EC Comics) and Timely Comics (Marvel Comics). By mid-decade comic books were the most popular form of entertainment in the US (with 80 to 100 million copies being sold per week!) By the late 1940s comic books were well and truly being marketed towards adults as well…”fed by the same streams as pulp fiction and film noir, titles (began to tell) lurid stories of crime, vice, lust and horror” [David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, (2008)].

♦️ Wonder Woman (Sensation Comics, 1942)

‘Seduction of the Innocent’
Dark clouds appeared over the comics industry’s blue skies in 1954 with the publication of Seduction of the Innocent by a Bavarian-born neurobiologist Fredric Wertham. The book was “a full-throttled attack on the lurid contents of various crime, horror, and even super-hero titles, (with an emphasis on) graphic illustrations of wife-beatings, sado-masochism, and gruesome murders”⁕ Sean Howe, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, (2012)]. Wertham’s inditement of the American comics of the day was that they corrupted impressionable youth, inveigling them into fanaticising about evil, leading them on a ruinous path to criminal behaviour, etc.[‘History of Comics Censorship, Part 1’, CBLDF, www.cbldf.org/].

♦️ Crime SuspenStories, 1950

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1940s, North and bonfires
Wertham was not the first critic to take aim at the US comic book industry. In the view of CBLDF✥, since the 1930s “the comics medium has been stigmatized as low-value speech”. In 1940 conservative commentator Sterling North urged parents and educators to guard against the influx of “mayhem, murder, torture and abduction—often with a child as the victim” in contemporary comic strips. North also decried the incidence of “voluptuous females in scanty attire, machine gun (-wielding hoodlums) and “cheap political propaganda” in the comics. The effect on children, he went on to say, of these “badly drawn, badly written and badly printed” strips was “a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems” as well as constituting “a violent stimulant” to them [North, Sterling. “A National Disgrace”. Childhood Education. 17.1, 1940: 56. Print.]. During WWII religious and patriotic organisations conducted public burnings of ‘disapproved’ comic books in American neighbourhoods – in ironic juxtaposition of the war being fought overseas concurrently against Nazi Germany (’Comic Censorship, Part 1’).

♦️ Dr Wertham, researching

“Pop culture McCarthyite”
But it was Seduction of the Innocent that struck the strongest chord in a 1950s America “looking over its shoulder” for real or imagined enemies of society in the grip of a hysteria heightened by McCarthyism. It triggered a public outcry, prompting an investigation into the industry by a Senate sub-committee. Publicity from the hearing was damning and the fallout was devastating. Comic books were denounced by Wertham and other moral crusaders as contributing to juvenile delinquency⚉. At the height of the moral panic, comic book publishers were sometimes treated as though they were mobsters, and the cartoonists, as if they were pornographers [‘The Caped Crusader’ (Jeet Heer), Slate, 04-Apr-2008, www.slate.com; ’Comic Censorship, Part 1’].

The emasculated comic book
Threatened with both public and government censure, the comics industry choose to self-regulate, introducing the Comic Code Authority, “a censorship code that thoroughly sanitized the content of comics for years to come”. The new code (something analogous to the film world’s draconian Hays Code) was taken to ridiculous lengths, it forbade comics from showing zombies, vampires, ghouls and werewolves; words like ‘horror’ and ‘terror’ couldn’t be mentioned in the story lines; nor could criminals be portrayed sympathetically and the institution of marriage could not be seen to be disrespected (Howe).

♦️ The imprimatur of the self-censor

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Comic book publishers were forced to produce ‘purified’ comics suitable for a younger market—more infantile and tamer stories, squeaky-clean but ‘dopey’ heroes replacing the previous super-overachievers—in short, “safe fantasies” for the youngest readers (’Comic Censorship, Part 1’).

The economic and human toll
The new reality of the world of comic books decimated the industry’s hitherto prosperity…between 1954 and 1956 the number of titles produced was cut by more than half – from 650 in 250 over that two-year period!✧. By summer 1954 15 comics publishers in the US went belly-up. EC Comics, up to then one of the market leaders, discontinued all its comics lines…its much-vilified publisher William Gaines switching production solely to the satirical Mad magazine. Over 800 jobs in the industry vanished more or less immediately (Howe; Hajdu). Many talented inkers and pencillers left the industry for good, many for economic reasons but others due at least in part to the stifling of their creative artistic output.

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Endnote: Demise of adult comics
Both Wertham and North in their hatchet jobs on the comics genre made the error of completely disregarding the significant adult readership of comic books. The recovery of the industry, the winning back of that readership, took many years…it didn’t really happen until the emergence of ‘Underground’ comics in the 1960s with publications like Zap Comics and comic artists like R Crumb§ [‘History of Comics Censorship, Part 2, CBLDF, www.cbldf.org/].

♦️ Detective Comics, 1945

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PostScript: The Wertham thesis unpacked
After it became accessible in 2010 Wertham’s research on comics books was investigated and his conclusions found largely baseless…Wertham was said to have manipulated data, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence. A further weakness of his work was that he used non-representative samples as the basis for his conclusions. Scorn was also poured on Wertham’s contentions that the comic character Superman harboured Nazi SS tendencies, that the Batman/Robin relationship had homoerotic overtones, and that Wonder Woman was a lesbian role model (Wertham saw this as wholly undesirable)[‘Fredric Wertham’,Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Heer].

________________________________________________

⁕ that serious comics of the period were laden with violence, misogyny and racism, could not be disputed (Heer)
✥ Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
⚉ a sense of elitism also coloured Wertham et al’s dislike of popular comics. Wertham considered their consumption blocked children from an appreciation of literature and fine arts (Hajdu; Heer)
✧ over 100 pieces of anti-comic book legislation came into effect in the Fifties (Hajdu)
§ the fashionability of adult readership was further advanced by the advent of graphic novels

The Americas, Pandemic on the Back of Poverty: Mexico and Venezuela

Posted on June 24, 2020June 24, 2020 by E Curb Nottus

International Relations, Media & Communications, National politics, Politics, Public health,, Society & Culture

While Brazil has sown up the unenviable title of the worst coronavirus hotspot in Latin America, Mexico has steered a similar course to disaster in the face of the pandemic. As Brazil’s coronavirus count climbs to well over 1.1 million confirmed cases and closing in on 53 thousand fatalities, the galloping toll in Mexico—60% the size of Brazil population-wise—now registers 191,410 cases and 23,377 deaths (as at 24-June-2020).

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(Source: www.lonelyplanet.com)

False security?
Among some Mexicans there seem to be a sense that the country’s demographics which are skewed toward the young—around 85% of the population is under 55—may act as a barrier against coronavirus. This confidence may be misplaced due to several factors: pre-existing health conditions in Mexico which affect younger cohorts as well—make the population more vulnerable to the ravages of coronavirus, as the table below indicates [‘Many young Mexican at risk from Covid-19’, (James Blears), Vatican News, 31-March-2020, www.vaticannews.va]. the death-rate from COVID-19 among maquiladora workers in the border region of Baja California was found to be 25 times higher for the age bracket 40-49 than in the corresponding San Diego County, [‘COVID-19 killing young maquiladora workers, study shows’, (Salvador Rivera), Border Report, 11-Jun-2020, www.borderreport.com].

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A league of populist leader ‘bedfellows’?
The way Mexico under its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has approached the pandemic has disturbing parallels with that of Brazil’s leader Bolsonaro, and with the US under Trump. Despite a difference of ideological orientation—Obrador (who’s commonly known within Mexico as AMLO) is a Left-populist whereas Bolsonaro and Trump are Right-populists—the Mexican leader has pursued much the same course with similar outcomes. AMLO’s government was slow to engage in the fight against COVID-19 in the critical early period. The virus apparently entered Mexico via overseas returnees, primarily wealthier Mexicans returning from business trips to Italy and skiing holidays in Colorado, and then spread to low-income groups [‘Mexico’s Central de Abasto: How coronavirus tore through Latin America’s largest market’, (Mary Beth Sheridan), Washington Post, 21-Jun-2020, www.washingtonpost.com].

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🔺 AMLO, pressing the flesh (Photo: Mexico’s Presidency Handouts/Reuters)

How not to contain a pandemic
Like his US and Brazilian counterparts, AMLO justified his inaction by being dismissive of the disease, continually downplaying its risk to people, and he was negligent by example. After the outbreak Obrador toured the country, holding rallies sans face masks, nonchalantly meeting and greeting supporters, freely shaking hands, embracing people and even kissing them✱. The president’s advice to the Venezuelan people was simply to continue to “live life as usual”…until late March he was encouraging people to go out, attend fiestas, dine in restaurants and go shopping, airports remained open◘ – a clear indicator that Obrador’s priority was the health of the economy rather than the health of the public [‘Poverty and Populism put Latin America at the centre of the pandemic’, (Michael Stott & Andres Schipano), Financial Times, 14-Jun-2020, www.amp.ft.com; ‘AMLO’s feeble response to COVID-19 in Mexico’, (Vanda Felbab-Brown), Brookings, 30-Mar-2020, www.brookings.edu].

Abject lack of medical preparedness.
Obrador’s dangerous indifference to the crisis extended to a half-hearted medical intervention. Testing for COVID-19 has remained woefully low, no program of widespread testing or of contact tracing – these vital measures dismissed as being impractical for a population of 128 million (Sheridan; Stott & Schipano). The reluctance to test extensively is no doubt also related to Mexico’s health care incapacity. Despite having gone through the experience of the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak, subsequent Mexican administrations have permitted the country’s health sector to run down, funding to hospitals and medical centres have been cut by millions. Mexico has only 1.4 hospital beds for every 1,000 persons and just over 2,000 ventilators all up. The shortfall extends to physicians, medical equipment including PPE and coronavirus test kits [‘Mexico’s coronavirus-sceptical president is setting up his own country for a health crisis’, (Alex Ward), Vox, 28-Mar-2020, www.vox.com].

Shooting the messenger
Inevitably AMLO has copped a lot of internal criticism for his irresponsible response to the crisis. Rather than taking positive measures to try to undo the disaster of his own creation, Obrador has gone on the attack against the Mexican independent media. Again invoking the Trump playbook, he has railed against the “fake news” and “Twitter bots” who have opposed his government’s handling of the situation. Independent investigations in fact have brought to light the clandestine activities of Notimex (the state-owned news agency) which has created a network of bots and fake accounts to discredit prominent journalists and label them as ‘criminal’ [‘Mexican President López Obrador frets about the spreading virus of fake news, but not COVID-19’, (José Miguel Vivanco), Dallas News,16-Jun-2020, www.dallasnews.com].

AMLO has taken to giving regular video ‘sermons’ to the masses (he calls them “Decalogues to emerge from coronavirus and face the new reality”)…these are not as you might surmise updates on how the government is attempting to counter the pandemic, but an uninspiring mish-mash of banalities about staying positive, eating corn and getting sun and fresh air. With the unchecked escalating death toll from the disease, many believe Obrador has given up any pretence to even trying to combat the virus [‘Mexico’s president has given up in the fight against the coronavirus’, (León Krauze), Washington Post, 19-Jun-2020, www.washingtonpost.com]. In this most unpropitious context AMLO is now taking an imprudent gamble by lifting restrictions – despite the curve of Mexican infections continuing to shoot upwards.

🔻 Mega-mercado, Mexico City

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Footnote: Mexico City epicentre
Mexico City accounts for about one quarter of all COVID-19 deaths in Mexico. The offical counts however are only starting points to explain the catastrophe. A Mexico City study by Nexos magazine found that there was an “excess mortality” of more than 20% unaccounted for by the official figures [‘8,000 ‘excess deaths’ in Mexico City as coronavirus rages: study’, Ajazeera, 26-May-2020, www.aljazeera.com]. One of the capital’s biggest clusters is the wholesale mega-market, the Central de Abasto. The enormous mercado providing 80% of the city’s food is a petri-dish for the virus which has cut a scythe through its 90,000-strong workforce, infecting its tomateros, chilli vendors and other workers whose need to keep working is often greater than their fear of the pandemicφ. The vendors and carters have another reason for continuing working even when they become ill – working class Mexicans are accustomed to poor quality health care and often harbour a distrust of hospitals (Sheridan).

~~⏦⏦⏦~~ ☤☤☤ ~~⏦⏦⏦~~

(Image source: www.studentnewsdaily.com)

Venezuela: Showcase numbers but a lack of transparency
Although the available statistics relating to Venezuela don’t reflect the dramatic numbers in Mexico, the situation in the South American country is peer bit as parlous. Venezuela has fessed up to 4,186 cases and 35 deaths (24-Jun-2020), but these figures have little credibility with independent observers. Venezuela has done very limited testing for the disease with the testing data guarded very carefully by the government [‘Hunger, Infection, and Repression: Venezuela’s Coronavirus Calamity’, (Stephanie Taladrid), The New Yorker, 29-May-2020, www.newyorker.com]. Doubters outside the country have noted that Venezuela’s health system was already in a state of collapse before COVID-19 arrived, citing as evidence: the country‘s functioning intensive care beds are estimated to number between 80 and 163; nil or intermittent supply to water to two-thirds of hospitals; power cuts off at regular intervals; shortages of gloves and face masks in 60% of hospitals; 76% of hospitals shortage of soap and 90% were short of sanitising gel [‘Venezuela’s Covid-19 death toll claims ‘not credible’, human rights group says’, (Tom Phillips), The Guardian, 27-May-2020, www.theguardian.com].

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🔺 Maduro: “People, we are identity”

President Maduro—already embroiled in a political and socio-economic crisis acerbated by long-term US trade sanctions on Venezuela—imposed a national lockdown in March. A side benefit to the lockdown (now extended to July) is that it allows the regime more scope to crack down on its critics…the obvious targets being opposition politicians and increasingly journalists, doctors and nurses who report adversely on Maduro’s handling of the pandemic (especially if they query the reported official numbers). [‘Venezuela’s Zulia State emerges as coronavirus hot spot’, Reuters, 24-Jun-2020, www.news.yahoo.com].

Footnote: Rich and poor, a widening of the divide
At the point of corona impact, the contrast between Venezuela’s masses and the elite have sharpened even more. The brunt of the economic crisis has fallen squarely on the poor and middle-class citizens – skyrocketing prices, scarcity of necessities, a greatly devalued Venezuelan bolivar, the oil price plunge (oil accounts for 98% of Venezuela’s export revenues), and over-reliance on the informal economy by the lower socio-economic classes [‘Why coronavirus could be catastrophic for Venezuela’, (Katy Watson & Vanessa Silva), BBC News, 12-Apr-2020, www.bbc.com]. With corruption, cronyism and nepotism ingrained in Venezuela, the Maduro regime and its acolytes—the heirs of Chavismoism—continue to benefit lavishly from black-market and other illicit financial activities◊ [‘Freedom in the World 2020: Venezuela’, Freedom House, www.freedomhouse.org].

~~~~⇚⇛⇚⇛~~⇚⇛⇚⇛~~⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛~~⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛~~~~⇚⇛⇚⇛~~

✱ AMLO preferring to travel and mingle accompanied only by his personal amulets for ‘protection’

◘ only in the last week of March did the government retreat a bit and start to urge the public to stay-at-home

φ the CDMX-run market only acted, bringing in health workers, ramping up testing and contact tracing, after workers starting dropping in significant numbers (Sheridan)…as with the rest of Mexico, too little, too late

◊ beneficiaries of this state largesse and privilege include the bolichicos, the wealthy children of the regime’s top leaders

Courting Controversy in Coronavirus Country: Belgium and El Salvador

Posted on June 6, 2020June 6, 2020 by funambulator@live.com

Comparative politics, Media & Communications, Public health,, Science and society

As countries try to deal with an epidemic that is novel to the world of public health, with no tried-and-true templates to follow, there have been various quite differing approaches to the COVID-19 crisis. Some of these approaches have inevitably roamed into the realm of the controversial and polemical, polarising people at home and abroad. In previous blogs 7dayadventurer.com has sketched the go-it-alone path adopted by Sweden✱,〘Two Antithetical Approaches to the COVID-19 Crisis: A Controversial Outlier Versus a a Low-key Over-achiever (10-May-2020)〙and the denialist response of President Bolsonaro to the epidemic in Brazil〘Covid/Ovid 2020: Crisis (Mis)Management – How the World’s Leaders are Responding? (02-Apr-2020) 〙.

Belgium’s unenviable record – with an asterisk
This blog turns the spotlight elsewhere, on to an unlikely duo, two vastly dissimilar countries whose strategies towards the pandemic have proved controversial, each in it’s own way. Belgium, a small European state, has surprised and shocked many observers by its prominence on the table of world’s worst affected countries. The country has recorded 815 deaths per million of population (as at the 1st of June), easily the worst per capita toll in “First World” Europe (next closest Spain, 580/one million). Although Belgium has some distinguishable factors which contribute it its fatality rate—the country and especially the capital Brussels is the sixth-most dense in Europe, and Brussels has a very international and mobile population, a high number of Belgians reside in nursing homes (accounting for more than half of the disease’s victims)✬—there’s another (statistical) factor that goes a good way to explaining why there has been 9,580 recorded victims of the disease⊡. Belgium counts both the deaths confirmed as resulting from coronavirus and the deaths which are suspected to have been caused by the disease (most countries do not include this second category in their official COVID-19 counts)✪. (“Is Belgium the world’s deadliest COVID-19 country or just the most honest?’, (Bevan Shields), Sydney Morning Herald, 01-Jun-2020, www.smh.com.au).

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🔺 Belgians returning home to a coronavirus-hit country

In defence of over-counting
Belgian virologist Prof Steven Van Gucht has deflected criticism of both Belgium’s numbers and its method of calculating corona casualties, commending Belgium for its honesty in selecting the more inclusive determination of the death toll. Van Gucht has argued that “public health shouldn’t be a political game or a contest on who is doing better than someone else”, adding that other governments not being honest with the public about the true scale of their outbreaks will be caught out on it later. Not everyone in Belgium applauds such transparency and honesty with the corona data, some within the kingdom’s business leadership have expressed alarm than the methodology used to ‘inflate’ mortality and morbidity numbers may have a deterrent effect on tourists returning to Belgium once the economy reopens (Shields).
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(Source: www.graphicmaps.com/)

El Salvador’s tough stand on lockdown transgressors part of a worrying authoritarian trend?
Pre-existing conditions in the Central American country of El Salvador have dictated the government approach taken to coronavirus. El Salvador’s high incidence of both gang activity and homicide prompted president Nayib Bukele (at 38 youthful and very social media savvy, eg, >1.9 M Twitter followers) to act hard and fast. Bukele’s government took a preemptive approach to the outbreak, schools and colleges were suspended and a state of emergence declared before the country had recorded its first confirmed case of the virus. Borders were closed, public gatherings in excess of 500 people banned, anyone caught driving cars without a sanctioned reason were detained at confinement centres for a 30-day period. Quarantine-breakers have been dealt with, summarily and harshly. Towns in El Salvador deemed to not be complying with the president’s strict lockdown orders have been cordoned off by the police, barring public egress [‘Savior or Strongman? El Salvador’s millennial president defies courts and Congress on coronavirus response’, (Patrick Oppman), CNN, 21-May-2020, www.edition.cnn.com].

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(Source: El Salvador Presidency via Reuters)

The new Salvadoran president has gone particularly hard on the country’s street gangs, the maras, who he fears would take advantage of the state of emergency to increase their criminal business activities when the security forces were busy policing the lockdown measures. Most controversial has been Bukele’s treatment of gang prisoners during the crisis – shockingly dehumanising images have emerged of large numbers of half-naked convicts shackled and huddled together in tight-knit formation (with zilch regard for social distancing), resembling a great amorphous mass of “human cargo” [’El Salvador’s president accused of using coronavirus to bolster autocratic agenda’, (Patrick J Mc Donnell & Alexander Renderos), Los Angeles Times, 01-May-2020, www.news.yahoo.com].

Recently Bukele has copped a lot of flak for the way he’s handled the crisis, including from labour organisations decrying the draconian quarantine measures as abuses of human rights. The legality of his actions has been questioned as has the increasing militarisation of the regime [‘One Year After Taking Charge, Nayib Bukele Faces Severe Criticism for Handling of COVID-19′, (Zoe PC/ Tanya Wadhwa), News Click, 03-Jun-2020, www.newsclick.in/].

El Salvador’s ‘hip’ president: taking a selfie before his speech at the UN 🔻

Shades of the White House
As an outsider—both as the son of an immigrant family from the Middle East and from a minor centre-right party which sits outside the political establishment traditionally dominated by the two main parties in El Salvador)—the president has deliberately attempted to work outside the mainstream including the National Assembly (NA) to achieve his aims. And he’s not adverse to employing military muscle to intimidate opponents⌽ while also reaching out to El Salvador’s impoverished with cash and food handouts (to buttress his personal popularity with the social base). Political opponents in the NA have accused Bukele of using the pandemic to consolidate an authoritarian regime, and of seeking to violate the national constitution (Oppman). The similarities seemingly extend to shared personal traits. President Bukele has disclosed his prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine, while referencing Trump’s use and endorsement of the drug. The El Salvador authorities have managed to hold the death toll thus far to 53 (06-Jun-2020) at the cost of drastic restrictions on individual liberties.

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✱ Sweden‘s top epidemiologist has now conceded the government’s laissez-faire approach was seriously flawed – with a status quo of 43 fatalities per 100,000 people and Sweden finding its borders with its Scandinavian neighbours remaining firmly closed [‘Top epidemiologist admits he got Sweden’s COVID-19 strategy wrong’, (Bloomberg), National Post, 03-Jun-2020, www.nationalpost.com]
⊡ as at 06-Jun-2020
✬ some countries simply don’t count deaths occurring in nursing homes in their COVID-19 tallies, the UK only belatedly included them later in the crisis
✪ if Belgium applied the same criteria as most countries the recorded number of deaths by COVID-19 would be around half of what it is
⌽ such as deploying the army inside the Legislative Assembly as ‘bouncers’ [‘Nayib Bukele’s military stunt raises alarming memories in El Salvador’, (David Agren), The Guardian, 16-Feb-2020, www.theguardian.com]

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