Tag Archives: WorldNews

One Cardiac Arrest. Four 911 Callers. And a Tragic Outcome.

by Lynn Arditi, The Public’s Radio

CUMBERLAND, R.I. — When Rena Fleury collapsed in the stands during her son’s high school football game last August, there was reason to be hopeful.

At 45, she was on the young side for a cardiac arrest, which improved her odds of surviving. And she was in a public place, which, studies show, also increased her chances. Plus, she was in Cumberland, a “heart safe” community where emergency medical personnel are among the most highly trained in the state.

But despite four 911 emergency calls from people in the stands, two nearby automated external defibrillators and bystanders who tried to help, Fleury didn’t make it.

The 911 call takers failed to recognize that Fleury was having a cardiac arrest. And they failed to provide CPR instructions over the phone.

A review of EMS dispatch logs and interviews with first responders showed that Fleury didn’t receive CPR for the first few minutes after she collapsed, perhaps for up to five minutes. Every minute delay in performing CPR on people in cardiac arrest decreases their chances of survival as much as 10%, according to the American Heart Association.

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The case haunts Dr. Heather Rybasack-Smith, medical director of Cumberland EMS, who helped perform CPR and supervised the emergency medical team’s response to the call. She testified about the case before the state House Committee on Health, Education and Welfare in March.

“No less than four people called 911. Four people,” she told state lawmakers, without mentioning Fleury by name.

“Unfortunately, the system completely failed this woman. This cardiac arrest went completely unrecognized by the bystanders, by her family and most importantly by the 911 operator who took the call.”

Rybasack-Smith and her colleagues in the emergency medical community wrote a series of articles in the May issue of the Rhode Island Medical Journal, which was devoted to out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. The issue includes new data showing that Rhode Island’s rate of bystander CPR — which one author described as “abysmal” — is well below that of other states that track it.

Fleury’s death once again raises troubling questions about whether failures in Rhode Island’s 911 system are costing lives, an investigation by The Public’s Radio and ProPublica has found.

In March, the news organizations reported on the death last year of a 6-month-old baby in Warwick after a Rhode Island 911 call taker failed to give CPR instructions to the family.

In every other New England state, as well as in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, among others, 911 calls for cardiac arrests and other medical emergencies are handled by certified emergency medical dispatchers, or EMDs. Their training includes following carefully scripted instructions — which one medical dispatch expert likened to a pilot’s preflight checklist — to talk a caller or bystander through performing CPR. But there is no federal mandate for these protocols and no central tracking of which states have adopted them.

After the story, Col. James M. Manni, Rhode Island State Police superintendent, recommended that all of the state’s 911 call takers be certified to provide emergency medical instructions over the phone before first responders arrive. The training, he said, would cost about $170,000.

But since next year’s state budget is still under discussion, it is unclear if money will be allocated to pay for it.

“Somebody Call 911”

On the day she died, Fleury and her fiance, Kevin White, had an early dinner before the game at their usual Friday night spot, PJ’s Pub.

Fleury, an office manager, and White, a software engineer, had met online several years earlier and soon became inseparable. They were both divorced with children in their late teens and 20s from previous marriages. And they were enjoying a new freedom and spontaneity. Sometimes they’d go into New York City for the day just to get pizza and shop.

They were living together at Fleury’s house in Woonsocket with her sons and the two cats they’d adopted. And the couple were planning a small destination wedding in Jamaica, followed by a big reception.

Kevin White and Rena Fleury were planning a small destination wedding and a big reception.
(Lynn Arditi/The Public’s Radio)

In the car on the way to the game, White turned to his bride-to-be and told her how pretty she looked; her burgundy lipstick matched her blouse perfectly.

As they walked into the stadium, the couple ran into the football coach’s mother, who congratulated them on their engagement. “And of course, Rena’s telling her all about the wedding,” White recalled. And they’re “laughing and talking all the way into the stadium.”

Fleury’s youngest son, Emmanuel Gomes, was the star running back for Woonsocket High School, and she rarely missed a game. On this evening, the game was to raise money for the Woonsocket Villa Novans’ injury fund.

About 30 minutes into the game, Emmanuel ran 60 yards for a touchdown. People in the visitors’ stands cheered and leaped to their feet.

“Yay, a touchdown!” Fleury shouted.

Then White thought maybe she’d spoken too soon.

“Oh shit,” he said, “they flew a flag.”

“It’s still a touchdown!” Fleury said.

White’s eyes were glued to the field. He said three, maybe four seconds passed. Then he turned to his right and saw Fleury slumped over on the bench.

“I’m like, Babe!”

“I have the phone in my hand, but I’m like in shock. I said: Somebody call 911!”

Rhode Island Lag

The chances of surviving a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital in the United States average about 1 in 10, according to the nonprofit Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival, or CARES, which collects data from 911 dispatch centers, EMS agencies and hospitals encompassing about 40% of the nation’s population (Rhode Island does not participate in CARES).

In Rhode Island, the odds are worse. Dr. Nick Asselin, an emergency medicine physician and faculty member at Brown University’s medical school, examined data from more than 500 cardiac arrests over 19 months during 2015-17 from three hospitals affiliated with Lifespan, the state’s largest health network. His preliminary findings show that Rhode Island’s survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests is 7.6% — or 1 in 13.

The difference, Asselin said, is what happens before a patient gets to the hospital.

“The battle for this is really won and lost in the field,” Asselin said. “So if a patient is in cardiac arrest not receiving CPR, even the best pre-hospital care and the best hospital care won’t effect a good outcome for them.”

Outcomes vary widely across the country. King County, home to Seattle, is a national model for prehospital cardiac care. Nearly 70% of people who experienced a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital in 2017 received bystander CPR. That’s two to three times higher than most other parts of the country. King County’s bystander CPR rate has risen from 53% in 2004.

Not surprisingly, the survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in King County in 2017 was about 21%, double the CARES national average rate of 10.4%.

And the survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests that were witnessed by someone else is even higher. In Seattle and King County, in situations where the patient’s heart was able to be shocked back into a normal rhythm, the survival rate in 2017 was 56%.

CPR training is part of the reason. Rhode Island is one of 38 states and the District of Columbia that mandate CPR training in high school. King County goes further, funding CPR training for adults, including residents of low-income communities, which studies show tend to have lower bystander response rates. About 80% of adults in King County are now trained in CPR.

King County also spends about $112,000 a year to help communities buy automated external defibrillators, or AEDs. And the county maintains a database of all AEDs that is accessible to 911 dispatchers.

In Texas, the Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport introduced the first interactive kiosks where people can learn to perform CPR on mannequins. There are now more than 30 Hands-Only CPR Training Kiosks in cities around the country, as part of a partnership between the American Heart Association and the Anthem Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Anthem Inc. None are in Rhode Island.

And the emergency medical system in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, uses a cellphone app, Pulse Point, that maps the locations of all AEDs so first responders can find them in an emergency. The app, which is funded by a three-year grant, can be downloaded for free by residents certified in CPR. These residents can then sign up to get alerts from the 911 center about the locations of possible cardiac arrests, so they can respond if they’re nearby.

Rhode Island currently has no statewide registry of AEDs. Cumberland created its own local registry, but EMS officials haven’t found a way to provide the information to the state’s 911 emergency center, the first point of contact for all 911 calls in the state, so it can be used to help callers.

In 2018, about 900 people in Rhode Island experienced a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital, but only about 22% — roughly 200 people — received CPR from a bystander, according to data from the state Department of Health. And not all of those people survived.

By comparison, the average rate of bystander CPR for jurisdictions that participate in CARES — whose members are required to log EMS data into special software that is then used to analyze and improve performance — is about 40%.

The single most effective way to improve the chances of surviving a cardiac arrest outside of a hospital, experts say, is to train 911 call takers to give CPR instructions over the phone.

An example of a defibrillator that is placed in public areas. Fleury died despite four 911 emergency calls from people in the stands, two nearby automated external defibrillators and bystanders who tried to help.
(Kayana Szymczak, special to ProPublica)

Dr. Michael C. Kurz, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and chair of the American Heart Association’s Telephone CPR Task Force, said that getting 911 call takers to consistently provide telephone CPR involves more than a one-time training.

To be effective, he said, EMS systems have to gather data and monitor performance. Such programs cost money and are often mandated by state law or regulation.

“It is significantly less expensive than building fire stations,” Kurz said, “or putting more ambulances on the street or frankly mass-training citizens.”

Jason Rhodes, the state Department of Health’s chief of emergency medical services, agrees that Rhode Island can do better.

“If we are able to double our bystander CPR rates from 1 in 4 to 2 in 4,” Rhodes said, “we think we’ll be able to save at least 100 more people in the state” each year.

The state Department of Public Safety is preparing to provide its 911 call takers with emergency medical dispatch training if the legislature provides funding to do so in next year’s budget. “If and when the funding is approved, the training would begin as soon as possible,” Laura Meade Kirk, a spokeswoman for the department, said in an email last week.

“Oh My God, Is She OK?”

After Fleury collapsed in the football stands, the first person to respond was Jonathan DePault, the father of another player, who was seated a few rows back.

“There was people saying, ‘Oh my god, is she OK?’” he recalled.

A former volunteer firefighter and EMT-Cardiac (his EMT-Cardiac license expired in 2009), DePault knelt next to Fleury.

“She was not conscious,” DePault said, “or she was in and out of consciousness.”

Initially, DePault said he thought she might be having a seizure. So he took off his sweatshirt and tucked it underneath her head. Then he checked her neck for a pulse and said he detected one.

“I was trying to talk to her and reassure her that everything was OK,” DePault said.

Kayla Cullerton, an assistant athletic trainer, was on the field when she heard the coach’s mother in the stands shouting for her. She jumped the fence and ran into the stands.

Fleury was lying not quite flat on her back between the bleachers, Cullerton said, while a man who said he was an EMT (later identified as DePault) held Fleury’s head.

“He was holding her head up and said she was seizing,” Cullerton said. “He kept saying he had a pulse.”

DePault would later say that he didn’t immediately start CPR on Fleury because “you can only do CPR if there is no pulse.” That runs counter to the American Heart Association’s CPR guidelines, revised in 2000, which recommend that no pulse check be done before bystanders begin chest compressions on a person who is unconscious, because a pulse check is “unreliable.”

DePault said he is familiar with the AHA guidelines but he relied on his professional training. “CPR needs to happen immediately, I get that,’’ he said. “But it could be the lady just passed out or slipped off the stands and banged her head. … To me, there has to be some kind of assessment.”

Cullerton rubbed the knuckles of her fist into Fleury’s chest — a practice known as sternum rubs — to try to wake her.

“She was reacting to the rubs; her eyes were moving a little bit,” Cullerton said. “So I kept asking [DePault] if he had a pulse.”

Cullerton felt Fleury’s wrist for a pulse. Nothing.

At some point, she said, DePault told her, “I don’t have a pulse.”

Then they pulled Fleury out from between the bleachers onto the middle steps and began CPR. A police officer ran to find an AED while they took turns doing chest compressions. But when the AED arrived, it indicated the rhythm of Fleury’s heart wouldn’t respond to a shock.

Down on the field, Mark Levesque, the athletic trainer for both the Woonsocket and Cumberland High Schools’ football teams, was watching the game when he spotted a fire truck pull up near the concession stands. Levesque is also a paramedic and brings a portable AED to every game.

Mark Levesque, an athletic trainer for high school football teams who is also a paramedic and brings an automated external defibrillator to every game, shown at the stadium where Fleury collapsed.
(Lynn Arditi/The Public’s Radio)

Levesque didn’t immediately think his help was needed. He figured someone had a medical problem at the concession stand, and he turned his attention back to his players.

A few minutes later, a rescue truck pulled up near the end zone. Levesque looked up into the stands and saw firefighter EMTs performing CPR.

If he’d known it was a cardiac arrest, he said, he would have come sooner.

“Person Unresponsive”

The initial 911 call was for “person unresponsive with possible seizure activity,” said Rybasack-Smith. She and Cumberland EMS Director John Pliakas had been working at a festival and were driving back to the station headquarters when the first 911 call blared over their radio.

A cardiac arrest is caused by an electrical problem in the heart; the shaking that sometimes occurs at the onset can be mistaken for a seizure. In Rhode Island, emergency calls for people in cardiac arrest often initially get reported as seizures, according to a sampling of EMS call logs reviewed by The Public’s Radio.

Rhode Island law bars the public — even the family of someone who was the subject of a 911 call — from accessing 911 records without the caller’s “written consent” or a court order. And in Fleury’s case, the callers’ identities are not known.

But doctors who were able to obtain the recordings from the 911 center as part of a review of emergency services say that in none of the calls did the 911 operators direct anyone to perform CPR.

It took about seven minutes from the time of the first 911 calls, at 7:32 p.m., for the firefighters, who are certified EMTs, to arrive at the field, according to EMS logs. The football game was still in progress, so first responders had to skirt the perimeter of the field to reach the visitors’ stands.

Rybasack-Smith said she and the EMS director reached Fleury just behind the ambulance crew, which arrived nine minutes after the first call. A second paramedic crew arrived shortly after, she said, bringing the total number of emergency staff on scene to nine.

They took turns performing chest compressions on Fleury. They gave her medication. And they shocked her heart multiple times (her heart at this point did have a shockable rhythm).

“We were really trying everything,” Rybasack-Smith said, “to get her heart back into a normal rhythm.”

But Fleury’s heart never managed to beat again on its own. She was later pronounced dead at Landmark Medical Center.

“She was so young and she really had so many things going for her,” Rybasack-Smith said. “And so you just never know what might have been if somebody had started CPR right away.”


A House bill, sponsored by state Rep. Mia A. Ackerman, D-Cumberland, would require that at least one 911 operator trained in telephone CPR be on call at all times at the Rhode Island 911 call center to “coach” someone calling about a cardiac arrest until a rescue unit arrives.

But the bill, introduced on behalf of the Rhode Island Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, has been put on hold, Ackerman said, since Manni, the state police superintendent, recommended improved training for all 911 call takers.

“I have to respect that he is a man of his word and things are going to change,” Ackerman said. “And if I don’t see any movement, if it’s just a lot of talk, then I’m going to put the bill back in again” when the next legislative session begins in January.

Manni has asked Gov. Gina Raimondo to have all 34 telecommunicators and eight supervisors in the 911 emergency center certified in emergency medical dispatch.

“I support his recommendation,” Raimondo, a Democrat, said last March, “and we’ll be working with the legislature to secure the additional funding.”

The legislature typically adjourns in late June.


These days, White lives alone in a tidy rental apartment he shares with his and Rena’s two cats, Big Daddy (named after the rapper Big Daddy Kane) and Sugar Mama.

White with photos of him and his late fiancee, Fleury.
(Lynn Arditi/The Public’s Radio)

One evening last January, White sat on his living room couch, Big Daddy curled up on his lap, as he flipped through a small photo album. There was a photo from New Year’s Eve in Georgia with his sister. And one from Mexico last July, where he proposed. And another with Rena showing off her big diamond engagement ring.

Rena’s daughter, Daneta, 29, made albums of her mother for each member of the family. White keeps his in a locked safe in his office.

“It’s hard for me to even look at her pictures,” he said. “I miss her so much. She was my everything.”

Their wedding reception was supposed to be this coming Saturday. Fleury, he said, was so organized, she had everything booked.

“I just feel so cheated.”

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The World Has Lost Its Compass

The question is: will humankind be able to create a values-based political system again? And, before that happens, will the New Right with its extreme nationalism lead to wars and blood? Looking at the mobilisation on climate change, led by a young girl from Sweden, a winning card in the European elections, there are reasons for hope (but now climate change has become a left-wing issue).

We face a dramatic risk: if we fail, once the mythology of sovereigntism collapses in the face of an unsolved dramatic reality, people who have lost hope and trust in politics will tend to look for the way out of chaos in a Man of Providence, as Pope Pius XI called Benito Mussolini.

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Jun 3 2019 (IPS)

The terrible feeling I had on waking up and seeing the Italian voting results at the recent European elections was that my country was suddenly full of strangers. How could the majority of Italians reconfirm a government which has been the most inefficient in history, quarrelling on everything every single day and looking with total indifference to the looming problem of how to establish the next budget without clashing with the European Union or squeezing Italian citizens? Its irresponsible debate on the Italian finances has now led to a spread (difference of value) of 290 points with the Germans.

Roberto Savio

Roberto Savio

What is more, the results have rewarded Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who has spent a grand total of 17 days in nearly a year in his office (not of a marginal ministry … should it now be abolished?) and all the rest in an electoral campaign? Well, Italians doubled his votes, from 17% to 34%, while halving those of messy government partners the 5 Star Movement (whose leader Luigi Di Maio came to the post of Deputy Prime Minister with the only a job on his CV that of steward at the Naples football stadium). What has Salvini done concretely, beside blocking ports to immigrants, displaying rosaries, bible and crucifix in rallies, and mimicking Mussolini’s body language?

Then, of course, you realize that Salvini is not alone, and that probably my generation, which is based on the values enshrined in the Constitution (solidarity, social justice, equity, peace and international cooperation) is unable to understand today’s times. On October 31, 2017, Corriere del Trentino published an interview in which I claimed that we needed populists in government in Europe as soon as possible, so it would soon become evident that while their denunciations are correct, they would have no answer to the problems. And when the interviewer observed that the next elections to come were the Italian elections, I replied that as an Italian I was sad, but as a European I was happy, because the Italian populists would fail miserably.

Well, under normal logic, they have failed. The chaotic government has realised few points of its programme, and Italy is the European country close to 0% growth. But the majority of the Italian population has seen things otherwise … so this opens up a crucial question.

Those who are fighting for democracy (look at Poland and Hungary with the progressive elimination of checks and balances, courts, media, teaching system, etc.); for transparency and accountability (think of US President Donald Trump’s refusal to disclose his tax declarations); for social justice (today just 80 billionaires own as much as 2.3 billion people), peace (the arms race reached an unprecedented 1.7 trillion dollars in 2018), and so on, do they really understand why we are becoming a minority in many countries and globally?

Looking at Trump’s very probable re-election, at Marine Le Pen’s gains over Emmanuel Macron in France, are we sure that we understand the new politics, and that we can provide a valid answer? The question is all the more important because the tide is impressive. In the wings behind those in power (the Trumps, Orbans, Kaczynskis, Erdogans, Putins, Salvinis, Bolsonaros, Dutertes and so on) are those in waiting (like Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Jussi Halla-aho and so on).

Of course, all those respond to different realities. If we call the new wave nationalists, we should then add Narendra Modi, Shinz? Abe, Xi Jinping and the very large majority of the world’s citizens.

But, at least in Europe, they call themselves sovereigntists. This makes it easier to understand them, as they basically share a number of points: a) nationalism, tinged with racism); b) xenophobia, within which they include minorities and LBGTs); c) use of moral superiority to depict the adversary as an enemy of the people, whom they represent; d) fight against any international treaty and structure, which they claim have taken away the sovereignty of their country; and e) echoing Trump: my country first. So, the fight is not between left and right, it is between those who are for their nation and those who are associated with globalisation.

This, by the way, is a gross manipulation. Nations are the basis on which we build international relations and are the basis for our identity. Nationalism is an extremism built on a legitimate concept. And the principles on which United Nations, for instance, was built was the concept of development, which is exactly the opposite of globalisation; the concept and strategy for eliminating national sovereignty to make the maximum use of free flow of capitals and investments and support the transnational system. Development was a concept based on the idea that, in the end, everybody taking part in it was going to be more: globalisation on the idea that, in the end, everybody would have more.

A world in which the cost of advertising per capita surpass that of education, and the financial system reaches volumes 40 times superior to those of production of good and services, is a world clearly against the concept of development. To have fiscal paradises with at least 40 trillion dollars, whose taxes – if paid to nations – would be more than the total cost of all long-term programmes of the United Nations, clearly does not fit with sovereigntism.

And let us also remember that before the economic crisis of 2008, created by a corrupt banking system, there were no sovereigntist parties in sight anywhere, except for that of Le Pen in France. Yet, the new political system has hardly fought against the dramatic power of finance: Trump’s first year of government had a cabinet with the largest participation of bankers in American history (later replaced by military figures).

But we have no space here for a conceptual debate. Just let us call the attention to the fact that voters seem to have reached a point where they disregard the most basic element of political action: do not trust those who have lied to you, regardless of any political inclination. I will take just three examples: Italy, Great Britain and Lithuania.

As already said, Italy is now in recession, with no growth in sight. The government has already tried to ignore the limit imposed by the European Commission that deficits should not surpass 3% of the budget deficit. This was in fact imposed by the Council of Ministers. It is worth recalling that the Council, formed by governments, is the body which takes the decisions, which are left to the European Commission to implement. The European Parliament was created to introduce the much-needed principle of checks and balances. But politicians from every side conveniently presented unpopular measures and law that they approved in the Council’s meeting as coming from the Commission.

Salvini and Di Maio have already had to make an ignominious retreat and cut the deficit of the Italian budget after trying to force the Commission to accept an unbalanced budget. Now Salvini claims that, siding with the other European sovereigntists, he will force the Commission to change the rules, to accept the next Italian budget, which ignores not economics but mathematics.

There was a recent TV debate between the recently appointed Deputy Minister of the Economy Laura Castelli, a young business administration graduate, and Carlo Padoan, a respected economist, university professor, member of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the World Bank. When Castelli said that she would not fear it if the spread between Italy and Germany continued growing because that had no impact on the real economy and the growth of interest on the enormous Italian debt, a startled Padoan tried to correct her. After a while, the moderator tried to change the subject, observing that Padoan was a world authority on the subject. Castelli’s answer was emblematic of the distrust of the New Politicians with the elites: Why? Because he has studied more, does that mean he knows more than me?

Well, it seems Italians trust Castelli more than Padoan. After the elections, Salvini announced that he is going to allocate 30 billion euro for tax reductions, a clear gift to the northern Italy’s business sector. That means find at least 80 billion euro of income for the next budget. This is clearly impossible, without an increase in taxes and a serious cut in current expenses. As usual, education, research and health will be affected, unless the European Union agrees that the 3% rule be put aside.

Well, here is an easy prediction: Salvini will find out that his fellow travelling companions, the sovereigntists of Austria, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, not to forget Germany, will not agree to put their money to save the Italian budget. Will that show Italians that living in mythologies instead of realities is not helpful?

Salvini won on the fear of immigration. Well, according to the United Nations, the Italian population has been in decline since 2015. Last year, it lost 160,000 people, and projections say it will lose 1.8 million people by 2025. Italy now has 5 million foreigners, which includes 500,000 students, Italians born of foreign parents. There are an estimated 670,000 illegal foreigners, against whom Salvini took no real action: his winning electoral card was to close ports to immigrants. Yet, under the previous government, immigration was as low as 119,000 people in 2017 and 20,120 at mid-September 2018. Immigrants make up 7.5% of the total Italian population, which was estimated at 59.9 million (of which 71.8% urban) in 2018. According to the official statistics, Italy has 1,673 deaths per day and 1.353 births … and 22% are 65 or over, with only 13.5% under 15.

African and Arab immigrants account for 1.5% of the Italian population, and 2.5% are Europeans. Yet, according to a poll, Italians think that immigrants make up between 15 and 25% of the population. And they believe that the large majority are Muslim, when they are orthodox.

Clearly, without immigration, the Italian economy and the pension system are not viable. But this is unacceptable to say … and it does not help to say that in Japan, the country where identity and culture are defended as untouchable, the aging population and loss of productivity has obliged Abe to accept 230,000 immigrants this year.

The second example is Great Britain, home of the mother of parliaments, considered a politically civilised country. Well, everybody knows the Brexit saga. But what is impressive is that in the recent European elections Nigel Farage won more votes than the Conservative and Labour parties together. He created the Brexit Party just six months ago. He was fundamental in forcing the famous Brexit referendum in 2016. That referendum was based on much clearly false information, and Farage admitted so after winning. Among them, one made by Farage was that 76 million Turks were joining Europe and would invade Great Britain: Turkey has no chance of joining the European Union. Boris Johnson claimed that every week Great Britain was giving the European Union 350 million euro, which should go instead to reinforcing the country’s National Health Service: another figure that was so false he is being brought to court. The British gave Farage 31.6% of the votes (Labour 14.1% and Conservatives 9.1%) and Boris Johnson is in pole position to be the next Prime Minister. Of course, there are many explanations for that, but all exclude any consideration of the eligibility of proven liars.

The third example is Lithuania, which had general elections just before the European elections. Lithuania had 3.7 million people at the end of the Soviet Union. By 2018 this was down to 2 million because of steady emigration, especially by young people. The Farmers and Greens Union party brandished the anti-immigration flag and won easily. Last year, the “invasion” was in fact of 54.000 people, of whom 69% were returning Lithuanians. Of the real immigrants, all basically from Eastern and Central Europe, the Arab-Africans were a grand total of 208, of whom 120 have already left the country. As an excuse for the Lithuanians, we can say that they have a history of invasions, repression and resistance, and identity is a strong feeling, like elsewhere in Eastern and Central Europe.

By the way, eastern Germany is the heartland of the extreme Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) and it has few immigrants, unlike western Germany where the AfD did poorly). But, from any logical viewpoint, it is hard to believe that feelings and not reality could play such primary role. Of course, there are many difficult questions. Look at Ukraine, where 73% of the voters elected an untested comedian, Volodymyr Zelenksy. That shows that feelings are in fact reality. But then why in the United States, cradle of feminism, were 43% of Trump’s voters women, who elected a clear champion of misogyny and a well-known womaniser?

In other words, reality is no longer a factor in elections. Other factors like feelings are more important. And while we have no space to present a serious analysis of this, let us just offer some considerations on which to reflect.

1) Historians agree that greed and fear are probably the most important elements of change. If that is so, let us remember that with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and ideologies declared dead, the winners introduced globalisation as the route for which there were no alternatives (TINA, Margaret Thatcher). This was embedded in the so-called Washington Consensus, which reduced the role of the State as much as possible to give free way to the movement of capital. Social costs were considered unproductive, then came elimination of the difference between deposit banks and investment banks (Clinton 1999), which gave birth to the finance that we now suffer from. Among other changes for unregulated greed, let us not forget Tony Blair’s Third Way, an acceptance of globalisation from the left, to give to it a human face and make it less damaging. The result has been a separation of the European left from its base, and the progressive disappearance of a value-based debate, which put humans at its centre, in favour of the new values: competition, individual success, wealth as the basis of social relations, markets as the centre of the international relations.

2) That was accompanied by a decline of multilateralism, peace and international cooperation. The United States was the main engine for the creation of the United Nations, with an engagement to provide its headquarters and pay 25% of the budget. But, in 1981, Ronald Reagan took a distance, declaring that his country could not accept having one vote like others, and it would not accept binding resolutions from a majority of smaller countries. And then Trump came with the last straw, with the ‘America First’ campaign, which means in fact ‘America Alone’, preaching that the United States had no friends or allies to limit its action. This was the final act against multilateralism.

3) In 2008, a world economic crisis spread worldwide from the US banking system, creating a wave of fear, unemployment, reduction in salaries, loss of jobs and precarity that the political system was largely unable to address because its global dimension went beyond national capacity of response, accompanied by a sharp decline in political competence. This was accompanied by a rise in corruption, as politics became short-term and directed towards administrative problems, without any ideological framework.

4) Trump has created a ripple situation, with the New Right (or Alternative Right, as Steve Bannon calls it), free from the moral and ethical considerations that emerged from the Second World War. The New Right can conduct politics based on greed, and much more fear, using immigrants and minorities as the enemy to fight, for defending national identities and histories. This narrative has created new divides: rural against urban, elite the enemy of real people, any international agreement as a straitjacket of the nation, recovery of a glorious past as the basis for the future. Trump has legitimised behaviour previously considered unacceptable, and during his very probable second term he will change even more the world that we have created from the ruins of the Second World War.

5) Internet has gone wrong. Instead of being the new instrument for horizontal communication and sharing, it has become a creator of fragmented and virtual worlds, where people group along partisan lines, no longer exchange views and ideas. It is an arena for insults and hate, run by false identities with fake news, and where citizens are sold as consumers by a number of logarithms, based on maximisation of profit. It has created the largest fortunes in human history, multibillionaires who do not feel accountable to social values and interests. This has helped to create the loss of quality in the political debate, and the use of feelings and guts, instead of political rationality. Trump has 60 million followers on Twitter, more than all American media combined. They do not buy newspapers, and believe whatever Trump says. This will lead to his re-election, unless some serious blunder occurs, but with the bar of tolerance being raised continuously.

Let us stop here. There are, of course, many more points of reflections. But whatever reflection we make, let us remember that political ideas come and go in history. Certainly, sovereigntism is not as structured as communism or fascism. It was normal for politicians to write books. Now, Trump even brags that he does not read them, to avoid having his ideas influenced. The New Right is basically content free, although expert in mobilising people’s feelings. So, this wave will also finish.

The question is: will humankind be able to create a values-based political system again? And, before that happens, will the New Right with its extreme nationalism lead to wars and blood? Looking at the mobilisation on climate change, led by a young girl from Sweden, a winning card in the European elections, there are reasons for hope (but now climate change has become a left-wing issue).

We face a dramatic risk: if we fail, once the mythology of sovereigntism collapses in the face of an unsolved dramatic reality, people who have lost hope and trust in politics will tend to look for the way out of chaos in a Man of Providence, as Pope Pius XI called Benito Mussolini.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti neoliberal global governance. Director for international relations of the European Center for Peace and Development.. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

The post The World Has Lost Its Compass appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Jared Kushner casts doubt on Palestinian ability to self-govern

He is an expert on knowing how not to govern but no expert on Palestine or Israel.

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White House adviser says freedom from Israeli military interference is a ‘high bar’

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s Middle East adviser and son-in-law, has expressed uncertainty over the ability of the Palestinians to govern themselves in a rare television interview broadcast on Sunday night.

Kushner – who is considering delaying the publication of the political portion of his peace plan because of the need for new parliamentary elections in Israel – said it would be “a high bar” when asked if Palestinians could expect freedom from Israeli military and government interference.

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‘It’s a miracle’: Helsinki’s radical solution to homelessness

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Finland is the only EU country where homelessness is falling. Its secret? Giving people homes as soon as they need them – unconditionally

Tatu Ainesmaa turns 32 this summer, and for the first time in more than a decade he has a home he can truly say is his: an airy two-room apartment in a small, recently renovated block in a leafy suburb of Helsinki, with a view over birch trees.

“It’s a big miracle,” he says. “I’ve been in communes, but everyone was doing drugs and I’ve had to get out. I’ve been in bad relationships; same thing. I’ve been on my brother’s sofa. I’ve slept rough. I’ve never had my own place. This is huge for me.”

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Major tuna brands failing to tackle slavery in Pacific supply chains – report

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Research shows only four of biggest companies in £17bn industry said they conducted due diligence specifically to uncover abuses

The world’s biggest canned tuna brands are failing to tackle modern slavery in their Pacific supply chains, leaving thousands of workers at sea under threat of human rights abuses, a report has found.

According to findings published on Monday by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), an international corporate watchdog, only four of the world’s 35 largest tuna retail brands said they conducted due diligence with the specific aim of uncovering modern slavery in their supply chains.

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Caster Semenya able to run medication-free for now as Swiss court floors IAAF

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• Swiss court tells IAAF to suspend testosterone regulations
• Semenya can compete in 800m without medication to 25 June

Caster Semenya is once again free to run the 800m without having to take medication – at least for the time being – after the Swiss supreme federal court ordered the IAAF to suspend its testosterone regulations for her with immediate effect.

The surprise news – which completely blindsided athletics’ governing body – means that the Olympic champion can compete in distances ranging from 400m to a mile without medication until at least 25 June. However for now it only applies to the South African and not other athletes with differences in sexual development (DSD).

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