SITREP: Venezuelan Bay of Pig’s while the planet is under lockdown
By Ana | The Saker Blog | May 5, 2020
In the early morning of the 3rd of May 2020, an illegal foreign invasion was intended and aborted in the Caribbean small town named Chuao, in the Aragua State in Venezuela. According to the available information, the invasion was successfully contended by the Venezuelan Militias together with the armed forces in a joint operative.
At the moment, there is not a lot of information available, but it is clear that two US citizens and the son of a high ranked ex-officer of the Venezuelan Army were captured together with six more mercenaries, as informed by TeleSur.
This failed new attempt to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro is apparently linked to the operation which failed on Sunday May 3rd, executed on the coast near Caracas, Macuto which ended with a green beret imprisoned by government agents.
Guaido’s fingerprints are all over the place and were sanctioned by the confession of Silvercorp Jordan Goudreau testifying the existence of a contract between himself and Guaido. As if this confession was not enough, we also have his plea for respect for human rights of Silvercorps mercenaries involved.
Meanwhile in Imperial mainland, many more were made aware of the operations leaving as well all sorts of fingerprints, not difficult to elucidate even for starved and untrained imperial vassals. We have a trace of tweets that preceded the apparently very secret operations of the Silvercorp commands.
1. – Silvercorp itself tweets to The Donald about readiness and high efficiency of the, at that time, still future operation.
2.- Marianella Salazar, former Venezuelan journalist exiled in Miami tweets as well the night before the events.
As well a video showing Goudreau and Nieto, was aired some hours before the attempted invasion:
https://www. facebook.com/MisionVerdadEnVzla/videos/1888201781313396/
Also involved and captured is Josnars Adolfo Baduel, son of General Baduel who was a former close collaborator of Hugo Chavez who later turned on him and joined the coup attempt of April 2002.
While all events keep unfolding and more information is breaking through, we have a modern time Pontius Pilates washing his hands.
Here are some photos of the folks who wanted to invade Venezuela:
Seems like this guy was close to Trump, at least on one photo, maybe a bodyguard or security?
This is a mercenary from the Silvercorp PMC.
Here the caption says “expectations” and “reality”:
Here is another one of those “invincible” Hollywood special operators:
and here is what they look like in reality:
they sure don’t look as cocky now:
proof of nationality? Sure, these “experts” took their passports with them (!!)
The world must halt Israel’s annexation and reverse its colonisation of Palestine
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | May 5, 2020
UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk’s criticism of the forthcoming US-Israeli annexation of more Palestinian land offers a good start to collective political action against Israel, if only the international community would show that it is willing. “The plan would crystallise a 21st century apartheid, leaving in its wake the demise of the Palestinian’s right to self-determination. Legally, morally, politically, this is entirely unacceptable,” declared Lynk.
The UN official described the repercussions of annexation as creating “a cascade of bad human rights consequences” and insisted that the international community can no longer play its acquiescent role to Israeli violations. “The looming annexation is a political litmus test for the international community. This annexation will not be reversed through rebukes, nor will the 53-year-old occupation die of old age,” he warned.
This is not the first time that Lynk has offered a harsher criticism of Israel than the appeasing commentary which is typical of UN officials and institutions. In the past, he recommended international sanctions against Israel and supported the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its investigation of Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people.
Lynk’s words draw attention to the UN’s political flaws and the endorsement of human rights violations committed by its member states. As Israel moves towards annexation, the international community is unlikely to assess its own complicity. The US-Israeli annexation plans are built upon decades of international endorsement of Zionist colonisation. To oppose annexation – one of the last steps that Israel is embarking upon to complete its colonial project – is not enough. Diluting settler-colonisation to “53 years of occupation” is also inconsistent and a misrepresentation of the causes of Palestinian displacement.
The US may currently be playing a more prominent role, but the international community has magnified the US-Israeli relationship to deflect attention from the historical process leading to the current dynamic. The international community’s endorsement of the Israeli colonisation project is a major violation that remains overlooked. What the US and Israel have achieved under the Trump administration is a reflection of an ongoing cycle of intentional political oblivion at a global level.
Having shone the spotlight on the US-Israeli collusion, the international community has availed itself of a temporary lull in scrutiny of its action, particularly its inaction when it comes to the Palestinian people’s political rights. In truth, the international community’s action can be summed up in the 1947 Partition Plan, after which reliance on statements and condemnations became the diplomatically-accepted means of purportedly championing Palestinian rights. Lynk’s statements, albeit devoid of direct references to Israeli colonisation, point towards international culpability.
In recent years, the two-state compromise remains the most blatant evidence of international culpability in preventing Palestinian reclamation of their land and rights. Just as annexation has been declared in violation of international law, the two-state diplomacy must also be held accountable for paving the way to annexation. This necessitates a complete reversal of the politics that have sustained the UN so far. There cannot be a unified political front against Israel if two-state politics is not abandoned. Stopping annexation requires a reversal of Israeli colonisation; anything less is an affirmation of treason against the Palestinian people.
Beware the Pentagon’s Pandemic Profiteers
Hasn’t the Military-Industrial Complex Taken Enough of Our Money?
By Mandy Smithberger | TomDispatch | May 3, 2020
At this moment of unprecedented crisis, you might think that those not overcome by the economic and mortal consequences of the coronavirus would be asking, “What can we do to help?” A few companies have indeed pivoted to making masks and ventilators for an overwhelmed medical establishment. Unfortunately, when it comes to the top officials of the Pentagon and the CEOs running a large part of the arms industry, examples abound of them asking what they can do to help themselves.
It’s important to grasp just how staggeringly well the defense industry has done in these last nearly 19 years since 9/11. Its companies (filled with ex-military and defense officials) have received trillions of dollars in government contracts, which they’ve largely used to feather their own nests. Data compiled by the New York Times showed that the chief executive officers of the top five military-industrial contractors received nearly $90 million in compensation in 2017. An investigation that same year by the Providence Journal discovered that, from 2005 to the first half of 2017, the top five defense contractors spent more than $114 billion repurchasing their own company stocks and so boosting their value at the expense of new investment.
To put this in perspective in the midst of a pandemic, the co-directors of the Costs of War Project at Brown University recently pointed out that allocations for the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health for 2020 amounted to less than 1% of what the U.S. government has spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone since 9/11. While just about every imaginable government agency and industry has been impacted by the still-spreading coronavirus, the role of the defense industry and the military in responding to it has, in truth, been limited indeed. The highly publicized use of military hospital ships in New York City and Los Angeles, for example, not only had relatively little impact on the crises in those cities but came to serve as a symbol of just how dysfunctional the military response has truly been.
Bailing Out the Military-Industrial Complex in the Covid-19 Moment
Demands to use the Defense Production Act to direct firms to produce equipment needed to combat Covid-19 have sputtered, provoking strong resistance from industries worried first and foremost about their own profits. Even conservative Washington Post columnist Max Boot, a longtime supporter of increased Pentagon spending, has recently recanted, noting how just such budget priorities have weakened the ability of the United States to keep Americans safe from the virus. “It never made any sense, as Trump’s 2021 budget had initially proposed, to increase spending on nuclear weapons by $7 billion while cutting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding by $1.2 billion,” he wrote. “Or to create an unnecessary Space Force out of the U.S. Air Force while eliminating the vitally important directorate of global health by folding it into another office within the National Security Council.”
In fact, continuing to prioritize the U.S. military will only further weaken the country’s public health system. As a start, simply to call up doctors and nurses in the military reserves, as even Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has pointed out, would hurt the broader civilian response to the pandemic. After all, in their civilian lives many of them now work at domestic hospitals and medical centers deluged by Covid-19 patients.
The present situation, however, hasn’t stopped military-industrial complex requests for bailouts. The National Defense Industrial Association, a trade group for the arms industry, typically asked the Pentagon to speed up contracts and awards for $160 billion in unobligated Department of Defense funds to its companies, which will involve pushing money out the door without even the most modest level of due diligence.
Already under fire in the pre-pandemic moment for grotesque safety problems with its commercial jets, Boeing, the Pentagon’s second biggest contractor, received $26.3 billion last year. Now, that company has asked for $60 billion in government support. And you undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that Congress has already provided Boeing with some of that desired money in its recent bailout legislation. According to the Washington Post, $17 billion was carved out in that deal for companies “critical to maintaining national security” (with Boeing in particular in mind). When, however, it became clear that those funds wouldn’t arrive as a complete blank check, the company started to have second thoughts. Now, some members of Congress are practically begging it to take the money.
And Boeing was far from alone. Even as the spreading coronavirus was spurring congressional conversations about what would become a $2 trillion relief package, 130 members of the House were already pleading for funds to purchase an additional 98 Lockheed Martin F-35 jet fighters, the most expensive weapons system in history, at the cost of another half-billion dollars, or the price of more than 90,000 ventilators.
Similarly, it should have been absurdly obvious that this wasn’t the moment to boost already astronomical spending on nuclear weapons. Yet this year’s defense budget request for such weaponry was 20% higher than last year’s and 50% above funding levels when President Trump took office. The agency that builds nuclear weapons already had $8 billion left unspent from past years and the head of the National Nuclear Security Agency, responsible for the development of nuclear warheads, admitted to Representative Susan Davis (D-CA) that the agency was unlikely even to be able to spend all of the new increase.
Boosters of such weapons, however, remain undeterred by the Covid-19 pandemic. If anything, the crisis only seems to have provided a further excuse to accelerate the awarding of an estimated $85 billion to Northrop Grumman to build a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), considered the “broken leg” of America’s nuclear triad. As William Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, has pointed out, such ICBMs “are redundant because invulnerable submarine-launched ballistic missiles are sufficient for deterring other countries from attacking the United States. They are dangerous because they operate on hair-trigger alert, with launch decisions needing to be made in some cases within minutes. This increases the risk of an accidental nuclear war.”
And as children’s book author Dr. Seuss might have added, “But that is not all! Oh, no, that is not all.” In fact, defense giant Raytheon is also getting its piece of the pie in the Covid-19 moment for a $20-$30 billion Long Range Standoff Weapon, a similarly redundant nuclear-armed missile. It tells you everything you need to know about funding priorities now that the company is, in fact, getting that money two years ahead of schedule.
In the midst of the spreading pandemic, the U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command similarly saw an opportunity to use fear-mongering about China, a country officially in its area of responsibility, to gain additional funding. And so it is seeking $20 billion that previously hadn’t gained approval even from the secretary of defense in the administration’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal. That money would go to dubious missile defense systems and a similarly dubious “Pacific Deterrence Initiative.”
How Not to Deal With Covid-19
Along with those military-industrial bailouts came the fleecing of American taxpayers. While many Americans were anxiously awaiting their $1,200 payments from that congressional aid and relief package, the Department of Defense was expediting contract payments to the arms industry. Shay Assad, a former senior Pentagon official, accurately called it a “taxpayer rip-off” that industries with so many resources, not to speak of the ability to borrow money at incredibly low interest rates, were being so richly and quickly rewarded in tough times. Giving defense giants such funding at this moment was like giving a housing contractor 90% of upfront costs for renovations when it was unclear whether you could even afford your next mortgage payment.
Right now, the defense industry is having similar success in persuading the Pentagon that basic accountability should be tossed out the window. Even in normal times, it’s a reasonably rare event for the federal government to withhold money from a giant weapons maker unless its performance is truly egregious. Boeing, however, continues to fit that bill perfectly with its endless program to build the KC-46 Pegasus tanker, basically a “flying gas station” meant to refuel other planes in mid-air.
As national security analyst Mark Thompson, my colleague at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), has pointed out, even after years of development, that tanker has little hope of performing its mission in the near future. The seven cameras that its pilot relies on to guide the KC-46’s fuel to other planes have so much glare and so many shadows that the possibility of disastrously scraping the stealth coating off F-22s and F-35s (both manufactured by Lockheed Martin) while refueling remains a constant danger. The Air Force has also become increasingly concerned that the tanker itself leaks fuel. In the pre-pandemic moment, such problems and associated ones led that service to decide to withhold $882 million from Boeing. Now, however, in response to the Covid-19 crisis, those funds are, believe it or not, being released.
Keep all of this behavior (and more) in mind when you hear people suggest that, in this public health emergency, the military should be put in charge. After all, you’re talking about the very institution that has regularly mismanaged massive weapons programs like the $1.4 trillion F-35 jet fighter program, already the most expensive weapons system ever (with ongoing problems galore). Even when it comes to health care, the military has proved remarkably inept. For instance, attempts of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense to integrate their health records were, infamously enough, abandoned after four years and $1 billion spent.
Having someone in uniform at the podium is, unfortunately, no guarantee of success. Indeed, a number of veterans have been quick to rebuke the idea of forefronting the military at this time. “Don’t put the military in charge of anything that doesn’t involve blowing stuff up, preventing stuff from being blown up, or showing up at a place as a message to others that we’ll be there to blow stuff up with you if need be,” one wrote.
“Here’s a video from Camp Pendleton of unmasked Marines queued up for haircuts during the pandemic,” tweeted another. “So how about ‘no’?” That video of troops without masks or practicing social distancing even shocked Secretary of Defense Esper, who called for a military haircut halt, only to be contradicted by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, desperate to maintain regulation cuts in the pandemic moment. That inspired a mocking rebuke of “haircut heroes” on Twitter.
Unfortunately, as Covid-19 spread on the aircraft carrier the USS Theodore Roosevelt, that ship became emblematic of how ill-prepared the current Pentagon leadership proved to be in combatting the virus. Despite at least 100 cases being reported on board — 955 crewmembers would, in the end, test positive for the disease and Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr. would die of it — senior Navy leaders were slow to respond. Instead, they kept those sailors at close quarters and in an untenable situation of increasing risk. When an emailed letter expressing the concerns of the ship’s commander, Captain Brett Crozier, was leaked to the press he was quickly removed from command. But while his bosses may not have appreciated his efforts for his crew, his sailors did. He left the ship to a hero’s farewell.
All of this is not to say that some parts of the U.S. military haven’t tried to step up as Covid-19 spreads. The Pentagon has, for instance, awarded contracts to build “alternate care” facilities to help relieve pressure on hospitals. The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences is allowing its doctors and nurses to join the military early. Several months into this crisis, the Pentagon has finally used the Defense Production Act to launch a process to produce $133 million worth of crucial N95 respirator masks and $415 million worth of N95 critical-care decontamination units. But these are modest acts in the midst of a pandemic and at a moment when bailouts, fraud, and delays suggest that the military-industrial complex hasn’t proved capable of delivering effectively, even for its own troops.
Meanwhile, the Beltway bandits that make up that complex have spotted a remarkable opportunity to secure many of their hopes and dreams. Their success in putting their desires and their profits ahead of the true national security of Americans was already clear enough in the staggering pre-pandemic $1.2 trillion national security budget. (Meanwhile, of course, key federal medical structures were underfunded or disbanded in the Trump administration years, undermining the actual security of the country.) That kind of disproportionate spending helps explain why the richest nation on the planet has proven so incapable of providing even the necessary personal protective equipment for frontline healthcare workers, no less the testing needed to make this country safer.
The defense industry has asked for, and received, a lot in this time of soaring cases of disease and death. While there is undoubtedly a role for the giant weapons makers and for the Pentagon to play in this crisis, they have shown themselves to be anything but effective lead institutions in the response to this moment. It’s time for the military-industrial complex to truly pay back an American public that has been beyond generous to it.
Isn’t it finally time as well to reduce the “defense” budget and put more of our resources into the real national security crisis at hand?
Mandy Smithberger, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).
Copyright 2020 Mandy Smithberger
China ‘Not the Only Place to be Blamed’ if Wuhan Facility Released COVID-19 – Microbiologist
Sputnik – May 5, 2020
Members of the scientific community have recently come to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s defense, as US officials and prominent individuals around the world have accused the facility of manufacturing or accidentally releasing the COVID-19 coronavirus. Despite the protests, one microbiologist tells Sputnik there may be some truth in the attacks.
Dr. Dady Chery, a microbiologist, co-editor-in-chief of News Junkie Post and author of “We Have Dared to Be Free,” joined Radio Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Monday to discuss why she disagrees with the assertion that the novel coronavirus is a product of nature, rather than a lab.
“China is not the only place to be blamed for this,” Chery noted to hosts Bob Schlehuber and Jamarl Thomas. “I think the Wuhan Institute of Virology was almost certainly involved in the SARS-CoV-2 research, but the Wuhan Institute of Technology was actually built with French help for $42.4 million.” (SARS-CoV-2 is the virus strain that causes COVID-19.)
She asserted that, from the start, China has had a number of international partners assisting in endeavors at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Chery explained that according to the lab’s website, scientists from France, the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, Pakistan and Kenya have all been within the highly secure facility.
Furthermore, its list of financial partners includes the European Union, United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization and the EcoHealth Alliance established under a project by the United States Agency for International Development.
Chery highlighted that the EcoHealth Alliance “finances to go and find very, very nasty pathogens in animals, and in humans, and bring them to biosafety level four [BSL-4] labs for research.” She added that there are only around 30 BSL-4 labs, featuring the highest level of biosafety precautions, that deal with that type of research.
“No legitimate scientist can really verify their research unless they also have access to a BSL-4 lab and want to take those kinds of risks,” she said.
When it comes to the virus itself, Chery explained that of the 16 proteins present in it, the spike protein is the focal point for scientists. This particular protein is the one responsible for recognizing the receptor protein on the surface of human cells so that it can enter them.
According to the WHO, the novel coronavirus is of “animal origin” and has not been “manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else.” While many have attributed US President Donald Trump’s dismissal of the WHO statement and his anti-China rhetoric as nothing more than xenophobia, it’s possible that he may be correct about the virus’s origin.
Chery noted that when it comes to SARS-CoV-2, it was believed that its closest relative is SARS-CoV, which was identified back in 2002 and causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). However, genetic sequence data published by Chinese researchers showed that RaTG13, a type of bat coronavirus, is the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2.
“The only problem with that is that the main resemblance between [RaTG13] and SARS-CoV-2 is in the spike protein,” she pointed out. “There’s a whole lot more to the virus.”
Chery asserted that the scientists in Wuhan sit on the editorial boards of six different scientific journals and are incredibly powerful in the scientific community, because they “give money to scientists all over the world.”
However, she said, French virologist and medicine Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier has argued that there are HIV sequences present in SARS-CoV-2, which is not likely to happen in something that occurs in nature.
“I did not just take his word for it,” Chery stressed. “I went and I actually read the papers [referenced].”
It’s worth noting that Montagnier’s comments have been opposed by many of his colleagues, including Jean-Francois Delfraissy, an immunologist and head of the French government’s advisory council for COVID-19.
Delfraissy, speaking to France’s BFM TV, said the hypothesis that the SARS-CoV-2 was made in a lab sounds like “a conspiracy vision that does not relate to the real science.”
Does NATO have a Future?
By Vladimir Platov – New Eastern Outlook – 05.05.2020
In light of recent developments worldwide, including lack of NATO involvement in efforts to protect citizens of the alliance as the Coronavirus continues its spread, a fundamental question arises of “whether NATO today enhances global security or in fact diminishes it.”
It is common knowledge that NATO was established in April 1949 in order to serve as a counterweight to the growing political and military might of the Soviet Union. From 1949 until the collapse of the USSR, “NATO’s primary purpose was to unify and strengthen the Western Allies’ military response to a possible invasion of western Europe by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies.” After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in October 1991, “the rationale behind NATO rendered the organization moot.” Seventy years on, the world has drastically changed, the USSR and the Warsaw Treaty Organization no longer exist, the Berlin Wall has fallen, but many large bureaucratic organizations, such as NATO, continue to thrive and “feed” military and political elites of the United States and Europe. Moreover, NATO has been expanding despite promises to the contrary. The West chose not to reciprocate the trust shown to it by the Soviet Union almost thirty years ago.
As reported earlier, while COVID-19 continues its rapid spread in various countries, including those that are part of NATO, more and more people throughout the world are becoming increasingly critical of the alliance’s unwillingness to truly help the citizens of its member states in their fight against the Coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the organization is following Washington’s lead by increasing military spending so that the US military industrial complex and other beneficiaries can earn more. All of this is happening to the detriment of citizens’ safety, especially because of cuts to spending on important needs of society including healthcare. Requests for help published by Spanish and Italian media outlets addressed to the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC, NATO’s principal civil emergency response mechanism in this part of the world) remained unanswered. And the Alliance was even unable to provide assistance by supplying medicine and personal protection equipment (PPE), which the EADRCC should have access to in the event of a large-scale armed conflict. Given the current state of affairs, many European media outlets have asked a reasonable question: “So what have EADRCC officials been doing aside from spreading anti-Russian propaganda and pushing its member-states to give money to it?”
The views expressed by European news sources were confirmed in the recent speech given by Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg, who admitted that due to the Coronavirus pandemic, undoubtedly, military budgets of Alliance member states would be cut. Still, in order to stop this from happening, he again began to promote his favorite viewpoint that the threat from Russia had supposedly not diminished during the press conference at the end of the Meeting of NATO Ministers of Defense in Brussels. It thus seemed as if the Secretary General was hoping to attract additional funding for the Alliance. He also deliberately failed to mention that it was not NATO but instead its so-called rival power, Russia, which during the difficult times for many nations, including NATO member states, responded not with threats but by providing humanitarian aid to a number of European nations being ravaged by the Coronavirus pandemic in the form of military doctors and medical equipment.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has tried to justify its existence by any possible means. The terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001, gave the organization a new lease on life. But given that the USA has come to an agreement with the Taliban, this particular reason for NATO’s existence will disappear once again. And, according to some observers, now that the United States is “becoming increasingly preoccupied with China, there is a growing feeling in the Trump administration that NATO is no longer a burden the United States should have to bear.” The alliance, which has existed since 1949, has come to the end of its road.
An article in The National Interest implies that, at present, NATO does not enhance global security but instead diminishes it. It also suggests that in light of the Coronavirus pandemic, “world leaders need to reassess expenditures of resources based on real and present threats to national security” and to reconsider their continuing commitment to NATO, “whose global ambitions are largely driven and funded by the United States.” The report in the National Interest provides 10 main reasons why “NATO is no longer needed.”
First of all, the three main reasons for creating the alliance “are no longer valid.” Instead of still focusing on an open confrontation with Russia, formerly the Soviet Union, that began in 1949, the West ought to reconsider the proposal made by Moscow (which it initially rejected out of hand) to create “a new continental security arrangement ‘from Dublin to Vladivostok’.” After all, if the concept had been accepted, Russia would have been a part of “a cooperative security architecture that would have been safer for the global community.”
As for the idea, being artificially spread by some in current political elite circles in the West, that Russia poses a threat, it is important to remember that, according to estimates by experts, the size of the Russian economy is one tenth of that of Europe. Hence, the EU can afford to defend itself against Russia, and neither the presence of US military in Europe nor the existence of NATO can be justified at present.
The alliance’s Article 5 (the “attack on one is attack on all” clause) is also not immune to criticism and cannot be used to explain why NATO continues to exist. After all, the only time this organization invoked it was in response to terrorism, i.e. the attack of September 11, 2001. And indeed Russia ended up providing “invaluable logistical intelligence and base support for the post–9/11 Afghan engagement.”
It is equally important to remember that not only does the United States “continue to spend close to 70 percent of its discretionary budget on the military,” such expenditures in other countries are also unjustifiably high. Americans as well as Europeans, therefore, “have the right to ask why such exorbitant “spending” is necessary and whom does it really benefit.” After all, in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, it has become painfully clear that “the health-care systems in the West are woefully underfinanced and disorganized.” Hence, “diminishing the cost and needless expense of NATO will make room for other national priorities of greater good.”
Today, we all see just how much the world has suddenly changed in the space of just a few months. Yes, the world has really changed and so has the entire population of the Earth and not only a few nations. And hopefully, in the future, we will be able to strive towards our goals and our dreams confidently rather than gradually. In addition, the global community ought to make resolving important issues plaguing societies its priority instead of focusing on strengthening military alliances, such as NATO, which has obviously become an anachronism. It is thus reasonable to state that the NATO era has finally come to an end.
Iraq mounts counter-terrorism operations amid warnings of US-Daesh plot to split region
Press TV – May 5, 2020
Iraqi army troops and allied fighters from Popular Mobilization Forces — known as Hashd al-Sha’abi — have conducted fresh operations against Daesh militants amid warnings of collaboration between the United States and remnants of the Takfiri terror outfit in the country.
On Monday, Iraq’s Security Media Cell announced the launch of a new military campaign, dubbed ‘Desert Lions,’ against Daesh sleeper cells in the country’s desert areas.
The operation covers “Wadi Houran, Husayniyyat, Al-Kara, H2, and Wadi al-Hallcom, all the way to international borders” in Iraq’s western Anbar Province with an aim to “enhance security and stability in these areas, to pursue terrorist elements and to arrest those wanted,” it said in a statement.
The new campaign followed a string of deadly attacks by Daesh terrorists targeting Iraqi forces, among them Saturday’s assault in Salahuddin Province that killed at least 10 Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters.
On Monday, the Iraqi Army’s intelligence detained a Daesh ringleader, called Abu Hajar, in Nineveh Province.
It came one day after the arrest of another Daesh element, Abu Abdulmalik, in Nineveh’s provincial capital of Mosul, which once served as the terror group’s main bastion in the Arab country.
Also on Monday, Rudaw media network reported that an explosive-laden vehicle had gone off in Madham area in western Anbar, killing the occupants — all terrorists.
Among those slain were Daesh military commander Abu Ghasurah, the report said.
Concerns rise about Daesh-US collaboration
Meanwhile, Mahmoud al-Rubaye, spokesman of Iraq’s Asaib Ahl al-Haq group, which is part of the Hashd al-Sha’abi, said that the US has long been supporting terrorists in Iraq and Syria and that Daesh is part of Washington’s scheme to disintegrate the region.
The US, he added, plans to settle Palestinians in western Anbar under President Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “deal of the century.”
Rubaye also emphasized that the Americans should honor the Iraqi parliament’s resolution on the withdrawal of foreign forces from the country. The resolution was passed in January following the US assassination of top Iranian anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and senior Hashd commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, in addition to several other comrades.
The US is evacuating its bases in Iraq and amassing its troops at Ain al-Assad and Harir bases, situated in Anbar and Kurdistan’s regional capital of Erbil, respectively, in the face of the outrage of the Iraqi people and popular forces, he pointed out.
Asaib spokesman further warned of armed resistance if the US refuses to leave Iraq and settles in the country’s remote areas.
Additionally, Iraq’s Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, which is also part of Hashd al-Sha’abi, said the US has been planning to transfer senior Daesh commanders from eastern Syria to neighboring Iraq.
“Washington is insisting on the implementation of a plot to return the terrorists to Iraq by transferring a large number of ISIS (Daesh) commanders and militants from the eastern Euphrates and other parts of Syria,” it said in an online statement.
The group also described the Americans as “occupiers,” noting, “We stress that the Islamic Resistance of Iraq is monitoring all your destructive plots to prevent the dangers which threaten the Iraqi provinces.”
Daesh began a terror campaign in Iraq in 2014, overrunning vast swathes in lightning attacks.
Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters played a major role in reinforcing the Iraqi army, which had suffered heavy setbacks against the Takfiri elements.
Iraq declared victory over Daesh in December 2017 after a three-year counter-terrorism military campaign, which also had the support of neighboring Iran.