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New Information: Guaidó Was the “Commander in Chief” of the Failed Mercenary Operation Against Venezuela

This document shows the chain of comand. (Council on Hemispheric Affairs)

This document shows the chain of comand. (Council on Hemispheric Affairs)
By Patricio Zamorano | Council of Hemispheric Affairs | May 13, 2020

New information divulged this week reveals that Juan Guaidó was designated as “commander and chief” of the mercenary operation that completely unraveled on the shores of Venezuela. The 41 page contract that formed the basis of the already known eight page General Services Agreement was published by the Washington Post [1] this week.

This more complete document confirms what the mercenary and head of SilverCorp, Inc., Jordan Goudreau, had already revealed to the media: the agreement was aimed at “planning and executing an operation to capture/detain/remove Nicolas Maduro (heretoafter “Primary Objective”) remove the current Regime and install the recognized Venezuelan President Juan Guaido.”

The document provides complete information about the money that would be invested (212 million dollars), and the payments and commissions that SilverCorp would receive from Guaidó’s team, which includes Juan José Rendón, Sergio Vergara and attorney Manuel Retureta.

The document also explains the promised retainer of 1.5 million dollars that Goudreau has been complaining about publicly since the failed operation last Sunday, May 3.

What has not been said: information about the operation was published two days before the attack

There is an important detail that the world press has not analysed. One AP article[2] which details the preparations for the attack was published Friday May 1, two days before the attempt to invade Venezuela was launched from Colombia. The article  provides particulars on the presence of three paramilitary groups (deserters from the Venezuelan armed forces and police) in Colombia and explains how this operation had been foiled and aborted. It clearly names Jordan Goudreau, including a profile on the mercenary and many other details about the planned attack. No Colombian nor US authority mobilized to neutralize the illegal paramilitary camps.

This document also appears to confirm that Goudreau, despite the exposure of the planned incursion by the press, still proceeded with the attack, irresponsibly putting at risk the lives of those involved. It also shows that neither US intelligence agencies, nor the Colombian police, nor even Guaidó’s team took action to stop the attack.

One can extrapolate two possible reasons for this. Allowing the operation to move forward, without directly committing to SilverCorp, would show the actual consequences of the operation (whether a success or failure). The operation could also expose the government of Maduro to world criticism if it produced fatalities on one side or the other. What is certain is that all of these scenarios, “whether above or under the table” in the words of Rendón on CNN, were discussed extensively with Guaidó and his advisors with the aim of illegally overthrowing Maduro. Rendón told CNN in Spanish that “they analysed all of the scenarios; alliances with other countries, their own actions, uprisings of people from within, of the soldiers that are there, the eventual use of actors that are outside, retired soldiers. All these scenarios were produced, as the president said well, we are analysing things above and below the table.”[3]

Guaidó was leader of the operations

The most important theme of this story, which the Washington Post does not even mention in its article, is what is described on page 39 of the contract.

Under the title “ATTACHMENT N: CHAIN OF COMMAND,” the document includes the following:

  1. Commander in Chief – President Juan Guaidó
  2. Overall Project Supervisor – Sergio Vergara
  3. Chief Strategist: Juan Jose Rendon
  4. On Site Commander – To be determined

The page is signed by Guaidó’s advisors and there is a large black box that surely hides compromising information about SilverCorp.

  Denial is followed by selective recognition

The evidence is very clear that Guaidó’s team has decided to change its strategy. The first reaction of Guaidó was to deny that he was involved in the disastrous operation[4] in the face of the cost of lives of eight mercenaries, former Venezuelan soldiers, and the capture of numerous paramilitaries, including two US former soldiers. Guaidó’s team  however,  publicly acknowledged this week their involvement, but they tried to discredit SilverCorp as if it had acted on its own. Nevertheless Rendón recognized that he had paid 50 thousand dollars to the mercenary company[5]  of Florida and that his signature on the document is legitimate.

The big question is what will be the response of the legal authorities in the US and Colombia. So far there has been no arrest, despite the fact that all of the details of the operation and the violations of law committed are clear and irrefutable.

In the coming days it will become evident whether the governments of Trump and Duque in Colombia opt for the strategy of impunity. This scandal without doubt weakens in an important way the illegal policy of sanctions and the dirty campaign supported by the hard-line Venezuelan opposition that has broken with the strategy of dialogue that other more moderate anti-Chavista sectors continue to advance in Caracas.

Translation made from the original Spanish by Fred Mills, academic and Co-Director of COHA

End notes

[1] “From a Miami condo to the Veenzuelan coast, how a plan to ‘capture’ Maduro went rogue”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/from-a-miami-condo-to-the-venezuelan-coast-how-a-plan-to-capture-maduro-went-rogue/2020/05/06/046222bc-8e4a-11ea-9322-a29e75effc93_story.html

[2] “Ex-Green Beret led failed attempt to oust Venezuela’s Maduro”, https://apnews.com/79346b4e428676424c0e5669c80fc310

[3] “J.J. Rendón habla sobre la Operación Gedeón en Conclusiones de CNN en Español”, https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2020/05/07/j-j-rendon-habla-sobre-la-operacion-gedeon-en-conclusiones-de-cnn-en-espanol/

[4] “Guaidó niega vínculos con intento de invasión en Venezuela”, https://www.chicagotribune.com/espanol/sns-es-coronavirus-guaido-niega-vinculo-intento-invasion-venezuela-20200505-uiditc4i6nbdda3nyx24n26zee-story.html

[5] “J.J. Rendón habla sobre la Operación Gedeón en Conclusiones de CNN en Español”, https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2020/05/07/j-j-rendon-habla-sobre-la-operacion-gedeon-en-conclusiones-de-cnn-en-espanol/

May 13, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Nations Spent $73bn on Nuclear Arms Amid COVID-19, UK in 3rd as US Tops at Half of Global Costs

By Demond Cureton – Sputnik – 13.05.2020

Despite being the global epicentre of COVID-19 cases and deaths, the world’s leading nuclear power accounted for roughly half of total global spending on nuclear arms, a shock report from a major Swiss nonprofit coalition found.

Nuclear armed states spent a record $73bn on nuclear weapons amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a report from the Geneva-based International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) revealed.

The report, entitled Enough Is Enough: 2019 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending, found an increase of nuclear weapons spending in 2019, up $7.1bn from 2018.

The findings, which assessed the world’s leading nuclear powers – The United States, United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea – revealed that top nuclear powers spent $138,699 on over 13,000 nuclear weapons every minute of 2019.

The amount of money the US spent in 2019 alone could pay for 300,000 intensive care unit beds, 150,000 nurses, 75,000 doctors and 35,000 ventilators, the report found.

But the United Kingdom was the third highest spender at $8.9bn after the US and China at $35bn and $10.4bn, respectively, according to the report.

“It is absurd to be spending $138,700 every single minute on weapons that cause catastrophic human harm rather than spending it to protect the health of their citizens. They are abdicating their duty to protect their people,” ICAN executive director, Beatrice Fihn, said in a statement.

Nuclear arms were banned by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which the UN will enforce after all participating 50 nations ratify or accede the document, effectively criminalising such expenditures under international law.

But the figures only included direct spending on nuclear warheads and delivery systems costs for operation and deployment, with real numbers skyrocketing after factoring in costs due to environmental damage and victim compensation, with ICAN calling on governments to remain transparent in disclosing expenses, the statement read.

2019 Nuclear Defence Spending ICAN

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

Alicia Sanders-Zakre, author of the report, said: “The figures do not include the massive humanitarian costs and the environmental toll from a legacy of nuclear testing and production. Even in the unlikely chance these weapons are never used, governments are paying massive sums to poison their environments and put their people at grave risk.”

The news comes as British MPs slammed the Ministry of Defence for wasting £1.3bn ($1.6bn) on upgrading the country’s nuclear Trident programme, which is currently six years behind schedule. Costs were estimated at £2.5bn for the three upgrade programmes, which have spiked an additional £1.35bn, according to reports.

May 13, 2020 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | 2 Comments

CNN lies about 68% of Americans waiting for vaccine to return to normal life as lockdown gives MSM new lease on life

By Helen Buyniski  | RT | May 12, 2020

Mainstream media is running wild during the US coronavirus lockdown with the kind of distorted “facts” that would normally be ignored but have developed staying power due to pandemic-induced vulnerabilities in its audience.

More than two-thirds of Americans are determined to hide out in their homes until a Covid-19 vaccine comes along. Or so CNN appeared to claim in a Tuesday headline, declaring “68 percent of Americans say a vaccine is needed before returning to normal life.” Citing a Gallup poll, the piece implied that until a vaccine is rolled out for the pandemic that has upended the lives of people around the world, most Americans are content to shelter in place, working from home (if they’re lucky enough to be working at all) and absorbing reality through the mainstream media.

The actual Gallup poll the article cited said no such thing. “Availability of a vaccine to prevent Covid-19” was merely one item on a list of factors that respondents could rate as “very,” “somewhat,” or “not too important” as conditions for returning to their pre-pandemic routines. Indeed, a poll taken the previous week that specifically asked how many respondents would only return to normal if there was a vaccine found just 12 percent of respondents felt they needed the still-hypothetical jab to resume their lives.

More important than a vaccine that is expected to take over a year to come to market in Gallup’s poll were “mandatory quarantine for anyone testing positive with Covid-19” (“very important” for 80 percent of respondents) and “improved medical therapies to treat Covid-19” (“very important” for 77 percent). Even a “significant reduction” in virus-related deaths (73 percent) outstripped the vaccine. Yet this benchmark was used as the headline by CNN.

Sure, the decision could have been motivated by the network’s heavy support by pharmaceutical companies. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called out CNN during a primary debate for taking drug company money in a direct conflict of interest, and vaccine safety advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has claimed 70 percent of ad dollars for news networks come from pharmaceuticals during non-election years.

However, given the abysmal track record of previous efforts to develop a vaccine for other coronaviruses, like SARS, there’s no guarantee a Covid-19 shot will ever come on the market. Instead, it’s more likely CNN’s motive in portraying Americans as willing to hide in their homes for another year in the hope of a pharmaceutical savior that may never come is an opportunistic attempt to prey on the newfound vulnerabilities of a pandemic-panicked population.

Everyone makes mistakes, of course, but CNN and its mainstream media ilk have been making an awful lot of them during the coronavirus pandemic, and they’ve all erred in the direction of presenting the virus as a terrifying killer that threatens all populations who dare peek their heads out of their windows (except for the prescribed hour of clapping, of course). CBS was caught re-using the same footage of an Italian hospital overwhelmed by coronavirus-stricken patients twice to illustrate New York hospitals supposedly buckling under the weight of the epidemic, even after the network was caught the first time and excoriated on social media. A Project Veritas exposé last week implied they hadn’t learned their lesson, claiming the network had allegedly staged a long line of patients waiting for coronavirus testing at a Michigan facility, which CBS was quick to blame. Many outlets continued to predict apocalyptic death numbers for the country long after it was apparent that the early estimates were significantly overblown.

It’s not like there haven’t been plenty of sensational Covid-19 stories in the US, which has long been the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. Between U-Haul trucks filled with decomposing bodies parked outside a Brooklyn funeral home and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s appalling order mandating contagious Covid-19 patients be admitted to nursing homes where they’d – in his own words – infect the tenants “like fire through dry grass,” tales of suffering inflicted by the virus abound. Covid-19 has contributed to over 81,000 deaths as of Tuesday, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University. But it never seems to be enough – so many of the deaths are in nursing home patients or those with comorbid conditions that the media seems compelled to dig for ever more lurid and shocking narratives.

The Covid-19 lockdowns have given the media establishment something it hasn’t had for years – a captive audience. It isn’t about to let something like that go, even as states begin to loosen restrictions and permit the housebound to return to work. Pre-virus, the media establishment enjoyed near-record low approval ratings, with just 41 percent claiming to trust mainstream outlets in 2019. But in the midst of the uncertainty caused by the virus – which has put over 33 million Americans out of work and disrupted the lives of millions more – the certainty and familiarity those outlets provide has shored up their falling stock. Some 57 percent of respondents to a Pew Research poll conducted last month said cable news was doing an “excellent” or “good” job covering the pandemic, while a whopping 68 percent approved of network television coverage. Given the low ratings they enjoy during business as usual, neither CNN nor any other mainstream outlet is going to risk letting their newly-loyal audience return to reality – not when they can keep them at home waiting for a vaccine for another year. For a media that thrives on fear, the best kind of customer is one who’s glued to the couch, terrified of the virus lurking just outside their door.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

May 13, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

Turkey stalls Iran gas imports amid aggressive US efforts to push its LNG

Press TV – May 13, 2020

Turkey is dragging its feet on repairing a pipeline which was hit by an explosion in late March, stopping Iran’s gas exports to the country, the Fars news agency says.

Iran sells about 10 billion cubic meters a year of gas to Turkey under a 25-year supply deal signed in 1996. The pipeline has been blown up several times by PKK terrorists, but it has been repaired and the gas flow has continued shortly.

However, after another blast occurred on the pipeline on March 31, an official at the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) said the Turkish side was not responding even as Iran had informed it of the incident.

According to Mehdi Jamshidi-Dana, Turkey’s representative at Bazargan gas transmission station had left his post due to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

The official said it was not clear when the line would re-open, but he cited past experience which showed “repairing the lines takes three to seven days, depending on the amount of damage done”.

On Wednesday, Fars suggested that the pipeline is still out of service, citing Turkish state energy company Botas’ dilly-dallying and unwillingness to repair it.

The news agency speculated that the situation must be the result of aggressive US efforts to push its liquefied natural gas (LNG) into Turkey.

Heavily dependent on gas imports from Russia, Turkey has already reduced flows from Gazprom significantly, while increasing LNG purchases and gas imports from Azerbaijan.

“In recent months, Turkey has imported as much LNG from the United States as gas imports from Iran,” Ali Nasr, an energy expert, told Fars.

Last November, Turkey marked the completion of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) to carry gas from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz II field to Europe.

In January, the presidents of Turkey and Russia formally launched the TurkStream pipeline to carry Russian natural gas to southern Europe through Turkey.

Fars warned that Iran may lose its biggest gas market to rivals, which could cost the country $150 million-$200 million in lost revenues a month.

The US has the necessary incentive to remove Iranian gas from the Turkish market in order to increase economic pressure on Iran, while Turkey seeks to diversity its energy sources and reduce gas imports from Iran and Russia, the agency said.

The US is currently pushing Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda that seeks to advance diplomatic and policy objectives through rapidly expanding US oil and gas exports.

Iran has already lost its biggest condensate market in South Korea which imported 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the ultra light oil from the Middle Eastern country.

The Koreans stopped the shipments under pressure from the United States which is aggressively thrusting its fast-growing condensate into Asia.

According to US officials, Washington has offered to sign a $100 billion trade agreement with Turkey, which their presidents discussed at the Munich Security Conference.

The offer is part of the Trump administration’s main goal to get President Recep Tayyip Erdogan drop plans to use Russia’s S-400 missile defense systems.

“If an agreement is reached, the possibility of replacing Iranian gas with American LNG is quite possible,” Fars warned.

According to the news agency stated, Turkey has expanded its LNG terminals to take in 25 billion cubic meters of cargoes – 2.5 times more than the imported gas from Iran. The terminals are currently operating only at 25 percent of their nominal capacity. … Full article

May 13, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

FBI Claims China Targeting US Organizations Engaged in Coronavirus Research

Sputnik – May 13, 2020

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued a joint statement in which they accuse malicious Chinese actors of trying to steal US coronavirus vaccine research.

“The FBI is investigating the targeting and compromise of US organizations conducting COVID-19-related research by PRC-affiliated cyber actors and non-traditional collectors. These actors have been observed attempting to identify and illicitly obtain valuable intellectual property (IP) and public health data related to vaccines, treatments and testing from networks and personnel affiliated with COVID-19-related research. The potential theft of this information jeopardizes the delivery of secure, effective, and efficient treatment options,” the statement, put out Wednesday, says.

The FBI and CISA urge organizations carrying out research in these fields to “maintain dedicated cybersecurity and insider threat practices” to prevent such thefts, and calls on institutions to watch out for and report any “anomalous” and “unusual” activities and behaviour. The statement also warns that organizations should realize that talking to the press about their COVID-19-related research may result in “increased interest and cyber activity” by possible malicious actors.

The warning comes just days following Sunday’s report by The New York Times citing current and former US security officials indicating that US intelligence was planning to put out an alert about alleged efforts by Chinese spies to access US-based coronavirus research. Officials told the paper that the ‘non-traditional collectors’ involved may include Chinese researchers and students working in the United States who may be interested in ‘infiltrating’ US academic and private laboratories in search of a vaccine. Complementing them are China’s “state-run hacking teams,” the paper claimed.

CISA director Christopher Krebs has alleged that “China’s long history of bad behaviour in cyberspace is well documented, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone they are going after the critical organizations involved in the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Krebs promised that the US would “defend our interests aggressively,” without elaborating.

Strong Claims From ‘Empire of Hackers’

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian commented on the claims made by NYT on Monday, saying China already leads global research and development on coronavirus vaccines and therapies, and that the hacking claims were an “immoral” and baseless attempt to “smear” his country.

Chinese biotech companies reported recently that they have four different coronavirus vaccines already undergoing clinical trials, with three of them entering the second stage, with pilot production of an inactivated COVID-19 vaccine expected to begin in July. US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has previously said he expects the US to have a vaccine available by the end of the year.

An anonymous researcher told the Global Times newspaper Monday that in the US’s core research efforts would be of little value to China, because US efforts are DNA and RNA-based vaccines, while China has chosen to focus on inactivated vaccines (i.e. vaccines made from virulent virus by destroying its infectivity while retaining its immunogenicity). Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine is the most famous example of a major inactivated vaccine.

Earlier this year, China called out the United States for being an “empire of hackers” and “the largest state eavesdropper in international cyberspace” following revelations of the extent of the National Security Agency’s global intelligence-gathering operations going back to the Cold War.

May 13, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Merkel cites ‘hard evidence’ she was victim of ‘Russian hackers’, says it doesn’t help mend ties with Moscow

RT | May 13, 2020

Germany’s chancellor has lamented what she claimed was irrefutable proof of a Russian “hacking attack” on her Bundestag office but said she is working day and night to fix relations with Moscow despite the “painful” incident.

Chancellor Angela Merkel accused Russia of carrying out an online intrusion into her Bundestag constituency office back in 2015, as she spoke to MPs on Wednesday.

“I can honestly say that it hurts me,” she said of the alleged hack attack, claiming there is “hard evidence” that some unspecified “Russian forces” were behind the theft of data, based upon the results of a “properly done” investigation.

Still, Merkel said she is working hard to foster diplomatic ties between Moscow and Berlin “every day,” even if the hacking activity doesn’t make it any easier.

Russia denied the allegations when they first emerged back in 2015, and has continued to do so in the years since. However, Moscow is yet to comment on Merkel’s fresh remarks.

When asked about the possible consequences of Moscow’s so-called “hybrid warfare strategy,” the chancellor used unusually harsh language, threatening that “[Germany], of course, will always reserve the right to take measures, including against Russia.”

The chancellor’s words came on the heels of a report by Spiegel magazine linking the 2015 online assault to Russian military intelligence. Culprits, it suggested, were able to get away with over 16 gigabytes of data, which include thousands of inbox messages originating from the chancellor’s Bundestag office.

According to Spiegel, the hackers apparently copied the emails to another computer. It was only in May 2015 that the Bundestag discovered its networks were breached; it was concluded that the hack attacks had been happening since at least the beginning of that year.

While the magazine heavily cited the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) among their sources, the agencies in question kept silent on the matter. The German government, in turn, didn’t confirm the authenticity of the report, until Merkel herself addressed it in her speech Wednesday.

May 13, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | 3 Comments

France’s Earlier Detection of COVID-19 Raises Questions on Global Origin

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 12, 2020

The emergence of Covid-19 was first reported by the authorities in China on December 31, as acknowledged by the World Health Organization. But that emergence does not necessarily mean the pandemic originated in China.

By January 30, 2020, a WHO situation report cited nearly 8,000 cases of the respiratory disease globally in 18 different countries. The vast majority of the infections at that stage were in China. It has since exploded to four million cases in virtually all 194 nations with the United States hosting by far the majority of infections and deaths (80,000 fatalities as of this week).

The early pattern of the disease spreading may suggest that China and its central city of Wuhan was the origin of the pandemic. It is widely speculated that the novel coronavirus residing in bats or some other mammal infected humans.

However, the report this week that a hospital in France detected Covid-19 in a patient as early as December 27, 2019, raises questions about the global origin. The French man, who went on to recover from the disease, was previously thought to have been suffering from pneumonia. The Paris hospital retested biomedical samples of patients and found that the man had in fact contracted Covid-19.

Curiously, the French patient had not travelled from abroad before he became ill at the end of last year. So, how does this finding square with claims that the disease originated in China? It has been speculated that the man’s wife who worked near Charles De Gaulle international airport may have been exposed. But she did not show symptoms of the disease. Her link as an “asymptomatic” disease carrier and her presumed contact with air travelers from China is therefore tenuous speculation.

French doctors are not certain if the case of the cited man represents that country’s “patient zero”, that is, the first case of Covid-19 in France. But the detection of the disease in France on December 27 is a full month before it was officially recorded as having arrived in France. In other words, the suspicion now is that Covid-19 may been circulating undetected in France and perhaps other European countries, as well as the United States, at the end of last year. Many of these infections and accompanying deaths may have been misidentified as due to seasonal flu or pneumonia.

It is understandable why the Chinese authorities are “defensive”, as the New York Times snidely headlines, about China being described as “the origin” of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This week China was accused of “censoring” an article penned by the European Union’s ambassador to the country. The article was published in news outlet China Daily but mention of “the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months…” was edited out. That led to recriminations in Western media about the EU pandering to Chinese state “censorship”.

Yes, the disease appears to have first emerged in large numbers in China at the end of December. But it is not yet determined how and where the virus originated. That will require further scientific study. Thus, for China to bridle at assertions about being “the origin” is not necessarily sinister censorship, but rather prudence to not prejudge.

What we have seen is an unseemly haste to politicize the pandemic with a view to blame China for infecting the rest of the world.

U.S. President Donald Trump is the most vocal in blaming China. But Australia, Britain and the EU have also antagonized Beijing by demanding an “independent” investigation into the origin of the disease. The inference is that China is at fault. Given the way, Western so-called “independent” investigations are prone to political bias to achieve preconceived conclusions (the Dutch-led MH17 airliner crash, for example), one can hardly object to China’s wariness about such calls.

Why should China submit to Western demands for “investigation” into Covid-19 when these Western demands are all one-way?

Why limit it to China? Surely international investigations would be merited for determining the actual appearance of Covid-19 in Europe or North America. The French case of Covid-19 in December misidentified as pneumonia suggests the disease was present contemporaneously with cases in China’s Wuhan.

Then there is the case of unidentified and deadly respiratory disease outbreaks in Fairfax, Virginia, in July 2019. Why shouldn’t international investigators be allowed into the U.S. to determine the precise nature of those disease outbreaks. Were they early incidents of Covid-19, a new unknown disease which happened to be first identified in China only months later?

The Trump administration has made unsubstantiated allegations that Covid-19 may have been released by a laboratory in Wuhan. No evidence has been provided by Trump or his bullish secretary of state Mike Pompeo. International scientific consensus has dismissed Trump’s allegations as a “conspiracy theory”. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has a solid reputation for safeguards over its study of infectious diseases.

The same cannot be said for the United States’ top biowarfare laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland, which was ordered to close last August by the federal Center for Disease Control due to concerns about substandard safety controls and danger of releasing deadly pathogens. Were U.S. army scientists studying novel coronaviruses?

If China’s Wuhan laboratory can be fingered and smeared for no sound reason, then why can’t a Pentagon biowarfare center that had to be shuttered for lack of safety? Chinese officials have already made an accusatory link to American personnel attending the Military World Games in Wuhan in October 2019 as being a possible cause of infection.

The origin of Covid-19 is far from clear. Trump wants to scapegoat China for obvious cynical reasons of distracting from his own disastrous mishandling of the disease. The same scapegoating instinct applies to other Western states where governments have been derelict in protecting the public from tens of thousands of deaths.

Investigations are indeed due. But determining the origin of Covid-19 will not be made by politicized probes that presume China’s fault for the pandemic.

May 13, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Pentagon’s Silent Killers

By Vladimir Platov – New Eastern Outlook – 13.05.2020

In light of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, which has caused rapid and substantial harm to many nations and lives of their citizens, analysts are reluctantly starting to look at the possibility that certain countries may resort to the use of biological weapons capable of causing mass deaths. Germ warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents, such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi, that are biological in origin with the intent to kill people, animals and plants. Designing microorganisms that cause disease and means of spreading them among target populations are all part of biological warfare.

In the military, the concept of weaponizing germs has existed for a long time. After all, epidemics that happened during wars resulted in substantial losses of troops, and this, in turn, had a significant impact on the way the conflict unfolded as well as its outcome. For example, during the Vietnam War, US troops lost more (approximately 3-fold) servicemen to disease than during military operations (injuries and deaths). Epidemics among civilian populations away from battlefields also had very negative consequences, resulting in serious issues in manufacturing and logistics sectors and, overall, problems in governance.

Hence, it is not surprising that the United States — responsible for unleashing more armed conflicts than any other country in recent years and for launching numerous military interventions in regions all over the world — has been constantly ramping up its research into biological warfare, mainly through the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). One of the key aims of its biological technologies branch is to conduct studies on germs.

It is worth reminding our readers that the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (BWC) was open for signature on 10 April 1972. It entered into force on 26 March 1975 when twenty-two governments deposited their instruments of ratification of this Convention with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. To date, 163 nations signed the BWC, thus agreeing not to develop, produce or stockpile biological weapons. Although the United States ratified the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, it did not sign an internationally binding verification protocol to the BWC from 2001. Hence, there are no mechanisms in place to check whether the USA is complying with the convention.

In any case, it is well-known that since the middle of 2016, four research teams under the aegis of DARPA have been working on a revolutionary research project aimed at protecting “the U.S. agricultural food supply by delivering protective genes to plants via insects”, called Insect Allies. American scientists “are looking at introducing genetically modified viruses that can edit chromosomes directly”, such as “using insects to transmit genetically modified material into plants”. In the summer of 2017, the research program received $27 million in funding.

In the opinion of experts from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany and the University of Montpellier in France, Insect Allies “may be widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery”. DARPA has denied such assertions “DARPA is producing neither biological weapons nor the means for their delivery”. Still, the authors of the article published in Science believe that the microorganisms in question could do more harm than good. For instance, insects “could be used to disperse agents that would prevent seeds from growing”.

“Given that DARPA is a military agency, we find it surprising that the obvious and concerning dual-use aspects of this research have received so little attention,” Felix Beck, a lawyer at the University of Freiburg, said. “The Insect Allies programme is largely unknown, even in expert circles,” Dr. Guy Reeves, an expert in GM insects at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology said. According to Silja Voeneky, a legal scholar at the University of Freiburg in Germany, the program “may be widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery”, and thus, as a violation of the BWC, which is strongly worded, banning the development of any biological agents “that have no justification for prophylactic, protective, or other peaceful purposes”.

Information available to date indicates that maize and tomato plants were used in experiments, with “leafhoppers, aphids and whiteflies” employed to disperse the genetically modified material. Since maize is widely cultivated and consumed in Latin America and Africa, the fact that it was chosen for the research study also points to a potential military use of DARPA’s program. Apparently, the defense agency ensures that its scientists do not conduct experiments on plants that are not widely used by people.

Leaving your opponent without a harvest, which could lead to famine, is a much slower approach to reaching one’s aim. But it is a practical one, as the land could still be used for growing crops in the future. Such a bioweapon (an insect that introduces genetically modified material) could be deployed by an aggressor without the need for special equipment, thus leaving no trace of an attack. No means of spreading any chemicals or toxins would be found either as these could serve as indirect proof of a deliberate (far from natural) attack on plants. Filling a field with weaponized insects is all one needs.

Recent epidemics among animals (for instance, the spread of African swine fever virus among pigs in a number of countries) and the appearance of new types of insects that cause great harm, all point to a potential link to some types of foreign bioweapons. For instance, tropical insects are gaining a foothold in Germany and spreading deadly illnesses in the process. According to experts, such bugs are dangerous because they can spread infectious agents that cause tropical diseases.

Throughout the Caucasus box tree moths (native to Asia) have been spreading for unknown reasons and causing severe damage to Colchic boxwood, a rare and endangered plant.

Concerns are growing about the fact that the United States has been providing a great deal of funding for biological programs that may have dual uses, such as conducting controversial experiments with infectious agents that cause deadly diseases; testing mechanisms of dispersal; increasing the scope of military research in biolabs abroad, and others. And as there are more and more questions about the nature of research done in numerous secret biolabs of the Pentagon, an unbiased international investigation ought to be conducted into their work.

May 13, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Six big lies you have been told about ‘Russiagate’

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | May 12, 2020

Russian ‘meddling’ in the 2016 US presidential election has become an article of faith, not just among Democrats but many Republicans as well, thanks to the endless repetition of vague talking points, none of which hold water.

It all began with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) claiming in June 2016 that Russia hacked their computers, after documents were published revealing the party’s rigging of the primaries. This was followed by Hillary Clinton accusing her rival for the presidency Donald Trump that he was “colluding” with Russia by asking Moscow for her emails – the ones she deleted from a private server she used to conduct State Department business, that is.

With a little help of the mainstream media, which overwhelmingly endorsed Clinton and predicted her victory, her efforts to cover up her email scandal turned into Russia “hacking our democracy,” eventually spawning the ‘Russiagate’ investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a series of failed attempts to derail Trump’s election and oust him from the White House.

Lie #1: Russia hacked the DNC 

The infamous US intelligence community assessment (ICA) of January 2017, and the Senate Intelligence Committee report based on it – as well as ‘analysis’ by actual election meddlers, among others – all claimed that the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin personally were behind the “hack” and publication of DNC documents. These have always been assertions, and no evidence was ever provided.

Last week’s declassification of 50+ interviews in the probe conducted by the House Intelligence Committee revealed that the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, brought in by the DNC lawyers to fix the “hack,” did not have evidence either.

CrowdStrike’s president, ex-FBI official Shawn Henry, testified that they “saw activity that we believed was consistent with activity we’d seen previously and had associated with the Russian Government.” [emphasis added]

In the same testimony, Henry also testified that CrowdStrike never had any evidence the data was actually “exfiltrated,” i.e. stolen from the DNC servers.

CrowdStrike’s feelings about the hack remain the only “evidence” so far, since the FBI never asked them or the DNC for the actual server, as Henry also confirmed. Meanwhile, former NSA official and whistleblower William Binney argued back in November 2017 that actual evidence showed a leak from the inside, not a hack.

Lie #2: Russia hacked Podesta’s emails and published them in collusion with WikiLeaks

There is likewise zero proof that the Russian government had anything to do with the private email account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair, which a staffer admitted had been compromised when someone fell for a phishing scam.

Instead, the key argument that WikiLeaks was somehow ‘colluding’ with Russia over the publication of the emails rests on a conspiracy theory promoted by the Clinton campaign staff, after RT reported on a fresh batch of emails before WikiLeaks got around to tweeting about them – but after they were published on the website and available to anyone willing to do actual journalism.

In fact, the existence of RT has been a major “argument” of Russiagaters; a third of the ICA intended to show ‘Russian meddling’ consisted of a four-year-old appendix about RT that was in no way relevant to the 2016 situation but lamented its coverage of fracking and ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests, for example.

Lie #3: The Steele ‘pee tape’ dossier was irrelevant

As it later emerged, Clinton’s claims about ‘Russian collusion’ were based on a dodgy dossier her campaign commissioned through the DNC and a firm called Fusion GPS from a British spy named Christopher Steele. It said that the Kremlin was blackmailing Trump with a tape of depraved sex acts in a Moscow hotel, with prostitutes supposedly paid to urinate on a bed President Barack Obama had slept on.

It was clearly ridiculous and entirely evidence-free. Democrats claimed it played no role in Russia investigations. Yet the FBI paid Steele for information from the dossier, and used it to justify a FISA warrant for the surveillance of Trump campaign aide Carter Page – and with him the campaign itself – starting right before the election, and renewed three times.

By January 2020, the DOJ had formally disavowed the dossier and all four FISA warrants, along with any information obtained from them, saying “there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause.”

Lie #4: General Michael Flynn treasonously colluded with Russia and lied about it to the FBI

Trump’s first national security adviser was hounded out of the White House after less than two weeks on the job, after media leaks insinuated he had improperly discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, violating the Logan Act, and then lied to the FBI about it.

After FBI Director James Comey was fired by Trump in May 2017, he told the media the president had urged him to drop the investigation of Flynn, which was quickly construed as “obstruction” and used as one of the pretexts to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel into ‘Russiagate.’

When actual evidence was finally coaxed out of prosecutors, however, it showed that the FBI sought to frame Flynn in a perjury trap, and that the people involved were Comey himself, his deputy Andrew McCabe, disgraced lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and others. All charges against Flynn were dropped.

Flynn didn’t even lie to Strzok and the other agent interviewing him – and the memo of that conversation had been first heavily edited, then destroyed. Basically, everything about the Flynn case has been as false as ABC’s December 2017 bombshell report about his “collusion” with Russia that got Brian Ross fired.

Lie #5: Mueller found collusion, or at least Russian meddling

When Mueller’s final report came out, in the spring of 2019, it found zero evidence of “collusion” but insisted there had been Russian “meddling” in the election. The only trouble was that he had no proof of meddling, basing it entirely on the above-mentioned intelligence “assessments” and his own indictments.

A Russian company named in one of the indictments actually contested it in US court and won. First, a federal judge slapped down Mueller’s prosecutors for violating rules by presenting allegations as “established” and “confirmed” facts and ruling that no link was actually established behind a catering company accused of “sowing discord” on social media – a far cry from hacking the DNC! – and the Russian government.

The DOJ quietly dropped that particular case in March, just as coronavirus shutdowns were starting across the US, using “recent events” and a change in classification of some of its evidence as a face-saving excuse.

Lie #6: Paul Manafort was Trump’s conduit to Russia

Paul Manafort, who ran Trump’s campaign between March and August 2016, was convicted of multiple counts of conspiracy against the US and sentenced to a lengthy prison term. However, despite repeated attempts by the media to present him as some kind of liaison between Trump and Russia, the entirety of things that got him in trouble with the law had to do with tax evasion on money he made lobbying for and in… Ukraine.

During the two trials against Manafort, it emerged that he and his business partner Rick Gates had worked with Podesta’s brother Tony to fleece Ukrainian oligarchs for years, and stash the profits in tax havens.

The Ukrainian officials who leaked the so-called “black ledger” implicating Manafort to the US media were even convicted of election meddling by a court in Kiev, and the whole thing may have been solicited by a Ukrainian-American DNC contractor… The US media have been curiously uninterested in that particular “collusion,” needless to say.

Peel back all these layers of misinformation, like an onion, and what’s left is an empty talking point, endlessly repeated by Democrats like Adam Schiff (D-California), that “Russia hacked our democracy.”

The charge is vague enough that it can mean anything, and deliberately so. No evidence is ever offered, because there isn’t any – as the years of investigations and boxes full of documents have clearly shown.

May 12, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia | , , | 2 Comments

US anti-ISIS chief says his goal in Syria is to create a ‘quagmire’ for Russia, not battle terrorism

RT | May 13, 2020

James Jeffrey, the US special envoy for Syria and defeating the Islamic State, has made quite a frank confession of how he sees his job and that of US troops there: to create a new Vietnam or Afghanistan for Moscow.

“Our military presence, while small, is important for overall calculations. So we urge the Congress, the American people, the president to keep these forces on, but again this isn’t Afghanistan, this isn’t Vietnam, this isn’t a quagmire,” Jeffrey said on Tuesday, during a video event hosted by the Hudson Institute. “My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.”

The arrival of the Russian expeditionary force in late 2015, following an invitation from Damascus, turned the tide of war in Syria. With their assistance, government forces rolled back both Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists and other militants, including Al-Qaeda affiliates, on multiple fronts – and scuttled US plans for regime change in Damascus.

Jeffrey grudgingly admitted the Russian military has been successful in Syria, but argued “they don’t have a political way out of their problems” with Syrian President Bashar Assad, and the US aims to offer “a way forward” through the UN – presumably referring to Resolution 2254 that Washington has long interpreted as “Assad must go.”

The envoy’s admission on Tuesday is a step beyond his remarks in early March, when he told reporters on a conference call that the US aims to “make it very difficult” for Russia to help the Syrian government achieve a military victory.

While US President Donald Trump repeatedly rejected nation-building interventions in the Middle East and sought to withdraw US troops from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, he has repeatedly faced resistance from the State Department and the Pentagon, still set on the previous administration’s strategy of regime change.

Jeffrey’s mention of a “quagmire” like Afghanistan is particularly ominous, given that’s precisely what the Carter administration did in 1978, covertly supporting Islamic militants in that country in order to provoke a Soviet intervention. According to Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, this was done to lure the USSR into their own costly, never-ending war such as the US experienced in Vietnam

Brzezinski boasted of his own role in those efforts, dismissing the fallout of Islamist terrorism that the conflict generated as irrelevant compared to US victory in the Cold War – shortly before the September 11, 2001 attacks triggered a US invasion of Afghanistan that the Trump administration is still struggling to extricate troops from.

May 12, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US Veterans Stationed in Guam During Vietnam War Likely Exposed to Agent Orange – White Paper

Sputnik – 12.05.2020

Veteran advocacy groups hope that research presented in a new white paper will allow American veterans to file for disability benefits if they have diseases linked to Agent Orange following US military service on Guam between 1962 and 1975.

The National Veterans Legal Services Program and the Jerome Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School published an authoritative report on May 8 which evaluated evidence on Guam-based US veterans’ exposure to Agent Orange and other dioxin-containing herbicide agents in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“We conclude that existing evidence establishes that it is, at the very least, ‘as likely as not’ that veterans who served in Guam from 1962 to 1975 were exposed to Agent Orange and other dioxin-containing herbicides,” the report read.

The white paper comes as the latest effort seeking to make available Agent Orange disability benefits from the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to troops who were exposed to the dangerous herbicide and related chemicals – after initially being told during combat that Agent Orange was virtually harmless.

Citing government documents on the matter, the report asserted there is “direct evidence” that the US Department of Defense’s “expedient and unregulated disposal of hazardous wastes on Guam” resulted in increased risk of exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin – a highly toxic dioxin byproduct of making Agent Orange – “and other dioxin pollution.”

The government documents detailed “widespread practices of herbicide spraying, mishandling, and improper disposal prior to enactment of federal hazardous waste regulations in 1976.”

An extensive list of “locations where tactical herbicides and their chemical components were tested” was released by the Pentagon in December 2019. However, Guam was not one of the locations included, despite the island hosting tens of thousands of US troops during the war.

The white paper referenced a 2018 examination of records by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that, in summary, claimed the use and storage of Agent Orange on Guam “could neither be conclusively proved nor disproved based on available records, in part because some potentially relevant DoD records have been lost or destroyed.”

As a result, those who have Agent Orange-related illnesses and served on Guam between 1962 and 1975 do not immediately qualify for VA benefits and instead have to satisfy evidence requirements that call for both medical and service records. Additional proof is requested if the veteran’s Agent Orange-related disease is not included in the VA’s approved list.

The May 8 report noted that the Pentagon’s failure to retain documents should not be such a major roadblock for veterans.

“Individual veterans should not be penalized for an incomplete evidentiary record when DoD has failed to maintain this record, or to resolve and refute extensive claims of Agent Orange and other toxic herbicide exposure,” the white paper read.

It remains to be seen whether the VA will move to make this particular change to Agent Orange disability benefits, but Military.com reported that the department is awaiting the results of two studies before making a final decision on whether to add “bladder cancer, Parkinson’s-like tremors, hypothyroidism, hypertension and monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance” to its list of Agent Orange-related diseases.

May 12, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

Russia Conducting Its Own Investigation Into Alleged Chemical Attacks in Syria – Ambassador to UN

Sputnik – 12.05.2020

UNITED NATIONS – Russia is conducting its own investigation into alleged chemical attacks in Syria and will share its conclusions with the world, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia told reporters on Tuesday.

“We are conducting our own expert investigation and we will share its results with you and international community”, Nebenzia said during a video briefing.

In late April, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had sacrificed its reputation to serve the West’s geopolitical ambition in Syria, after the body published the first report of its newly created investigation and identification team two weeks ago, blaming the alleged chemical attacks in the Syrian town of Al Lataminah in Hama province in March 2017 on the country’s government.

Russia argued that the investigative body had been set up in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Only the UN Security Council has the right to apportion blame for chemical attacks.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry has slammed the OPCW document as fabricated, adding that it is based on materials provided by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly known as Al-Nusra Front, an offshoot of Al-Qaeda).

May 12, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

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