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Asleep at the wheel: Why didn’t Western politicians act quicker on Covid-19 spread?

By Neil Clark | RT | March 19, 2020

Western countries are in lockdown due to Covid-19, but if leaders, their advisers, and the political class in general had paid attention to what was going on in China at the turn of the year, the crisis might have been averted.

Imagine you’re a passenger on a ship. You’d expect, wouldn’t you, that the captain and his officers keep a very good look-out for dangers ahead? You’d expect them to have up-to-date weather information. You’d expect them to take corrective action before the ship hit an iceberg.

The sad truth – for Western citizens, the passengers of the ship – is that those whose job it was to watch out for gathering storms have let us down very badly.

The chronology is most important.

According to the South China Morning Post, the first case of someone suffering from what later came to be known as Covid-19 occurred in China on November 17. The number of cases grew in December, (the majority linked to the Huanan Seafood Market), but we didn’t know internationally what was going on until news began to come out that Wuhan had been hit by a new virus in very late December/early January. The Chinese informed the World Health Organization of new pneumonia cases of unknown etiology on December 31.

The Chinese delay in flagging up what was happening in Wuhan absolutely didn’t help, but there was still time – about a two-week window – for other countries to act.

As reported in the BMJ, on January 11 and 12, the Chinese authorities shared the virus’ genetic sequence for countries to use in “developing specific diagnostic kits.” 440 deaths had been confirmed by January 21. By the 22nd, seven cases had been confirmed OUTSIDE China, including one in the US. All were travelers from Wuhan.

That surely should have got alarm bells ringing in Western capitals, especially as Chinese New Year on January 25 was coming up. Western leaders, and their advisers, would surely know that many Chinese workers based in the West would return home to celebrate, greatly increasing the risk that the virus would be brought back to Europe and North America.

On January 22, the UK government announced that health teams would meet the three direct flights a week from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the virus. At the same time, the risk level was raised from ‘very low’ to ‘low’.  But as Neil Ferguson, director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College, London, pointed out, flight screening was no panacea.

“This measure will only identify people who have symptoms as they come off the plane. If someone was infected two days before they travelled, they will arrive without any symptoms at all.” He added, and I emphasize in bold: “It’s essential that the entire health system is alert to the possibility that there will be cases here.”

Lo and behold, the first British case was confirmed nine days later, on January 31, 2020, from Chinese nationals staying at a hotel in York. That very same day, the first cases were also confirmed in Italy. Guess what: they were two Chinese tourists in Rome. Italy is now the world’s number one coronavirus ‘hotspot’. Nearly 3,000 have died there and 60mn people are in quarantine.

Wouldn’t it have been better, if instead of ineffective flight screening, all flights to Western countries from China had been stopped in January – and all travelers who had recently visited China been quarantined? France, by the way, got its first three cases on January 24 (a week before Italy and the UK). All three people had just come back from China. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see the pattern, do you?

In the New Year, the number one priority of Western politicians should have been the new coronavirus and how best to protect their own populations from it. But their minds were clearly on other things.

Trump – egged on by Washington’s Endless War Lobby – was engaged in an utterly reckless escalation of tensions with Iran. While Covid-19 was spreading in China, the New Year began with the assassination of General Soleimani, a man who had been fighting ISIS, but who was now portrayed as the ‘worst terrorist in the world’. The ‘Iran crisis’ dominated the news cycle. Boris Johnson meanwhile began the year on holiday with his girlfriend in Mustique. The opposition Labour Party were focusing on a leadership election which needn’t have taken place for several months. Three of the four candidates declared on television on February 13 – a day after the UN had activated its WHO-led Crisis Management team to deal with a rapidly escalating problem –that their ‘number one priority’ was… tackling ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party. Yet after all the brouhaha about anti-Semitism being ‘rife’ in Labour, it was reported at the end of February that the police had ended up charging just one person, a former Labour member.

One person, that is, out of a membership of half a million.

It seemed in February that no one in the political class was very interested in Covid-19.

This is despite the publication in the leading medical journal The Lancet on January 24 of a report entitled ‘A novel coronavirus outbreak of global concern’.

Covid-19 only began to be taken with the seriousness it warranted when it was already too late to try and stop its entry.

By not acting in time to restrict travel to and from China – and later from other ‘hotspots’ like northern Italy and Madrid, Spain, the governments instead waited and waited, until the measures they did take were far more draconian that might otherwise have been the case. It’s true that Trump did bar foreigners who had recently visited China from entering the US on January 31, but as David Leonhardt pointed out in the New York Times, it was “not the sweeping solution that Trump portrayed it to be.”

The costs to the economies of the various lockdowns are incalculable. People’s livelihoods are going to be destroyed. Entire industries are threatened. Don’t forget lockdowns and ‘social distancing’ can actually cause deaths too. As John Pilger pointed out on Twitter, a 2012 study showed that isolation killed the elderly, but isolate is what they’re now being told to do.

We’re in a right old state at the moment, but how much of this could have been avoided if instead of dozing off, or looking elsewhere, those whose job it was to protect us had acted quickly, at the proper time?

March 19, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

US Military Accuses North Korea of Lying About Coronavirus Infection Rate of Zero

Sputnik – March 17, 2020

North Korea, whose contacts with the outside world remain limited even in a normal situation, was one of the first countries to introduce tough inspection and quarantine measures, canceling tourist visits, cutting off flights and rail travel and quarantining all workers coming home from abroad.

Nearly three months into the COVID-19 outbreak, North Korean health officials maintain that the country has zero cases of the virus.

The Korean Central News Agency reported last week that it there were no cases of COVID-19 in the country, but urged the public to remain vigilant. The agency reported that the country has enforced “strict, top-class anti-epidemic measures,” to intensify its coronavirus response, including the tightening of inspection and quarantine of imports from abroad. The measures are said to include comprehensive “inspection and disinfection of vehicles, vessels and goods,” and a 10-day quarantine of imports.

The World Health Organization too has indicated that it’s not aware of any cases of the virus in the self-isolating country, although the organization does plan to send equipment and supplies to help Pyongyang battle COVID-19. North Korea had previously asked the WHO for material assistance including disposable gowns, gloves and hazmat suits.

The popular Coronavirus Resource Center map run by Johns Hopkins’ University School of Medicine, which depends on credible sources including the WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also reports zero cases for North Korea thus far.

However, US officials believe Pyongyang, which is required to report on any outbreak of contagious viruses as part of its WHO membership obligations, is lying.

Speaking to reporters last week, US Forces Korea commander Gen. Robert Abrams said the Pentagon was “fairly certain” that the country had coronavirus cases given the lack of noticeable military activity. According to the US commander, the North Korean military only recently restarted training following a month-long lockdown.

Keith Luse, executive director of the National Committee on North Korea, a Washington-based think tank, told Bloomberg that it “it’s hard to imagine that North Korea could dodge the COVID-19 bullet.”

Western media have similarly spread stories suggesting that the virus was quietly raging throughout the country, with one report by the US National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored Daily NK online newspaper claiming that as many as 200 soldiers had already died, and that another 4,000 people were in quarantine. These claims, citing anonymous sources, were never verified, but have been spread widely by English-language media.

North Korea, which is thought to have successfully weathered both the SARS and Ebola outbreaks in 2003 and 2014, became one of the first countries in the world to mount a nation-wide emergency response to COVID-19 amid rising infection rates in neighbouring China, South Korea and Japan.

These measures included a ban on all foreign tourists in late January, quarantine for travellers from China exhibiting potential symptoms of the virus in Sinuiju in the country’s west, and the declaration of a “state emergency” to deal with the epidemic on January 30, including the creation of a special ‘Central Emergency Anti-Epidemic Headquarters’.

North Korea’s presumed infection rate stands in sharp contrast to those of its neighbours, with China, where the virus originated, reporting over 81,000 cases, including some 218 cases in the North-Korea neighbouring regions of Liaoning and Jilin. South Korea has 8,320 confirmed cases. Japan has reported 833 cases. Russia, meanwhile, has 93 confirmed cases.

March 17, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Meet Eli Rosenbaum, the Justice Department’s Nazi Hunter

American taxpayers still paying for World War 2

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • March 17, 2020

The New York Times is reporting somewhat ruefully that “The Mission to Hunt Nazis Has Become a Race Against Time.” The U.S. Government’s zeal in going after alleged former “Nazis” began in 1979 when the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) was established within the Justice Department. In 2002, OSI included 13 attorneys, almost all of whom were Jewish, backed up by 10 “historians.” In 2010 it merged with the Criminal Division’s Domestic Security Section to create a new unit, the current Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP).

HRSP engages in a range of enforcement activities, but one of its principal focuses is the arrest and repatriation of claimed human rights violators associated with the German concentration and prison camp system preceding and during the Second World War. In the cases of those individuals linked to the camps, the HRSP has reportedly pursued the cases with some urgency because “These people are old, and they’re dying,” suggesting that the pursuit of World War II’s possible surviving criminals is more about revenge than justice. The Times article describes it as a “race against natural life spans.”

The man in charge of ferreting out hidden Nazis is Eli Rosenbaum, highly educated in the usual places and a lawyer. Wikipedia describes him as an Israeli-American, the dual-bit, if true, presumably in spite of the fact that he holds a high-level and highly paid American government job, an all too common feature of officials who engage in so-called holocaust related issues. Rosenbaum has been seeking out what he describes as Nazis as what amounts to a full-time job since 1980, though he disdains descriptions of him as a Nazi hunter

The most recent victim of the Department of Justice’s HRSP and Rosenbaum is a 94 year-old man living in Tennessee named Friedrich Karl Berger, who was recently ordered by Memphis federal judge Rebecca Holt to be returned to Germany. Holt ruled that he was deportable under the 1978 Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act due to his “willing service as an armed guard of prisoners at a concentration camp where persecution took place” which constituted rendering voluntary assistance to a Nazi-sponsored persecution.

Some facts regarding Berger’s involvement on World War II were presented by his defense and do not seem to have been disputed by the prosecution represented by Rosenbaum, who regretted that the passage of 75 years since 1945 means that Berger might be the last real live “Nazi” that he is able to punish.

Berger was drafted in 1943 when he was 17 years old, at the height of the war, and was enlisted in the navy. In 1945, he was seconded to the Neuengamme prison camp near Hamburg as a guard. Neuengamme was in fact a complex of as many as 80 camps and subcamps that were relatively low security. Berger was at a subcamp near Meppen. Jews, Poles, Russians, Danes, Dutch, Latvians, French, Italians and political opponents of the Nazis were imprisoned in the camps and it is believed that some of the prisoners, mostly Russians, were the victims of medical experiments or were gassed to death. Many prisoners also reportedly died from malnutrition and abuse as well as from actual starvation when the allies began to bomb the railroads and roads that provided food to the camps.

The camps were run by the SS, but the guards, which included women for women inmates, were drawn from a number of branches of the military services as well as from the police. Berger was therefore not SS even though the prosecution kept referring to Neuengamme as an SS camp, and he was not even armed except possibly for a brief period when the prisoners were being moved to the main camp near Hamburg as the war was ending. The prosecution claimed that the prisoners were forced to work outside digging defensive trenches during the winter of 1945 “to the point of exhaustion and death… Berger was part of the SS machinery of oppression that kept concentration camp prisoners in atrocious conditions of confinement.”

In fact, the largest loss of life of the Neuengamme prisoners took place when 9,000 of them were being evacuated in late April 1945 on the passenger liners Deutschland and Cap Arcona and two large commercial steamers the Thielbeck and Athen. The British bombed the ships, possibly thinking that they were full of fleeing government officials, killing at least 7,100 prisoners and crew.

In his justification for revoking citizenship and expatriating Berger, Rosenbaum claimed that the man had made two mistakes: “Mr. Berger made his choice to enlist in 1943 in the German military” and he then made another choice “not to request a transfer when he was assigned to a sub-camp overseeing prisoners…” Both claims are not completely credible as Berger was drafted and, as a low-ranking enlisted man being ordered to take up a position, he was hardly in control of where he was sent and what he would be called upon to do. If he had objected at that point in the war he might have been shot.

After the war Berger emigrated legally to Canada and then on to the United States in 1959. His entry into the country was completely legal and he eventually became a citizen, married and had children who are American citizens and settled down in a modest house in Oak Ridge Tennessee. He worked in a factory that made wire stripping machines. Acquaintances recall him as friendly and talkative, a kind man who took care of his sick wife until she died some years ago. One neighbor who knew him for 30 years described him as “proud to be living in the United States.”

The Times article illustrates what critics of the media have sometimes described as the “poisoned pen.” In the second paragraph of the article it describes Berger as one of many “under-the-radar Nazi collaborators.” It goes on to report on the “cases that played out over the years in the long shadow of World War II and the Holocaust, as collaborators were discovered and rooted out from often-cozy American existences that had normalized them and scrubbed them of their complicity.” The piece concludes with “Devora Fish, the director of education for the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, who opined that prosecutions like those of Mr. Berger help ensure that the sins of the past will not be forgotten. ‘Every time that somebody is brought to justice, even from 50 years ago or longer, that is a message to the world. Because we are not going to stop until everybody is brought to justice. Even if it’s something you did years ago, it will catch up to you.’” In another comment, Efraim Zuroff, a holocaust historian (sic) and currently the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s top Nazi hunter, praised the deportation of Berger, saying his age did not diminish his guilt, adding the usual spin of Jewish perpetual victimhood, and observing “Especially these days, when we see anti-Semitism on the rise and the rise of right-wing movements, this is a reminder that, if you commit such crimes, even many years later, you will be held accountable.”

How destroying the end of the life of a 94 year-old who was seventeen when he got caught up in a war that victimized him as much as millions of others provides justice is not completely clear, particularly as Berger was not a decision maker and was not personally linked to any mistreatment of anyone. Revenge is not justice but it is something that the United States government and the U.S. media promote relentlessly through the activity of taxpayer funded Rosenbaum and also the ridiculous bizarre State Department offices of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism and the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues.

And going after “Nazis” with such virulence ignores other war crimes like the fire bombings of Tokyo which killed 100,000 and Dresden where 25,000 died, mostly civilians. Or Hamburg itself, close to camp Neuengamme, where 35,000 died in a firestorm that destroyed the city and which was possibly witnessed by Berger. And then there are Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 2 million dead Vietnamese and more than a million dead Muslims since 9/11. Inevitably, he who controls the media controls the narrative while the winner in a war writes the history books and also decides who is guilty.

One also has to wonder about modern day war crimes and what Eli Rosenbaum would do about them. Israel has just killed its 10,000th Palestinian since 2000. In Gaza alone, Israeli snipers shooting unarmed demonstrating Arabs in the past year have killed more than 200 and injured 8,000. The favored sniper tactic has become shooting the Palestinians in their knees. One leading sniper boasts that on one day alone he shot forty-two knees, mostly of teenagers, crippling them for the rest of their lives. “I remember the knee in the crosshairs, bursting open” said another marksman. Will Eli Rosenbaum, once he runs out of potential victims and stops chasing “Nazis,” be representing the interests of those severely injured in Gaza to punish the Israeli war criminals and bring justice?

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

March 16, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Iranian Army to hold nationwide drills against biological warfare

Press TV – March 14, 2020

The Iranian Army will start countrywide drills on Sunday to prepare itself against biological warfare amid an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, which has so far killed over 600 people.

The plan for holding the biological defense war game war unveiled by Army Chief Commander Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi during an extraordinary meeting held on Saturday to coordinate efforts in the battle with the COVID-19.

According to General Mousavi, the war games will be kicked off on Sunday under command of the Army’s Biodefense Base and under supervision of Deputy Chief of Army for Coordination Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari.

The Army’s biodefense drills come in line with a Thursday edict by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, in which he warned the outbreak might be the result of a “biological attack” against the Islamic Republic.

“Since there is some evidence that this incident might be a ‘biological attack’, this measure could be also some form of biological defense drill, which would add to national power and strength [of the country],” the Leader said.

As part of efforts to fight the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has in turn opened three field hospitals in northern and southern Iranian provinces.

“Given the outbreak of the coronavirus in the country and people’s need to have access to health and medical centers, two hospitals that contain 30-40 beds have started their work in the city of Borazjan [in the southern Bushehr Province] and a 54-bed mobile hospital in [the southern port city of] Bandar Abbas,” IRGC Navy Commander Rear Admiral Alireza Tangsiri said on Saturday.

He added that another 74-bed mobile hospital has opened in the northern city of Rasht and noted that the hospital’s capacity can be increased to 120 beds in order to provide more services to confirmed coronavirus patients.

Kianoush Jahanpour, the head of the public relations and information center of the Iranian Ministry of Health, said Saturday the new coronavirus has claimed 97 lives in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll to 611.

Jahanpour added that 1,365 fresh cases have been added to the number of the confirmed infections during the period, bringing the total to 12,729.

More than 4,300 of those with confirmed infections have recovered so far, he added.

March 14, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

China does not rule out US role in coronavirus outbreak

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (Photo by AFP )
Press TV – March 13, 2020

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has not ruled out the possibility that the United States was to blame for the spread of the new coronavirus in the Asian country.

Geng Shuang, the ministry spokesman, sidestepped questions on Friday about whether Beijing viewed Washington as responsible for the deadly virus outbreak in China, a day after another spokesman suggested the US army could have engineered it.

Speaking at a news conference in the Chinese capital, Geng refused to directly comment when asked whether his colleague Zhao Lijian’s comments were consistent with Beijing’s official stance on the virus.

“In fact, the international community, including people within the US, have different opinions about the origin of the virus,” Geng told reporters at the presser.

“As I have been saying for a few days, China has always seen this as a matter of science, and scientific and professional opinions must be heard.”

Geng went on to say, “You’re very interested to know if Zhao Lijian’s views represent the views of the Chinese government.”

“I believe that perhaps you would be better off first asking whether or not recent comments from a number of senior US officials attacking or smearing China represent the US government’s position.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian

In a strongly-worded tweet, written in English, Zhao blasted the US on Thursday for what he called lack of transparency in official reports regarding the coronavirus outbreak in the US.

He suggested that the US military might have brought the new coronavirus to the Chinese city of Wuhan, the birthplace of the current global pandemic.

“When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!” Zhao wrote.

The Chinese government had been criticized by Western media and particularly by US officials for what was alleged to be a slow response to the outbreak and of not being sufficiently transparent.

Beijing has, however, been taking strict measures since the outbreak began, including locking down Wuhan, a city of roughly 11 million people, which appears to have paid off.

The COVID-19 disease, caused by the new coronavirus, emerged in the provincial capital of Hubei late last year and is currently affecting 131 countries and territories across the globe. It has so far infected over 137,000 people and killed more than 5,000 others.

The World Health Organization has declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.

March 13, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Italy’s Hospital Meltdown

Coronavirus has turned hospitals into war zones, say Italian doctors.

click to enlarge; source here
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | March 11, 2020

Doctors in northern Italy are warning their colleagues in other countries about an approaching COVID-19 tsunami. Medical personnel are sick, exhausted, and overwhelmed. There are too few beds, too little equipment, and too many patients. Decisions are being made about who lives and who dies that were unthinkable a month ago.

EXHIBIT 1
The testimony of an unnamed intensivist (a physician who specializes in caring for the critically ill) has been posted on Twitter by his/her British medical colleague, Jason van Schoor. Please read the full Twitter thread here.

The unnamed doctor, working in the Lombardy region, explains that this is “the most developed region of Italy,” with an “extraordinary” health care system. We’re told not to make the mistake of thinking what’s being described “is happening in a 3rd world country.”

Hospitals are now beseiged, “and numbers do not explain things at at all,” this person declares. Normal medical care has been suspended. Operating rooms have been converted to intensive treatment units (ITUs). Doctors who specialize in orthopedics (bones) are being “given a leaflet and sent to see patients” struck down by this lung disease.

A clear pattern has emerged, says this person. At first, the hospital receives a few mild cases. The second wave consists of mostly moderately ill patients, with “a few severe ones” who require intubation (a tube inserted down their throat to help them breathe).

The third wave consists of “tons of patients with moderate” respiratory difficulties. Those patients soon deteriorate and fill up the intensive care unit. As their numbers grow, they consume all the non-invasive ventilation (NIV) resources. They use up all the CPAP machines, and require therapeutic oxygen.

Here’s the crucial point. According to this doctor, because hospitals are now running at 200% capacity, patients older than 65, and younger patients with additional health issues, are de-prioritized. If you have relatives with a “history of cancer or diabetes or any transplant,” says this doctor, no extraordinary measures will be taken to save their lives. Even if they are young.

Too many patients with a higher chance of survival are already competing for a limited number of ventilators.

EXHIBIT 2
Daniele Macchini is a surgeon at Humanitas Gavazzeni, a hospital in Bergamo. Located an hour’s drive northeast of Milan, tens of thousands of patients from outside Italy have been treated there.

Three days ago, a Bergamo newspaper published remarks Macchini had posted on Facebook. You can read a Google translation of his entire message here.

He describes how his hospital reorganized in order to free up as many beds as possible. He, himself, wasn’t convinced such measures were necessary, but then things

exploded and the battles are uninterrupted day and night. One after the other the unfortunate poor people come to the emergency room… Let’s stop saying it’s a bad flu. In these 2 years I have learned that the people of Bergamo do not come to the emergency room at all… but now they can’t take it anymore. They don’t breathe enough, they need oxygen.

… One after another, the departments that have been emptied are filling up… Now, tell me which flu virus causes such a rapid tragedy…

While the most serious cases are “mainly elderly people with other pathologies,” Macchini says young people are also now in intensive care, being kept alive by ventilators. In his words, a “disaster is taking place:”

there are no more surgeons, urologists, orthopedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us. The cases… arrive at the rate of 15-20 hospitalizations a day all for the same reason. The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly the emergency room is collapsing… help is needed in the emergency room… Intensive care becomes saturated… The staff is exhausted…Nurses with tears in their eyes because we are unable to save everyone and the vital signs of several patients…reveal an already marked destiny.

There are no more shifts, schedules. Social life is suspended for us…I see neither my son nor my family members for fear of infecting them… please, listen to us, try to leave the house only to [do] indispensable things…Tell your family members who are elderly or with other illnesses to stay indoors. Bring [them] the groceries please… We must spread the word to prevent what is happening here in Italy.

Two weeks ago, Italy was establishing hundreds of field hospitals to screen patients (see the photo at the top of this post). Two days ago, the entire country entered an emergency lock down. Churches, schools, and universities are closed. Public gatherings and sports events have been cancelled. Travel is forbidden, with some exceptions. People have been told to stay home.

March 11, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Venezuela: Nearly 50,000 Voting Machines Burnt in ‘Terrorist Attack’

By Paul Dobson | Venezuelanalysis | March 9, 2020

Mérida – An unknown militant group has claimed responsibility for a blaze which destroyed 99 percent of Venezuela’s electoral machines on Saturday.

In a video message published on Twitter on Sunday, seven masked men calling themselves the Venezuelan Patriotic Front stated that the attack formed part of “Operation Sodom,” a reference to the biblical tale of the city destroyed by “divine judgement” on the Jordan River.

The group goes on to justify the arson by alleging that electoral authorities have “violated the people’s rights through fraudulent elections.” In the same message, it also claimed responsibility for a fire last month at a state-run CANTV telecommunications center used in elections in Valencia, Carabobo State.

While the origins and connections of the group remain unclear, its video message pledged further actions against government supporters and leaders, which it defined as being “military targets,” as well as issuing warnings about “what may occur” at the upcoming opposition march on Tuesday.

Speaking Monday, National Constituent Assembly President Diosdado Cabello condemned the fire as a “terrorist attack.” Opposition leaders are yet to comment.

Another hard-right militant opposition group called the T-Shirt Soldiers endorsed the Patriotic Front’s actions and claimed they “were not finished.” The T-Shirt Soldiers claimed responsibility for the August 2018 C4-carrying drone assassination attempt against President Maduro.

According to the National Electoral Council (CNE), a massive fire on Saturday at the storage facility in the Filas de Mariche district on the outskirts of Caracas destroyed 49,408 electronic voting machines, 582 computers, 400 electronic ballot cards, 49,232 fingerprint identification machines and 22,434 power inverters. Only 562 voting machines and 724 fingerprint identification machines could be saved. All voting machines and other instruments are kept at the warehouse under military and civilian supervision between electoral processes.

The blaze caused no human injuries, but devastated the 1500 m2 facility, according to the reports of the 570 firefighters who tackled the fire.

Addressing the press on Sunday, CNE President Tibisay Lucena told the country that two national prosecutors have been assigned to investigate the fire, and that “no hypotheses have been ruled out.”

The voting machines were originally produced by the multinational company Smartmatic. The CNE ended a maintenance and repair contract with the company in 2017 following its “baseless” claims of fraud at the July 2017 National Constituent Assembly elections. The electoral body has not updated its machine stockpile since nor signed a new manufacturing contract, and a wide-reaching US embargo announced in 2018 threatens any foreign firm which engages with the organisation with sanctions.

The CNE has overseen 24 electoral contests since 1998, with National Assembly (AN) elections scheduled for 2020, with a date yet to be set. Lucena also took the opportunity to calm fears that this year’s elections would be affected.

“If there are small groups which think that this will end our constitutionally established electoral processes, they are very wrong,” she said. “We have the capacity, the legal know-how, the operative and logistical technology, 17 years of experience, and the human talent [to] guarantee the electoral processes in Venezuela as we know them: fast, transparent and trustworthy,” she went on.

Venezuela’s combined electronic and paper electoral system has been described as one of the most secure and transparent in the world by independent international observers. Nonetheless, discussions aimed at applying further consensual safeguards, as well as renovating the CNE leadership, have been part of a dialogue agenda between the government and a host of smaller opposition parties.

The efforts were boosted after a dissident opposition group wrested control of the National Assembly from former AN President Juan Guaido in January and backed the ongoing dialogue process as well as the renewal of electoral authorities.

Guaido has already ruled out taking his hard-right Popular Will party to the vote later this year, a position which has been backed by Washington. Other Guaido-aligned opposition parties, however, are still to announce whether they will participate, with Democratic Action party hinting that it will.

March 10, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Intra-Afghan dialogue gets kickstarted

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | March 10, 2020

Three significant things about Ashraf Ghani’s swearing-in ceremony in Kabul on Monday augur well for the implementation of the US-Taliban pact signed in Doha on February 29.

One, the US officials, civilian and military, made a full court appearance at the ceremony in Kabul, affirming their reconciliation with Ghani. The US special representative for Afghan reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and US General Scott Miller, the commander of the US-led international force in Afghanistan, attended Ghani’s inauguration, apart from the EU, UN and western diplomats.

Two, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan felicitated Ghani. He wrote on his Twitter page,“[I] look forward to working with him [Ghani]. Pakistan will do everything it possibly can to bring peace and stability in our region.”

Islamabad and Washington held back from congratulating Ghani when his election victory was formally announced last month. Now they are moving in tandem to engage with the Ghani presidency.

Three, Ghani announced in his speech at the ceremony that he will issue an order on Tuesday itself on the release of the Taliban prisoners. Ghani expressed the hope that the Taliban will reciprocate by significantly reducing violence. Thereby, Ghani is signalling that he will not block intra-Afghan dialogue.

Furthermore, he added that the government’s negotiating team for the intra-Afghan dialogue will also be finalised by Tuesday.

What may be even more significant than the above is that the Taliban is not creating a ruckus over Ghani’s inauguration. A senior figure in the Taliban leadership, Amir Khan Motaqi who is based in Qatar sounded optimistic that peace negotiations with the Afghan government will be “easier” than the Taliban’s marathon talks with the United States (which took around a year and a half).

“We will reach a conclusion with Afghans in a better way – of course with Afghans who consider other Afghans’ interests and do not consider foreigners’ interests,” Motaqi said. Another senior Taliban figure, Anas Haqqani, who was freed from Bagram prison last November, called the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners important and urged the speedy formation of the negotiating team from Kabul so that the intra-Afghan dialogue can commence on March 10, as envisaged under the Doha pact of February 29.

In sum, Ghani’s induction or his change of heart — depending on how one views it — gives traction to the US-Taliban pact signed in Doha.

Contrary to doomsday predictions that the political rift in Kabul between Ghani and the former chief executive Abdullah over the disputed election results — Abdullah held his own inaugural ceremony in Kabul on Monday — would undermine the US-Taliban pact, the opposite seems to be happening.

Ghani’s brinkmanship in recent weeks served its real purpose, which was to get US support for his presidency and also carve out for himself an influential role in the inter-Afghan dialogue.

Pakistan and the Taliban have wisely kept away from getting embroiled in the Ghani-Abdullah rift and left it to Khalilzad to pacify Ghani.

Ghani apparently didn’t need much persuasion to do the two things that are Khalilzad’s top priority — release of the prisoners and the launch of the intra-Afghan dialogue. It is a fair guess that Khalilzad has struck some sort of deal with Ghani regarding the uncertain future role of the latter’s presidency.

The Taliban’s flexibility to hold talks with the Afghan government could be one factor here. Conceivably, Pakistan would have persuaded the Taliban to show flexibility.

If so, this is brilliant a tactic on the part of Islamabad and the Taliban. For, once the intra-Afghan dialogue begins, a new dynamic will appear in any case, and, given the fragmentation in the opposite camp, with so many cliques and factions jostling for position, Taliban would have the inherent advantage of being the only cohesive group at the negotiating table.

US President Donald Trump acknowledged these ground realities when he said on March 6 while talking to reporters at the White House that the Taliban could “possibly” overrun the Afghan government after foreign troops withdraw from the country as part of the Doha agreement.

As Trump put it, “Countries have to take care of themselves. You can only hold someone’s hand for so long.” Asked if the Taliban could eventually seize power from the current US-backed government, Trump said it is “not supposed to happen that way but it possibly will.”

This is of course a hypothetical scenario, since it will not be in Pakistan and Taliban’s interest to grab power forcibly in Kabul. It is useful to remember how much the Taliban hankered after US and UN recognition for its regime in Kabul in the nineties.

Significantly, the joint statement on the US-Taliban pact agreed by Special Envoys and Special Representatives of the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, the United Nations and the United States of America on the occasion of the signing of the U.S.-Taliban Agreement in Qatar spells out the expectations regarding the Afghan transition and it is quite obviously based on the understanding reached between Khalilzad and the Taliban.

The following paragraphs merit attention:

  • “Reaffirmed that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is not recognised by the international community, and furthermore, the international community will not accept or support the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
  • “Welcomed the Taliban committing to join a political process and their prospective role in a new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan negotiations.”

However, there is the “known unknown”— how far the fragile Afghan state structure will hold through the stresses and strains of the period ahead — negotiations with the Taliban and a period of profound transition to an entirely new beginning of state-building.

Importantly, Abdullah’s coalition which opposes Ghani is also a coming together of non-Pashtun groups — Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek. The ethnic overtone is ominous.

When asked whether the Afghan government had the ability to defend itself from fighters after foreign forces pull out, Trump was brutally frank: “I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. We’ll have to see what happens.”

Indeed, what happens next will also significantly depend on Abdullah’s future moves. He and his associates have thrown their weight behind the intra-Afghan dialogue but it is unlikely they will accept Ghani’s leadership to navigate the peace process.

To be fair, Khalilzad tried hard for a Ghani-Abdullah reconciliation, but it didn’t work. The bitterness lingers because this was a patently rigged election and Ghani doesn’t have a legitimate mandate to rule.

Meanwhile, the drawdown of the US troops has begun. Washington is unlikely to get entangled in Afghan domestic politics. To quote Trump, “We can’t be there for the next 20 years. We’ve been there for 20 years and we’ve been protecting the country but we can’t be there for the next – eventually, they’re going to have to protect themselves.”

Washington’s focus is going to be on the reduction in violence (ceasefire) and on verifiable evidence of the Taliban’s commitment to severe links with al-Qaeda.

The bottom line is, as the sensational report by New York Times on Sunday — A Secret Accord with the Taliban: When and How US Would Leave Afghanistan — confirms, the Doha pact is only the tip of the iceberg.

A matrix of understanding between the US, Pakistan and the Taliban provides the underpinning for the incoming Afghan peace process and the road map leading to a transition, based on their mutual recognition of the legitimate interests of all three protagonists.

March 10, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Hung jury results in mistrial for former CIA tech accused of handing ‘Vault 7’ docs to WikiLeaks

Assange trial rehearsal?

RT | March 10, 2020

Federal prosecutors were unable to convince a jury on any of the spying-related charges against an ex-CIA engineer accused of stealing reams of classified material – in what may be a dry run for the case against Julian Assange.

In a significant blow to prosecutors on Monday, jurors failed to come to a verdict on eight central counts against former CIA software engineer Joshua Schulte, who was charged for stealing thousands of pages of classified information on the agency’s secret hacking tools and passing them to WikiLeaks – what later became its ‘Vault7’ release, the largest breach of classified material in CIA history.

While Schulte was found guilty of contempt of court and making false statements to investigators, a hung jury on the remaining eight charges – including illegal gathering and transmission of national defense information – prompted District Judge Paul Crotty to order a mistrial and dismiss the jurors on the case, who had deemed themselves “extremely deadlocked” in a note to the judge.

The split verdict came after nearly a full week of messy deliberations, which saw one juror removed for researching the facts of the case against Crotty’s orders. She was never replaced, however, leaving a short-handed panel to deliver a final decision.

The former technician left his job in the CIA’s Langley headquarters in 2016 and was charged some two years later for his alleged role in the Vault 7 leak. But prosecutors had difficulty tying Schulte to the disclosure throughout his four-week trial, with jurors often mystified by a complicated maze of technical evidence.

The case may offer parallels to that of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who faces 17 charges under the World War I-era Espionage Act and up to 175 years in prison over his role in the publication of the Iraq and Afghan war logs in 2010. Assange is accused of helping leaker Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley) “hack” into military computers to obtain classified material, but if extradited from the UK to stand trial in an American courtroom, prosecutors would likely produce similar technical forensics to prove his involvement, precisely what the government was unable to do in Schulte’s case.

Arguing that the CIA’s computer network had widely known vulnerabilities, including poor password protections, Schulte’s defense insisted prosecutors had failed to prove his role in the breach. They noted it was possible another actor gained access to his work station, pointing to another CIA employee identified only as “Michael” as a potential culprit.

The CIA later placed the employee on administrative leave for refusing to cooperate with the investigation, which suggested the government had “doubt about the case against Mr. Schulte,” defense attorney Sabrina Shroff said in her closing argument on Monday.

Prosecutors are likely to demand a retrial for Schulte, and he still stands accused of possessing child pornography, allegedly stored on devices found during a search of his home. He will be tried separately on those charges, facing a total of 15 counts.

March 9, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

AIPAC confirms two coronavirus cases at Israeli lobby gathering attended by US elites & politicians

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivers remarks at the AIPAC convention in Washington, DC, March 2, 2020. © Reuters / Tom Brenner
RT | March 7, 2020

Two people from New York who attended the AIPAC conference in the US capital have tested positive for COVID-19 coronavirus, raising the possibility that lawmakers in Washington, DC were exposed to the potentially lethal contagion.

“At least” two conference-goers who came from Westchester County, New York have tested positive for the virus, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said on Friday evening, adding that they’ve sent notice of this to the attendees, participants, speakers, administration staff and congressional offices.

AIPAC previously said that a group that traveled to the conference from New York “potentially” interacted with an individual carrying the illness beforehand. Almost two dozen cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in New York state.

The conference held just outside of Washington on March 1-3 was attended by 18,000 people, including more than 3,600 students from campuses across the US, over two-thirds of Congress, as well as a number of attendees from abroad. The day after it concluded, Israel asked anyone who attended “international conferences abroad” to self-quarantine for 14 days, in hope of containing the infection to 15 cases reported so far.

Most of the fatalities from the virus are among people with underlying medical conditions and the elderly – which would apply to many members of Congress.

Vice President Mike Pence, who spoke at the conference, said he hadn’t heard of the coronavirus revelation when asked about it on Friday. Other speakers included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, current Democrat presidential front-runner Joe Biden, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York).

DC health officials have not reported any confirmed coronavirus cases, but authorities in nearby Montgomery County, Maryland have already identified three. As of Friday morning, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had registered 164 total confirmed COVID-19 cases in 19 US states, including 11 fatalities – ten in Washington state and one in California.

The novel coronavirus, designated COVID-19, first appeared in Wuhan, China in December last year. Most of the fatalities so far have been in China. The airborne pathogen has since managed to spread to Europe, the Middle East and the US despite strict quarantine measures.

March 6, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Trump puts Taliban deal back on track

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | March 5, 2020

A mini mutiny in Kabul against the US-Taliban deal has been nipped in the bud and it should sound warning bells in Washington that the real threat to peacemaking in Afghanistan comes from one principal source — the interest groups that monopolise state agencies and are loathe to transfer power. Isolating the Kabul clique amidst the country’s hopeless fragmentation becomes complicated and only the US can do it.

A powerful metaphor used by Peter Tomsen, President Ronald Reagan’s special envoy for Afghanistan during the jihad against the Soviets in the eighties, comes to mind. Ambassador Tomsen, despairing from his futile efforts to forge consensus among the squabbling Mujahideen groups (“Peshawar Seven”) even as the Soviet withdrawal was looming ahead said the whole exercise was turning out to be like a futile attempt to assemble frogs on a scale — when you put one, another already on the scale jump out, and so on.

No sooner than the US-Taliban agreement was signed in Doha on February 29, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani jumped out of the scale where the US special representative for Afghan reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad had put him after months of persuasion.

Ghani sprang a surprise by saying he refused to countenance the release of Taliban prisoners, a key demand of the Taliban during the Doha negotiations and something which was written in black and white in the document signed on Feb. 29 with his prior knowledge and concurrence.

In fact, he had even dispatched officials from Kabul to Doha who met with the Taliban and had discussed the modalities of release of the prisoners. But then he changed his mind.

Ghani’s calculation was that his volte-face on the release of Taliban prisoners could be a deal breaker that would scuttle the intra-Afghan dialogue slated to begin on March 10.

Ghani was in a rebellious mood, goaded by the hardliners in his clique, and he almost succeeded. The Taliban retaliated by ending the reduction in violence agreement. Fighting resumed and as can be expected, Afghan government forces, unable to withstand the Taliban onslaught, sought US air cover, which led to US air attacks on the insurgents.

The detractors of the US-Taliban deal abroad promptly began celebrating that the US and Taliban were once again clashing and the Doha pact was unraveling within three days of its signing.

However, in a bold initiative, Trump called Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the de-facto Taliban leader who conducted the negotiations in Doha with Khalilzad and shored up the fragile mutual confidence between the two sides.

Indeed, beyond the Doha pact, there is a matrix of mutual understanding that was painstakingly reached between the US and Taliban, with the strong support of Pakistan. Trump dwelt on it. (See my blog Afghan peace comes with caveats but can’t be snuffed out.)

From available accounts, Trump assured the Taliban that the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would intervene with Ghani and the prisoners will be released as the US had committed and that Washington expected the Taliban to continue to abide by the ‘reduction in violence’.

Trump has since publicly expressed the confidence that the violence will come down.

Quite obviously, Washington continues to place trust in the constructive role Pakistan has been playing.

Looking back, this war of nerves is directly linked to Ghani’s aversion to intra-Afghan dialogue, which he fears will inevitably lead to the formation of an interim government at some point in the near future necessitating his stepping down. The US is yet to congratulate Ghani on his recent victory in the rigged presidential election and prevailed upon him to defer his swearing-in ceremony.

We have curious line-up today — the (non-Taliban) Afghan opposition to Ghani and his clique (which is by far the majority opinion in the country) looks forward to the inter-Afghan dialogue and reconciliation with the Taliban and is supportive of the US-Taliban deal and the peace process envisaged under it, while Ghani and his circle undermine the entire process that Khalilzad painstakingly negotiated.

Ghani is biding time and hopes to insert Afghan reconciliation as a controversial issue in the US presidential election campaign ahead and hopes to get support from the Democrats who would be inclined to demand the centrality of human rights issues in any deal with the Taliban.

Ghani is overreaching. The plain truth is that his regime has no popular support among Afghans and he still remains a creation of the Americans, which is why the international community learned to live with him in the first instance.

His henchmen also have no political base. Ghani has no political base among Pashtuns. As for Amrullah Saleh, his main associate, he was originally trained and groomed by the Americans as an intelligence officer, and although notionally a Panjshiri, he is no successor to Ahmed Shah Massoud. These are the stark realities.

Clearly, the main threat to the Afghan peace process comes from the rejectionist Afghan faction of time-servers in the Ghani government. It is about time the Americans crack the whip and read the riot act to them.

An interview on March 2 by the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Bret Baier of Special Report suggests that Washington is willing to do just that. Khalilzad is back in Kabul.

The good part is that the opposition to Ghani led by Abdullah is rallying behind the US-Taliban pact. Khalilzad has met with former president Hamid Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah and other opposition leaders (erstwhile Northern Alliance resistance figures), all of whom have thrown their weight behind the US-Taliban pact.

Pompeo’s interview gives us a feel of Trump’s phone conversation with Mullah Baradar. The US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said on Monday that the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan will begin before March 10. For the present, things are back on track. As Pompeo put it,

“I met with them (Mullah Baradar) myself when I was in Doha.  I looked them in the eye. They revalidated that commitment (to renounce al-Qaeda and reduce violence). Now they’ve got to execute it.  Now we’ll be able to see, the world will be able to see, if they truly live up to that obligation. It’s important because that’s the reason we went there, Bret.”

The fact that Trump took time out amidst all the excitement over “Super Tuesday” to personally intervene with the Taliban leadership at the highest level underscores that this is one foreign-policy achievement of his administration to which he attaches the greatest importance. And that is the best guarantee of its success. 

March 5, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Supreme leader’s advisory council member dies of coronavirus – Iranian media

RT | March 2, 2020

Seyyed Mohammad Mirmohammadi, a long-standing member of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, has reportedly died from a novel coronavirus infection.

He was being treated at the Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran when he succumbed to the Covid-19 infection at the age of 71. Mirmohammadi’s mother, sister of senior cleric Ayatollah Shobeiri Zanjani, also died from a coronavirus infection on Monday.

Mirmohammadi was a member of the sixth and seventh Iranian parliaments and was appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as a member of the Expediency Discernment Council in August 2017.

Iran’s former ambassador to the Vatican, Hadi Khosroshahi, died of Covid-19 last week, while the country’s Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi placed himself in isolation after appearing to sweat profusely and seeming ill while giving a press conference to assuage fears over the outbreak. He later confirmed that he had been infected with the virus.

Iran is battling shortages of medical supplies – exacerbated by US sanctions – but authorities have allocated a number of military hospitals to treat the general public and help stem the tide of infection. Meanwhile, schools, universities and sports centers have been closed and the parliament has been shut down.

Iran has the world’s second highest death toll outside of China. The country has officially announced 978 cases and 54 deaths. At 5.5 percent, the country’s death rate is more than twice the global average of two percent.

Several of Iran’s neighbours have closed their borders as the virus spreads across the region. These countries include Kuwait and Bahrain, each with 50 confirmed cases, the UAE with 21, and Iraq with at least 19 cases.

March 2, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

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