US push for low-yield nukes makes atomic war MORE likely as Russia will retaliate with full force: Moscow
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | April 30, 2020
The US State Department’s case for tactical nuclear weapons is a case study in psychological projection not seen since the darkest days of the Cold War and its ever-present threat of world-ending atomic holocaust.
Back in February, the Pentagon announced the US Navy has fielded the first batch of W76-2 low-yield submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warheads. A paper by the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, published last week, aimed to explain the reasoning behind this move and “debunk” the critics. The 10-page document was endorsed by the acting Under Secretary for arms control Christopher Ford, who hailed the missiles as “reducing net nuclear risks.”
On Wednesday, however, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the move “a deliberate blurring of the lines between non-strategic and strategic nuclear weapons” that “inevitably leads to a lowering of the nuclear threshold and an increase in the threat of nuclear conflict.”
“Everyone who wants to do this should understand that according to the Russian military doctrine, such actions will be considered the basis for the reciprocal use of nuclear weapons by Russia.”
At the root of this discrepancy is a fundamental misunderstanding. Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon are basing their arguments not on the actual Russian doctrine or behavior, but on their belief as to what those might be.
For example, there is an unquestioned assumption in US policy circles that Russia has a nuclear doctrine described as “escalate to de-escalate” – which “purportedly seeks to deescalate a conventional conflict through coercive threats, including limited nuclear use,” according to a 2015 congressional testimony of then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work.
As former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter pointed out, Work’s own words reveal that this is not the actual Russian doctrine, but the impression of it by some US analysts. Whoever originated this utter fantasy is irrelevant; it ranks right alongside Molly McKew’s “expertise” on Russian nuclear posture or the likewise widespread acceptance of the nonexistent “Gerasimov Doctrine.”
The State Department’s paper is indeed based on Work’s assumptions about Russia, as it literally talks about the US “deterrence objective of undermining Russian confidence that it can control escalation in a nuclear war.”
In struggling to understand where this notion may have come from, I remembered a 1978 fiction book about World War III by Sir John Hackett, a British general. Hackett envisioned a Soviet nuclear strike on a European NATO capital after the conventional war started going badly for the USSR. In the book, NATO responds with a nuclear strike on Minsk, and the war ends with a coup in Moscow by Ukrainian nationalists (stop me if you’ve heard that one before!). It may sound insane that a 42-year-old fantasy appears to be the basis of US thinking about current Russian strategy, yet here we are.
The other thing that’s downright alarming about the State Department paper is its talk of a “limited response to demonstrate resolve.” Considering that the US is the only country in the world to ever use nuclear weapons in combat – against primarily civilian targets, no less – there is no reason for anyone to doubt Washington’s “resolve.” Go read their argument; it seems to be one giant straw man, composed of wishful thinking, projection and mirror imaging – textbook mistakes its authors should have known better than to make.
Which gets us to the fundamental misunderstanding at work here. Over the course of its 244-year history, almost every US war has been fought abroad and by choice. By contrast, Russian wars tend to be fought at home and against foreign invaders. Russians do not think of war in terms of posturing, but in terms of life and death. They don’t need to “demonstrate resolve” – not after countless documented acts of bravery against overwhelming odds.
Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin literally spelled out his country’s nuclear doctrine back in 2018, on two separate occasions. “Why would we want a world without Russia?” he said in March, illustrating the notion that Moscow is willing to use atomic weapons if the survival of Russia was endangered, even if by conventional means. Several months later, in October, he was even more graphic.
“Any aggressor should know that retribution will be inevitable and he will be destroyed. And since we will be the victims of his aggression, we will be going to heaven as martyrs. They will simply drop dead, won’t even have time to repent.”
Yet here are the Pentagon and the State Department, ignoring this observable reality in favor of their own wishful thinking that may well be based on decades-old fantasies from a world long since gone. As Zakharova correctly points out, that’s not making the world safer – not even a tiny bit.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
Russia: US use of low-yield nukes would still be nuclear attack, draw retaliation
Press TV – April 30, 2020
Russia has warned that any attack by the United States involving its low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missiles would still be construed as nuclear aggression and would draw all-out nuclear retaliation.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that any attack with the use of the submarine-launched ballistic missiles, regardless of their characteristics, would be viewed by the Kremlin as nuclear aggression and, therefore, a basis for a retaliatory strike.
Zakharova made the comments following the United States’ deployment of its low-yield nuclear warheads, saying the move was a dangerous step that would lead to destabilization.
“We noted the article, published by the US Department of State’s official website on April 24 and devoted to the issue of creating W76-2 low-yield nuclear warheads and deploy it on some of its Trident submarines,” she said. “As we have already said many times, we view this as a dangerous step. We believe that it carries a certain element of destabilization.”
The US State Department argued in a paper released last week that the new warhead “reduces the risk of nuclear war by reinforcing extended deterrence and assurance.”
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the US’s production of W76-2 missiles lowered the nuclear threshold and increased the risk of a nuclear conflict.
Back in February, the United States announced the deployment of a new long-range nuclear missile aboard its stealth submarines to deter what it called Washington’s potential adversaries.
The US Department of Defense claimed in a statement at the time that the low-yield warheads were deployed on the USS Tennessee submarine patrolling in the Atlantic Ocean to deter “potential adversaries, like Russia,” and in response to Russian tests of similar weapons.
Low-yield nuclear weapons have less than 20 kilotons of destructive power but still have devastating effect. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, in August 1945, had about the same explosive power.
Washington has been deploying missiles in Eastern Europe and near Russia’s western borders, a provocative move denounced by the Kremlin.
Moscow has repeatedly warned Washington not to deploy weapons systems in the vicinity of Russia.
Iran breaks through US-led blockade to deliver record amount of oil to Syria
Al-Masdar News | April 28, 2020
Iran has managed to break through the U.S. blockade to deliver a large amount of oil to the Syrian Arab Republic, TankerTrackers website has revealed.
According to the website Tanker Trackers, Iran has significantly increased their oil exports to Syria, with several cargoes reportedly reaching the Port of Baniyas in the Tartous Governorate.
The website reported that Iran is currently delivering more than three times the normal amount they export to Syria, which is a significant increase to the Arab Republic, who relied heavily on the Islamic Republic’s oil last year.
“There can be several reasons why this is happening. Excess oil stocks in the midst of sanctions and a global oil glut is forcing Iran to ship and perhaps store the oil in a friendly country. Another reason is that Bashar Assad’s government and Hezbollah can be conduits to sell the oil on the black market. One place Hezbollah can manage to do this is Lebanon, where it has sway over the government,” the website Radio Farda reported.
However, despite these claims, the large oil exports to Syria have less to do with selling the petrol and more to do with the Arab Republic providing relief to its people.
Since the U.S. currently occupies some of Syria’s largest oil fields, the Arab Republic has been forced to find alternatives to meet the civil demand for this resource.
George Soros Wants You to Believe Russia Is a Danger to World Peace, Turkey’s Erdogan an Angel
By Philip Giraldi | American Free Press | April 16, 2020
George Soros is a billionaire Hungarian-born investor who is extremely controversial due to his promotion of what he chooses to define as democracy and free-trade movements, primarily conducted through the Open Society Foundations, which he founded and has funded with $32 billion, according to one estimate. He contributed to the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, which has in part led to conservative politicians in the United States and elsewhere frequently citing Soros when complaining about politically motivated interference in support of a progressive agenda for the United States and also globally. At least they used to do so until Soros’s allies began to fire back with accusations of anti-Semitism, which had the effect of muting the complaints.
Soros moved from Europe to the United States in 1956 and is now an American citizen. The sources of at least some of his wealth are somewhat controversial. He made over $1 billion in 1992 by selling short $10 billion in British pounds sterling, leading to the media dubbing him “the man who broke the bank of England.” He has been accused of similar currency manipulation in both Europe and Asia. In 1999, New York Times economist Paul Krugman was highly critical of Soros’s interference in financial markets, writing, “Nobody who has read a business magazine in the last few years can be unaware that these days there really are investors who not only move money in anticipation of a currency crisis, but actually do their best to trigger that crisis for fun and profit. These new actors on the scene do not yet have a standard name; my proposed term is ‘Soroi.’ ”
Soros was heavily involved with the restructuring of former communist regimes in eastern Europe and had a hand in the so-called Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014, both of which were supported by the U.S. government. But in March 2017, six conservative U.S. senators sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asking him to look into several grants that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had given to groups connected to Soros, most particularly in Macedonia. Soros’s projects are particularly targeted by conservatives and nationalists, as they are transnational in nature, and, indeed, some critics have noted that the well-funded and broadly supported Open Society is the most effective and visible weapon in the arsenal of the progressive dominated globalist movement.
Soros has been linked to a number of theories that see him as a puppet-master pulling the strings on a worldwide conspiracy to control key elements of the world economy as well as leading politicians. His critics are generally conservatives who are opposed to the progressive causes that he promotes. Soros has been in the news recently for his financial support of a Washington-based think tank called the Quincy Institute, which is also funded by the libertarian Koch family. The institute claims to be a non-partisan organization that promotes a “restrained” foreign policy using diplomacy as a means to resolve international disputes rather than threats followed up by warfare, which has become the preferred option for successive U.S. presidents and their administrations.
Soros’s motives in suddenly embracing diplomacy and non-intervention might well be questioned. On March 4, the Financial Times published an op-ed (unfortunately behind a paywall) by Soros entitled “Europe Must Stand With Turkey Over Putin’s War Crimes in Syria.” It had the subtitle “Focusing on the Refugee Crisis Russia Has Created Addresses Symptoms Not the Cause.” In it, he let loose a sharp attack on both the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin.
The Soros op-ed is full of errors of fact and is basically a call for aggression against Russia. It starts with, “Since the beginning of its intervention in Syria in September 2015, Russia has not only sought to keep in place its most faithful Arab ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has also wanted to regain the regional and global influence that it lost since the fall of the Soviet Union.” First of all, Russia did not “intervene” in Syria. It was invited there by the country’s legitimate government to provide assistance against various groups, some of which were linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State, that were seeking to overthrow President al-Assad.
And apart from Soros, few actual experts on Russia would claim that it is seeking to recreate the “influence” of the Soviet Union. Moscow does not have the resources to do so and has evinced no desire to pursue the sort of global agenda that was characteristic of the Soviet state.
There then follows a complete flight into hyperbole with: “Vladimir Putin has sought to use the turmoil in the Middle East to erase international norms and advances in international humanitarian law made since the second world war. In fact, creating the humanitarian disaster that has turned almost 6 million Syrians into refugees has not been a byproduct of the Russian president’s strategy in Syria. It has been one of his central goals.” None of Soros’s assertions are supported by fact. The U.S. and Israel are the two top flaunters of international norms and law, not Russia, and there is no evidence whatsoever that Moscow sought to create the “humanitarian disaster” in Syria. That was the work of the U.S. and its “allies” in the region who were supporting both separatists and terrorists.
Soros states his belief that “Assad is the most barbarous ruler that the world has seen since Joseph Stalin. When his own people rose up against him, he developed a military strategy designed to inflict the greatest possible harm on his civilian opponents. He deliberately targeted hospitals, schools and kindergartens, trying to kill or maim caregivers. He has used poison gas and chemical attacks over the course of a conflict that has left more than half a million dead.” None of the assertions are true and a lot of the “evidence” comes from propagandists for the terrorist groups, to include the notorious White Helmets. The lies advanced about the use of chemical weapons have recently been exposed.
Soros goes on to describe how Russia has “deliberately targeted” and bombed schools and hospitals, claims that largely derive from sources hostile to al-Assad and Putin that are impossible to check. Soros also asserts that, “The only government that has put up military forces to defend the civilians trapped in Idlib by Mr. Assad and its Russian ally is Turkey.” It is a claim that is perhaps the biggest lie of all, as Ankara is involved in Syria in support of its own completely selfish irredentist objectives and its desire to crush the Kurdish militias operating in the north and east of the country. Back in October, Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan issued an emotional call to Jihad to his supporters, saying, “Inshallah, God has promised us in Syria victory from Allah and an imminent conquest; and give good tidings to the believers. We see it is happening right now.”
The Soros op-ed also included a bit of reminiscence, describing how, “In 2014, I urged Europe to wake up to the threat that Russia was posing to its strategic interests, albeit in a different context and geography. Russia had invaded Ukraine knowing that Europe would seek to avoid any confrontation with Moscow. Yet what is happening in Idlib now is following the same pattern: Europe is evading a confrontation with Russia over its Syria policy when it should be standing up to it . . . with respect to Syria at least, Turkey deserves Europe’s support. Europe should therefore seek to bolster Turkish President Erdogan’s negotiating position. . . . I hope that this would also put Mr. Putin’s war crimes at the center of the European conversation.”
The op-ed is neither conciliatory nor “diplomatic” and is a clear sign that Soros picks his enemies based on ideological considerations that also drive his choices on how to frame his ventures. He is a billionaire who has chosen to use his money to remake the world in an image that he is comfortable with. Unfortunately, there is a lot of that kind of thinking going around—that having lots of money ipso facto equates to some kind of superior wisdom. And the whole process is facilitated by the fact that politicians as well as space on editorial pages of leading newspapers can easily be bought. Soros would have Europe and the United States taking on Russia over what he perceives to be going on in Syria, where they have no genuine interests. It is a formula that we have seen played out repeatedly in the past 20 years and can only lead to disaster.
‘Hillary’s Been Enabling Sexual Predators’: Biden Accuser Rips Clinton for Endorsing Him
© AFP 2020 / DOMINICK REUTERS
Sputnik –
During a conference call on Tuesday, Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee for the presidential race, received a formal word of support from Hillary Clinton, yet another party member to wish the former vice president luck as he prepares to take on President Trump in November.
The former Senate staffer who is accusing Joe Biden of sexually abusing her in the 1990s has blasted Hillary Clinton’s endorsement of the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. I voted for her in the primary. I’m a lifelong Democrat”, Biden accuser Tara Reade told Fox News, before continuing her rant:
“But yet, what I see now is someone enabling a sexual predator and it was my former boss, Joe Biden, who raped me”, Reade fumed.She addressed at length Hillary Clinton’s “history enabling powerful men to cover up their sexual predatory behaviours and their inappropriate sexual misconduct”, arguing that this is not “what this country needs”.
“We don’t need that for our new generation coming up that wants institutional rape culture to change”, she stressed.
Biden’s press service has continuously dismissed the sexual assault claims, with Kate Bedingfield, Mr Biden’s communications director, busting the claims straight away, inviting journalists to verify them first: “Women have a right to tell their story, and reporters have an obligation to rigorously vet those claims. We encourage them to do so, because these accusations are false”, she said. Independently, the campaign released a statement from Marianne Baker, an executive assistant to Mr Biden from 1982 to 2000, who said: “In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period. Not from Ms Reade, not from anyone”.
Biden received Clinton’s endorsement via livestream on Tuesday, as both Democrats are stuck at home due to the current coronavirus crisis-caused lockdowns and self-isolation measures.
Biden has received a flurry of endorsements from prominent party members including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday, and former President Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren, another 2020 rival, earlier this month. Sanders, the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, who was the last to give up the fight in the primary, also endorsed Biden seeking not to further split the party during a healthcare crisis.
However, amid all the endorsements, calls have been on a rise for the presumptive Dem nominee to personally respond to Reade’s claims, as she thundered the other day in comments to Fox:
“I will not be smeared, dismissed, or ignored. I stand in truth and I will keep speaking out”, Biden’s former employee said.Reports of ‘Prominent Senator’ Behaving Badly
A number of other persons who appear to corroborate her claims have recently made headlines, one of them being Reade’s former neighbour, who told Business Insider that she recalled hearing about the ex-Biden staffer’s alleged assault when Reade said the incident occurred – back in 1993.
“This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it”, she shared with the publication.
Another individual, Lorraine Sanchez who worked with Reade in the mid 1990s, told the edition that she remembered Reade explaining her dismissal from her previous job by raising concerns about sexual harassment by her former boss.
The allegation surfaced after a clip came out that allegedly features the voice of Reade’s mother phoning into “Larry King Live” in 1993 and asking if her daughter should turn to the press about a “prominent senator” behaving inappropriately.
Reade, who was among the women who came out last year with stories about Biden being too handsy, claiming he “just had her up against the wall” in a Capitol Hill hallway in 1993, when Reade worked on his staff during his tenure as a senator for Delaware.
‘Tough Luck’ for US Prisoners During COVID-19
By John Kiriakou – Consortium News – April 28, 2020
A federal judge last week denied NSA whistleblower Reality Winner’s request for release rom federal prison, saying that her possible exposure to the coronavirus was not serious enough to warrant relief because she is incarcerated in a prison hospital for other health issues. The judge also said that each prison’s warden and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) have jurisdiction over compassionate release. Federal judges do not.
Reality Winner (@bjwinnerdavis, Twitter)
The problem is that prison wardens and the BOP almost never release anybody under their compassionate release authorities, even though Congress recently made it easier for them to do so. Reality Winner is not the only person, then, suffering through this pandemic, worried about sick people living practically on top of each other, and without hope of relief.
I’m in regular touch with several prisoners in the federal system and they have reported a rapidly worsening situation because of the spread of coronavirus. Not only is the disease spreading among prisoners and staff alike because of overcrowding, but poor nutrition and inadequate hygiene also play an important role.
At least 27 federal prisoners have died of coronavirus so far and untold thousands have been infected. And, although there have been some high-profile releases, like celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti and former New York Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, most federal prisoners who have applied for compassionate release have been told to go fly a kite.
Years of Talk
One of those prisoners, Clint Goswick, is a friend of mine. He was convicted of being a part of a methamphetamine ring and was given two decades in prison. The truth of the matter is that there were 30 people involved in his “conspiracy.” And although his role in the conspiracy was that he allowed the use of methamphetamine at his house during a party, he was given a draconian sentence because one of the attendees at the party had a gun. Clint didn’t know there was a gun. He never saw a gun. He never touched a gun. But that gun quadrupled his sentence. And because his crime is now called a “gun crime,” he is ineligible for compassionate release, whether there’s a coronavirus pandemic or not.
Now multiply Clint times thousands of other prisoners. They’re all out of luck. They have to remain in prison. I always ask myself, “Is society really better off — are we really safer as a country — keeping a guy in his mid-60s in prison for a first-time non-violent drug offense?” Our politicians like to talk about prison reform and sentencing reform, but after years of talk and even passage of legislation, we have very little to show for it. Clint will have to remain in prison for another six years. He’ll be nearly 70 years old. And that’s only if he survives the coronavirus.
Marty Gottesfeld (Twitter)
I am also in touch with whistleblower Marty Gottesfeld. Marty is incarcerated in the notorious Communications Management Unit (CMU) at the Federal Correctional Institution at Terre Haute, Indiana. Until just a few weeks ago, Marty was held incommunicado because he had been reporting on conditions inside the prison for The Intercept, the HuffPo, and other outlets, and that reporting had embarrassed the BOP. The restrictions were lifted inexplicably and he immediately began blowing the whistle on conditions again.
Marty tells me that the BOP only locked down the prison for coronavirus on April 14. Prisoners have not been permitted to bathe since then. They are confined to their cells and are not permitted to have any outside exercise. Marty says that a nurse takes every prisoner’s temperature every few days and, if a prisoner has a fever, he is taken to solitary confinement — not to the medical unit. Solitary has a simple steel bunk, a toilet, and a sink. What it doesn’t have is a doctor or any comfort whatsoever for a sick prisoner.
Prisoners also are given one disposable mask every Wednesday morning, which they must wear at all times. For reasons not made clear to prisoners, there are new restrictions that have accompanied the lockdown. Prisoners, for example, are now allowed to spend only $50 per month in the commissary, rather than the normal $320 monthly (unless they are informants for the guards, in which case they can still spend $320.) At the same time, the commissary has no detergent, no disinfectant wipes and no hand sanitizer.
Prison authorities have also decided, in their infinite wisdom, that prisoners may only make one phone call per week. They did not explain how this is supposed to help control the coronavirus. The more likely scenario is that they hope prisoners will use their one phone call to speak with family members, rather than with journalists, who may be hungry for information from “the inside.”
No Clue
The bottom line is that the Bureau of Prisons leadership has no plan, no policy, to control the coronavirus inside its prisons. It’s winging it. If you have a fever or test positive, you go to solitary.
But how do you remain healthy when there’s no real medical care and no way to keep yourself clean? What do you do when the White House and the Congress say that many of you should be released to home confinement because of the pandemic and the warden and judges say “tough luck?”
I suppose we can write to our elected officials, but that clearly hasn’t worked. In the meantime, we can keep calling out the BOP and its wrong-headed, incompetent, and sadistic leadership. Maybe one of these days somebody will listen.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
His warnings unheeded, Iranian scientist contracts coronavirus in US jail
Undated picture provided by ISNA of US-held Iranian scientist, Sirous Asgari
Press TV – April 29, 2020
An Iranian scientist — who remains behind bars in the US despite having been exonerated in a sanctions trial — has contracted the new coronavirus after he repeatedly drew attention to his fragile health and called for his release from the “dirty” and “overcrowded” jail facility.
The Guardian reported the lawyers representing Sirous Asgari, a professor of material sciences at Sharif University of Technology, had confirmed his infection on Tuesday.
He has repeatedly pleaded for release since March, complaining about unsanitary detention conditions and overcrowding at the Louisiana facility, where he is being kept.
Coughing violently and suffering from a fever, Asgari told the paper in a phone call that the detention center was even taking in more inmates rather than releasing some as a precaution to stop further spread of the outbreak.
He also said the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) had refused to notify him about his positive test results, adding that he only learned about his infection from his lawyers and family members on Tuesday.
“It makes sense to send me to the hospital as soon as possible. I don’t trust them at all,” the 59-year-old said. “If something happens, they are not fast responders … I prefer to leave this dirty place.”
The detainees are responsible for all the cleaning at the detention facility,” where there is a single shower and only two toilets for all 44 of them to share,” the daily reported.
Ice, however, has told Asgari’s lawyers he would only be released to a hospital if he was struggling to breathe.
Asgari was arrested in the United States in mid-2017. Back then, the FBI alleged the scientist had shared information about a project he had conducted on a sabbatical in the US five years before with his students.
His wife, though, said in an interview in late March that the findings of the project had been published and made available on the Internet afterwards, which means there was nothing secret about the project. US legal authorities then charged him with withholding information in the process of visa application, circumventing the sanctions, and transferring technology to Iran.
Washington then delayed the holding of a trial for him several times, “all the while knowing they had no evidence to bring against him,” she said.
The Iranian professor was cleared of the charges at a court session that was ultimately scheduled after about two and a half years. Nevertheless, US Citizenship and Immigration Services then took the matters out of the hands of the country’s legal system, once again detaining Asgari for “lacking a valid visa and illegal presence on US soil.”
Mr. Asgari has reminded US officials that they themselves had seized his passport and were, hence, responsible for his prolonged presence in America.
His spouse said Washington was intentionally prolonging Asgari’s detention so that it could eventually swap him with an American prisoner held in Iran.
Pentagon would be producing biological weapons in the Amazon Rainforest
By Lucas Leiroz | April 29, 2020
The theme of biological warfare has gained increasing prominence in recent times. The global pandemic of the new coronavirus has aroused interest in this matter in particular, and several speculations have arisen by experts from many countries about the possibility of an artificial origin of the virus that currently plagues the planet. In fact, it doesn’t matter if this particular virus was created in laboratory or not, but the use of biological manipulation for military purposes is a complex subject and worthy of careful study. The interest in the issue is absolutely legitimate and allows such a debate to go beyond the sphere of “conspiracy theories” to acquire an academic character.
Recently, some alleged cases of biological weapons operations have received due attention, thanks to the suspicions raised by the pandemic. This is the case for American military laboratories in the Amazon rainforest. Although little is said about this subject, the American armed forces maintain several laboratories for obscure research purposes within the Amazon territory. It is already known that many of these laboratories have or had an active participation in the drug production process by drug trafficking criminal organizations hidden in the Amazon. The most notorious laboratory is the so-called NAMRU-6, which belongs to the American Navy.
The “Observatory for the Closing of the School of the Americas” reported in a note that several bacteriological and tropical diseases researches are being carried out in the Peruvian Amazon by the NAMRU-6 base. “In Peru, the United States has a number of military bases, some allegedly involved in drug trafficking,” said Pablo Ruiz, spokesman for the observatory, emphasizing: “This is a military base that we are monitoring, which belongs to the US Navy. […] (NAMRU) Conducts research on pathological and infectious diseases, and we are very concerned because it is close to the Amazon, and eventually on that military base they could be preparing biological weapons.”
NAMRU-6 (Naval Medical Research Unit Six) is an American Navy biomedical research center based in Lima, Peru. Publicly, Washington states that the interest of the researches carried out by the base is the identification and control of infectious diseases and the development of medications for their control, however there are several suspicions about the real nature of its activities, with the hypothesis of clandestine operations on biological manipulation being highly considered. According to the Observatory (which is a social movement that fights for the end of foreign military bases in Latin America), NAMRU is behind the creation of several biological weapons, many of which have already been used in combat by the USA.
The Observatory spokesman reported that the investigations being carried out on NAMRU suggest that this base is behind the epidemic of hemorrhagic dengue in Cuba in 1981, which caused the death of hundreds of people. The hypothesis gains even more strength now that evidence is found of the use of the mosquito “aedes eagypt” (host of the virus that transmits dengue and other diseases) as a biological weapon by the Pentagon in several regions of the planet, as described in several official documents recently revealed.
Pablo Ruiz argued that the UN bodies responsible for the control of weapons of mass destruction should work more closely with regard to biological weapons and seek greater control over the activities carried out by military laboratories. In his words: “In the situation that humanity is currently experiencing, it would be very good if the UN body that ensures that no country produces weapons of mass destruction could visit this base and see what they are doing there with infectious diseases”.
In fact, too much attention has been paid in recent decades to the danger of nuclear weapons proliferation; however, biological weapons are almost never seriously treated, with almost all complaints on the subject being referred as “conspiratorial”. The reason for this is understandable: when used, biological weapons transmit an atmosphere of “normality”, as they deal with natural phenomena that are artificially manipulated. So, the last thing one could think about an infection is that it is a military weapon rather than a natural phenomenon. But this is exactly where the benefits of using such weapons are: they are almost never noticed and their damage can be greater than that of chemical and nuclear weapons – which clearly identify their launchers. The difficulty in understanding whether or not such weapons were used in a given event was the main reason why some countries chose to go ahead in research to develop such products.
It is increasingly difficult to deny the existence of biological weapons. It is a matter of time before publicly admitting that the biomedical field is a battlefield like any other, just as it happened recently with the cyberspace. However, until it is proved whether or not such weapons are being used, many things continue to happen, such as, for example, top-secret research by the American Navy within the Amazon Rainforest. The location is extremely strategic: far from any rich country, in remote and difficult-to-reach regions, these laboratories remain out of the international media and do not put the populations of western urban centers at risk in the event of accidents or leaks.
Indeed, Washington already has several accusations of using biological weapons. Experts from Russia, China, Iran and several other nationalities raised this hypothesis about the new coronavirus. Now, a new charge comes from South America. Above all, the US owes the world an answer. After all, what is so secret about biomedical research being carried out in military laboratories in remote areas of the globe? International society demands an explanation.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Cuomo says one Covid-19 patient is like ‘fire through dry grass’, demands care homes take them anyway
RT | April 28, 2020
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has acknowledged that a single Covid-19 patient in a nursing home could rip through the facility like “fire through dry grass.” His order that facilities treat all infected patients remains, however.
Admitting that nursing homes are “congregate facilit[ies] of vulnerable people,” Cuomo admitted during a press conference on Tuesday that if just a single infected person – whether a doctor, nurse, janitor, or “one anything” – walked into one of the state’s hard-hit elder care facilities, “it is fire through dry grass in that nursing home.”
“It is frightening. And if you have a loved one in a nursing home, yes, it is frightening,” Cuomo shuddered.
Over 3,500 nursing home patients have died since the coronavirus epidemic took root in New York. The highly-infectious virus is known to be particularly devastating among the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions and has killed over 10,000 in elder-care facilities across the US.
However, Cuomo has refused to address or alter the executive order he issued late last month, forbidding care home operators from testing patients prior to their readmission to their facilities. No patient “determined medically stable” upon discharge from an acute care hospital may undergo testing for Covid-19 as a prerequisite for entry into a care home, never mind the judgment of staff.
The New York governor has defended his order despite protests from the facilities, even as staffers insist they don’t have adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) to deal with coronavirus patients and that the risk of infection threatens the fragile health of their existing charges.
“It’s not our job” to provide nursing homes with PPE, the governor said last week. He insisted that “we have given them thousands and thousands of PPE” and calling it the “primary responsibility” of nursing homes to outfit themselves with the equipment needed to fight the epidemic.
During his nine years as governor, Cuomo has slashed state healthcare budgets to the bone, and a recent controversial Medicare cut foisted hundreds of millions of dollars of costs from the state onto local governments.
A similar requirement that nursing homes take Covid-19 patients in California was walked back after protest. While Cuomo has insisted on the no-testing requirement as a way to ease pressure on supposedly overloaded local hospitals, other facilities meant to ease that pressure – from the hospital ship USNS Comfort docked on the west side of Manhattan to the temporary hospital set up in Manhattan’s Javits Convention Center – have gone largely unused, as the city’s hospitals have proven sufficient to absorb the surge in hospitalizations.
Burdened by the order to take in recovering coronavirus patients, some of the state’s nursing homes have unwittingly become breeding grounds for the virus. NBC profiled one facility in Long Island where the epidemic exploded from a single case to 24 deaths in just a month. Only three of the dead were transfer patients, and one wasn’t even a patient but a staffer, the outlet reported.
Almost 80% Americans Oppose Trading Privacy for COVID-19 Surveillance, Study Finds
Sputnik – April 28, 2020
According to a fresh survey, the vast majority of respondents are concerned about pandemic-induced surveillance measures continuing well after the outbreak ends.
Americans are increasingly worried about losing their privacy, as governments introduce monitoring measures to keep citizens safe from the further epidemic spread, research from CyberNews.com suggested, putting the number of concerned citizens at 79 percent.
The said respondents noted that they were either somewhat worried or to a great extent worried that intrusive tracking mechanisms forced upon them by the government would extend well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the research involving 1,255 adults, the vast majority of Americans – a staggering 89 percent – “support or strongly support privacy rights.” When it comes to potentially sacrificing privacy rights for the sake of combating the spread of COVID-19, just over half (52%) go for “retaining personal privacy.”
Nearly two-third (65%) of those surveyed would not like the government to keep tabs on them via harvesting data or facial recognition measures, while less than a third (27%) would allow an app to use this kind of tracking.
The number is slightly bigger – up to 30% – for those who would allow an app to share their location details with others “if they were infected.”
“Even though the US has not yet introduced any new draconian surveillance measures to combat the spread of COVID-19,” the report concludes adding that “the results of this survey indicate that American adults are far from complacent when it comes to their privacy.”According to Johns Hopkins University estimates, the number of confirmed infection cases in the US has hit 1 million, with more than 57,500 corona-related deaths.
Your Freedoms Don’t Have to Be Muzzled Just Because You’re Wearing a Mask
By John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | April 28, 2020
Despite all appearances to the contrary, martial law has not been declared in America.
We still have rights.
Technically, at least.
The government may act as if its police state powers suppress individual liberties during this COVID-19 pandemic, but for all intents and purposes, the Constitution—especially the battered, besieged Bill of Rights—still stands in theory, if not in practice.
Indeed, while federal and state governments have adopted specific restrictive measures in an effort to lockdown the nation and decelerate the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the current public health situation has not resulted in the suspension of fundamental constitutional rights such as freedom of speech and the right of assembly.
Mind you, that’s not to say that the government has not tried its best to weaponize this crisis as it has weaponized so many other crises in order to expand its powers and silence its critics.
All over the country, government officials are using COVID-19 restrictions to muzzle protesters.
It doesn’t matter what the protest is about (church assemblies, the right to work, the timing for re-opening the country, discontent over police brutality, etc.): this is activity the First Amendment protects vociferously with only one qualification—that it be peaceful.
Yet even peaceful protesters mindful of the need to adhere to social distancing guidelines because of this COVID-19 are being muzzled, arrested and fined.
For example, a Maryland family was reportedly threatened with up to a year in jail and a $5000 fine if they dared to publicly protest the injustice of their son’s execution by a SWAT team.
If anyone had a legitimate reason to get out in the streets and protest, it’s the Lemp family, whose 21-year-old son Duncan was gunned down in his bedroom during an early morning, no-knock SWAT team raid on his family’s home.
Imagine it.
It was 4:30 a.m. on March 12, 2020, in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that has most of the country under a partial lockdown and sheltering at home, when this masked SWAT team—deployed to execute a “high risk” search warrant for unauthorized firearms—stormed the suburban house where 21-year-old Duncan, a software engineer and Second Amendment advocate, lived with his parents and 19-year-old brother.
The entire household, including Lemp and his girlfriend, was reportedly asleep when the SWAT team directed flash bang grenades and gunfire through Lemp’s bedroom window.
Lemp was killed and his girlfriend injured.
No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, had a criminal record.
No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, was considered an “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public, at least not according to the search warrant.
Now what was so urgent that militarized police felt compelled to employ battlefield tactics in the pre-dawn hours of a day when most people are asleep in bed, not to mention stuck at home as part of a nationwide lockdown?
According to police, they were tipped off that Lemp was in possession of “firearms.”
So instead of approaching the house by the front door at a reasonable hour in order to investigate this complaint—which is what the Fourth Amendment requires—police instead strapped on their guns, loaded up their flash bang grenades and acted like battle-crazed warriors.
This is the blowback from all that military weaponry flowing to domestic police departments.
This is what happens when you use SWAT teams to carry out routine search warrants.
This is what happens when you adopt red flag gun laws, which Maryland did in 2018, painting anyone who might be in possession of a gun—legal or otherwise—as a threat that must be neutralized.
These red flag gun laws allow the police to remove guns from people merely suspected of being threats. While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to “stop dangerous people before they act,” where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
Now Lemp is dead and his family is devastated, outraged and desperate to make sense of what appears to be an insensible act of violence resulting in an inexcusable loss of life.
As usual in these kinds of shootings, government officials have not been forthcoming with details about the shooting: police have refused to meet with family members, the contents of the warrant supporting the raid have not been revealed, and bodycam footage of the raid has not been disclosed.
So in order to voice their objections to police violence and demand answers about the shooting, Lemp’s family and friends planned to conduct an outdoor public demonstration—adhering to social distancing guidelines—only to be threatened with arrest, a year in jail and a $5000 fine for violating Maryland’s stay at home orders.
Yet here’s the thing: we don’t have to be muzzled and remain silent about government corruption, violence and misconduct just because we’re wearing masks and social distancing.
That’s not the point of this whole COVID-19 exercise, or is it?
While there is a moral responsibility to not endanger other lives with our actions, that does not mean relinquishing all of our freedoms.
Be responsible in how you exercise your freedoms, but don’t allow yourselves to be muzzled or your individual freedoms to be undermined.
The decisions we make right now—about freedom, commerce, free will, how we care for the least of these in our communities, what it means to provide individuals and businesses with a safety net, how far we allow the government to go in “protecting” us against this virus, etc.—will haunt us for a long time to come.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, there is always a balancing test between individual freedoms and the communal good.
What we must figure out is how to strike a balance that allows us to protect those who need protecting without leaving us chained and in bondage to the police state.
We must find ways to mitigate against this contagion needlessly claiming any more lives and crippling any more communities, but let’s not lose our heads: blindly following the path of least resistance—acquiescing without question to whatever the government dictates—can only lead to more misery, suffering and the erection of a totalitarian regime in which there is no balance.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute.
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How Rothschild Banking Clan Uses Its Vast Wealth to Influence World Events and Control Governments
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 15.09.2024
How powerful is the Rothschild banking family? How did they amass their fortune? Just how rich are they? Do they secretly control the world? Sputnik explores. … continue
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