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Corporate Media Cover for US Mob Threats Against Venezuela

By Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz | FAIR | April 15, 2020

The Trump administration unveiled on March 31 a “democratic transition” plan to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office, in favor of a “council of state” composed of both opposition and ruling party loyalists.

The plan was, however, less an offer to negotiate than a diktat, with the US State Department (3/31/20) vowing that “sanctions will remain in effect, and increase, until the Maduro regime accepts a genuine political transition.”

Despite the obvious mafioso overtones, Washington’s stenographers in the corporate press were quick to present the initiative as “sanctions relief,” once again whitewashing murderous US economic warfare against Venezuela (FAIR.org, 2/6/19, 6/14/19, 6/26/19).

Western journalists’ callous obfuscation of sanctions’ deadly toll, especially amid a global pandemic (FAIR.org, 3/25/20), goes hand in hand with their parroting of bogus “narco-terrorism” charges leveled against Maduro and top Venezuelan officials, which butresses Washington’s ever-illicit casus belli.

An Offer They Can’t Refuse

The New York Times (3/31/20) jumped at the opportunity to furnish the Trump administration’s plan with a varnish of reasonability. “The proposal…offers to ease American sanctions intended to pressure President Nicolás Maduro and his loyalists over the past year,” Lara Jakes wrote, misconstruing the unilateral measures destroying Venezuela’s economy as well-intentioned steps to bring about “fair elections.”

At no point did the paper of record mention Washington’s threat to ramp up illegal sanctions if Maduro refuses the “offer” to replace his government with a five-person junta, in flagrant violation of Venezuela’s constitution. Other Western media likewise covered up the US blackmail, praising Donald Trump’s bayonet-hoisted ultimatum as a “roadmap to relief” (Washington Post, 3/31/20), a “more toned-down approach” (Reuters, 3/31/20) and a “conciliatory framework” (Economist, 4/2/20).

Having dutifully whitewashed US sanctions, the Times and its counterparts were free to cast war criminal Elliott Abrams, rehabilitated last year as Trump’s Venezuela envoy (CounterSpin, 3/1/19), as an honest broker committed to good-faith dialogue:

But Mr. Abrams was careful to say that the plan was an opening offer for talks between the two sides, “not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition,” and that no single issue was a deal breaker—except the demand for Mr. Maduro’s departure.

By contrast, Maduro—reelected in internationally monitored elections with a greater percentage of the electorate than Trump won in 2016, or Barack Obama in 2012—is for the Times “reminiscent of mid-20th century Latin American strongmen,” whose 2018 victory was “self-declared.”

The Times went on to accuse the Venezuelan leader of “creating one of the world’s largest refugee populations,” concealing the role of criminal sanctions in driving migration (FAIR.org, 2/18/18).

This vilification of Maduro and the Chavista poor people’s movement does not merely reflect reporters’ professional class bias, but is structurally necessary to justify US economic warfare and more overt criminality in the first place.

It is therefore no coincidence that the Trump administration’s gunpoint “proposal” to overturn Venezuela’s constitutional order came on the heels of Department of Justice “narco-terrorism” charges against the Venezuelan head of state and other top officials, which corporate journalists trumpeted enthusiastically.

Most outlets regarded the timing as a symptom of “contradictory” (Washington Post, 4/14/20) or “erratic” (New York Times, 4/10/20) US policy, which could “make it harder to remove Maduro” (Economist, 4/2/20), but the underlying regime change (ir)rationality never comes into question.

Indeed, even liberal imperialist academics like David Smilde and Abraham Lowenthal (Washington Post, 4/14/20) declined to call for scrapping the indictments, let alone easing sanctions, as a goodwill gesture aimed at securing Chavista support for the US plan, which they hailed as a “step in the right direction.” Rather, they merely recommend that the Trump administration offer “guarantees for indicted officials” against extradition, as if Maduro would be inclined to negotiate while Washington continues its collective punishment and maintains a $15 million bounty on his head.

Smilde and his Washington Office on Latin America colleague Geoff Ramsey’s  (Washington Post, 3/27/20) refusal to demand the immediate annulment of the drug charges and illegal sanctions is hardly surprising, given both men’s long-running support for US coup efforts (Common Dreams, 3/5/19).

(Left) The NYT found Maduro’s white suit and being flanked by ministers as “reminiscent of dictators” (Right) The WaPo found an unconstitutional plan to remove an elected president on the basis of threats “a step in the right direction”

Calling the Kettle Black

The DoJ’s indictment of 14 current or former senior Venezuelan officials on “narco-terrorism” charges provided the Western media with fresh grist for its imperial propaganda mill.

This is hardly the first time that the corporate media have reported the Washington’s evidence-free drug allegations against official enemies, which they have frequently done without any pretense of journalistic rigor (Extra!, 1/90, 9/12; FAIR.org,  9/24/19, 5/24/19).

The New York Times (3/26/20) dedicated no less than 12 paragraphs to repeating prosecutors’ claims, which are centered on the outlandish notion that Maduro secretly heads a drug cartel that conspired with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas to “‘flood’ the United States with cocaine.”

Despite marshaling a crack team of three writers and four contributing reporters, the Times proved incapable of citing any contrarian perspectives, let alone basic facts, that cast doubt on the “narco-terrorism” narrative.

The Guardian (3/26/20) and the Washington Post (3/27/20) were virtually the only outlets to mention the US government’s own publicly available data showing that just a small fraction of drug routes pass through Venezuela, with the overwhelming majority of cocaine entering the United States via Mexico and Central America. Furthermore, Colombia remains the world’s largest cocaine producer, right under the nose of large US military and DEA contingents, which have long waged a “war for drugs and of terror” in the country.

The DoJ’s case looks like a reheated version of equally unfounded accusations against former President Hugo Chávez, which corporate journalists eagerly promoted last year (FAIR.org, 9/24/19).

A map produced by the US Southern Command shows that most drug routes enter the US via the Pacific and then Central America (Business Insider)

As with prior allegations against Socialist Party Vice President Diosdado Cabello (Wall Street Journal, 5/18/15), the indictments hinge on the testimony of defectors, whose claims are echoed in the Western press without scrutiny.

In the most recent case, retired Maj. Gen. Cliver Alcalá and former intelligence chief Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal were also charged by the DoJ and pledged to cooperate with US authorities. Both had previously broken with the Maduro government and endorsed self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó.

Alcalá, who swiftly surrendered to DEA agents and was flown to the US, boasted of plotting a coup in conjunction with Guaidó and “US advisers.”

In an exposé of the coup plot, the Financial Times (4/4/20) cast doubt on the general’s “rambling and contradictory” account, quoting several US officials denying the coup attempt and alleging Alcalá was “acting on the orders of Caracas.”

The outlet conveniently ignored that this would not be the first time Alcalá conspired to invade Venezuela with a paramilitary force.

According to Bloomberg (3/6/19), there was a plan for the general to lead a contingent of 200 Venezuelan exile soldiers to clear the way for the entry of “humanitarian aid” on February 23, 2019, which was vetoed at the last minute by Colombia, suggesting high-level coordination with Washington, Bogotá and Guaidó.

By repeating the US narrative of Alcalá as a Maduro “plant,” corporate journalists paradoxically legitimize the general as a reliable source of current information on Venezuelan “narco-terrorism,” while concealing his embarrassing ties to the US and its opposition proxies.

As we have exposed for FAIR.org (5/24/19), Carvajal has already proved his worth in the past by serving up to credulous reporters highly dubious allegations about Venezuelan leaders’ Hezbollah ties (New York Times, 2/21/19).

(Left) The NYT (and other outlets) accepted the DoJ’s “narco-terrorism” charges at face value (Right) An AP headline endorsed Trump’s dubious justification for an aggression

Imaginary Cartels, Real Warships

The uncritical coverage of the DoJ charges paved the way for a further US escalation shortly after the “transition” plan was unveiled.

On March 31, the Trump administration announced a military deployment to the Caribbean described by Associated Press (4/1/20) as “one of the largest in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama.”

One might have expected such an obscenely expensive display of force amid a deadly pandemic currently killing thousands of Americans to be met with widespread rebuke across the media spectrum.

In fact, the opposition was largely muted. Newsweek (4/3/20) and Foreign Policy (4/2/20) gave voice to the Pentagon’s concern that the operation was wasteful and politically motivated, while the New York Times (4/10/20) published an op-ed raising polite proceduralist quibbles. Agreeing with the Trump administration that Maduro is a “dictator” who “must go,” Michael Shifter and Michael Camilleri nonetheless placed a vague call for Washington “to reboot sanctions policy, provide aid through accountable channels, and press the country’s leaders to work together.” Evidently, demanding the immediate lifting of (arguably genocidal) sanctions was too unreasonable to ask.

Referring to the Venezuelan military as “deeply involved in corruption and criminality,” Shifter and Camilleri exemplify the decadent imperial intelligentsia’s psychology of displacement.

From social democratic left to neoliberal right, Global North journalists and intellectuals remain invested in the self-serving illusion that besieged Southern nations such as Venezuela and Iran are more “criminal,” “corrupt” and “authoritarian” than the US empire (FAIR.org, 2/12/20).

For all their polite critiques of illegal US sanctions and military escalation–whose monstrosity has been laid bare by the current pandemic–the cult of Western exceptionalism goes unchallenged.

April 19, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Coronavirus Testing Delayed Due to Contamination in CDC Labs – Reports

Sputnik – April 19, 2020

The production of coronavirus test kits by the CDC was delayed for nearly a month, as the laboratories developing the kits had violated manufacturing practices that led to contamination of one of the three testing components, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

The problems with the tests were allegedly found in January at 24 of the 26 public health labs that had received test kits from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), media reported, citing unnamed sources.

The violation reportedly occurred after chemical mixtures were assembled into the kits in the same lab space where synthetic coronavirus material had been handled earlier.

The CDC efforts “were not sufficient in this circumstance” and the agency has “implemented enhanced quality control to address the issue”, the CDC said, as quoted in the article.

According to a New York Times report, citing the officials of the national Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the faulty testing kits were created at two of the three CDC laboratories in Atlanta.

“CDC did not manufacture its test consistent with its own protocol”, Stephanie Caccomo, spokesperson for the FDA, said in Saturday’s statement to the paper.

The Department of Health and Human Services is now investigating the production and dissemination of the test kits.

The US has so far confirmed more than 690,000 cases of COVID-19, including at least 35,400 fatalities, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

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

The Paper Of Record Says Feel Sorry For Bill Gates, Who’s Been Targeted With Conspiracy Theories

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 04/17/2020

The Wall Street Journal’s Deepa Seetharaman wants us to know that while poor billionaire Bill Gates has ‘long been a target for online trolls,’ that ‘the social-media attacks have intensified’ as the Micrrosoft co-founder and World Health Organization (WHO) benefactor has become the left’s de-facto coronavirus czar.

Seetharaman suggests that the attacks have increased due to Gates’s angry criticism towards President Trump, who halted funding to the WHO due to the organization’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its allegiance to China.

In the 24 hours after Mr. Gates’s comments, his Twitter account was mentioned at least 270,000 times—more than 30 times more than average—mainly by angry supporters of President Trump, according to Clemson University researchers. Mr. Gates’s Instagram post from April 5 drew an additional 45,000 comments in that same 24-hour period. The post now has more than 225,000 comments. –WSJ

Perhaps the ‘conspiracy theorists’ are having a little trouble digesting the fact that Gates – whose vaccine efforts in India were blamed for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children – coincidentally hosted an October, 2019 high-level ‘pandemic simulation’ in New York called Event 201 which specifically focused on coronavirus and projected over 65 million deaths worldwide.

Combine that with Gates’ recent comments about mass vaccination and biometric identification in order to ‘open up’ the country and allow people to attend mass gatherings – an idea which Dr. Anthony Fauci said “has merit,” and so-called conspiracy theorists have plenty of dots to connect.

According to the Journal, “social-media platforms remain fertile ground for virus-related conspiracies and online harassment, despite repeated pledges by the companies to crack down on such activity.”

So – Gates is being harassed and nobody is stopping these thought criminals with their menacing opinions. And of course, ‘bots’ are also being blameed for amplifying ‘conspiracy claims’ – since there can’t be that many real humans with bad things to say about Mr. Gates.

“I’ve never seen a time where more mis- and disinformation has flowed than this coronavirus period,” said Univsity of Texas assistant professor Sam Woolley, who has ‘studied disinformation for nearly a decade.’

Some antivaccine activists and conspiracy-minded posters encouraged their followers across social media to attack Mr. Gates on Instagram, a form of harassment called “brigading” in which people coordinate attacks and hijack conversations online, according to a review of accounts. This week, one Instagram account told its 52,000 followers that “it wouldn’t be a bad thing for all of us to go visit Bill Gates Instagram and let him know what you think.” A spokeswoman for the Gates Foundation declined to comment. –WSJ

According to the report, Facebook is now “looking at this behavior carefully to determine whether it violates our policies. People on our services are allowed to speak freely, and do so in an organized way, but we remove accounts that are fake or designed to mislead,” and will begin notifying users who have engaged with what they deem misinformation that they’ve been hoodwinked by bad actors in cyberspace.

How nice! Maybe Facebook will hire someone from the Gates foundation to do their fact checking?

April 18, 2020 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Is the United States About to Engage in Official State Piracy Against China? Strong Precedent Points to Worrying Trend

By A. B. Abrams | The Saker Blog | April 18, 2020

The Coronavirus crisis appears set to herald a new era of much poorer relations between China and the Western world, with Western countries having borne the brunt of the fallout from the pandemic and, particularly in the United States, increasingly blaming China at an official level for the effects.[1] Looking at the U.S. case in particular, at first responses to the virus were if anything optimistic – the fallout in China was seen as a ‘correction’ which would shift the balance of global economic power back into Western hands. Indeed, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross stated on January 30th that the fallout from the virus in China “will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America” with millions at the time placed under lockdown in Wuhan and elsewhere.[2] Western publications from the New York Times to the Guardian widely hailed the virus as potentially bringing an end to China’s decades of rapid economic growth – with a ‘rebalancing’ of the global economy towards Western power strongly implied.[3],[4] Against North Korea, the New York Times described the virus as potentially functioning as America’s “most effective ally” in achieving the outcome Washington had long sought – “choking the North’s economy.” [5]

The result, however, has if anything been strong resilience to the virus across much of East Asia, with Vietnam and South Korea being prime examples of successful handling alongside Macao, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland – in contrast to a very sluggish and often ineffective response in the West.[6] From rot filled and broken emergency supplies in the U.S. national reserve[7] to nurses wearing bin bags due a lack of protective equipment,[8] the commandeering of supplies heading to other countries, [9] and the enlistment of prison labour to build mass graves in New York City[10] – signs have unanimously pointed to chaos. It should be pointed out that the U.S. reported its first case on the same day as South Korea – which had the virus fully under control several weeks earlier due to more effective handling and a lack of complacency.[11] The U.S. and wider Western world had a major advantage in its warning time over China in particular, but effectively squandered it.[12]

The results of the fallout from the Coronavirus in the Western world, and in the U.S. in particular, could be extremely serious given the context of escalating American pressure on China in the leadup to the outbreak. Blaming China for the virus across American press and in the White House itself – despite it having reached America primarily from Europe rather than Asia[13] – has heralded mass hate crimes against the Asian American community of unprecedented seriousness and scale since the targeting of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s.[14] Perhaps even more seriously, however, the official American response as public opinion is directed against China appears set to place the world’s two largest economies on a potentially catastrophic collision course. On April 14th U.S. Senator Josh Hawley unveiled highly provocative legislation which would strip China of its sovereign immunity in American courts and allow Americans to sue China’s ruling Communist Party directly for the damages caused by the coronavirus crisis.[15] Such legislation relies heavily on growing anti-Chinese sentiments and depictions of China as directly responsible – and contradicts evidence from the World Health Organisation among others that China’s response effectively stalled the global spread of the virus at its own expense with its lockdown.[16]

An unbiased analysis shows that the disproportionate fallout in the Western world relative to East Asia is overwhelmingly due to poor preparation – and had effective South Korean style measures been implemented from the outset America would have seen only a small fraction of the cases it currently suffers from.[17] Nevertheless, calls from the U.S. and to a lesser extent from within other Western states[18] to make China foot the bill are manifold. Scholars from the American Enterprise Institute and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution among others have made direct calls for Western states to unilaterally “seize the assets of Chinese state-owned companies,” cancel debts to China and expropriate Chinese overseas assets “in compensation for coronavirus losses.”[19] The Florida based firm the Berman Law Group has already filed two major lawsuits suing China calling for compensation for the outbreak – and the situation looks set to worsen considerably with many more suits to follow. Regarding how the crisis could play out, and how the U.S. could act on its massive claims against China over the virus which are expected to be in the hundreds of billions at least, there is an important precedent for American courts providing similar compensation to alleged victims of an East Asian government and the American state taking action accordingly – that of the Otto Warmbier case in 2018. Assessment of the Warmbier case sets a very important precedent with very considerable implications for the outcome of a Sino-American dispute.

Otto Warmbier was an American student arrested in North Korea in 2016 for stealing a poster and violating a restricted high security area in Pyongyang. The student was returned to the U.S. the following year in a comatose state, with his parents alleging that his teeth had been artificially rearranged and his body showed signs of torture. This was strongly contradicted by medical analyses, with the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office carrying out an external examination of Warmbier’s body and dismissing the claim by his father that his teeth had been pulled out and rearranged by the North Koreans. “The teeth are natural and in good repair,” the office concluded, after Warmbier’s father had sensationally claimed that “his bottom teeth look like they [the Koreans] had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged them.” Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco stated addressing the claim of forced rearranging of Otto’s teeth: ”I felt very comfortable that there wasn’t any evidence of trauma. We were surprised at the [parents’] statement.” She said her team, which included a forensic dentist, thoroughly evaluated the body and assessed various scans of his body.[20] Medical assessments showed no signs of mistreatment or any trauma to the student’s head or skull, with a blood clot, pneumonia, sepsis, kidney failure, and sleeping pills were also cited as potential causes of death.[21] Nevertheless, Warmbier’s parents would continue to claim against all available evidence that their son had been tortured to death – filing a lawsuit against the North Korean government. Where a full autopsy could have provided data to more completely undermine their claims, and was strongly recommended by doctors, they were adamant in their refusal and no autopsy was carried out. Forensic scientists were highly critical of this unusual and unexpected decision in this critical case.[22]

In response to the Warmbiers’ claim against the North Korean state, which amounted to a staggering $1.05 billion in punitive damages and around $46 million for the family’s suffering in a motion filed in U.S. District Court in Washington in October 2018, Pyongyang was asked to pay the couple $500 million.[23] This was despite no evidence for the couple’s claims of Korean culpability, but at a time when public opinion was strongly against North Korea and would have supported the motion. To seize the Warmbiers’ compensation, the United States Navy would later that year commandeer a North Korean cargo ship, the Wise Honest, and escort it to American territory where it was subsequently sold at auction. The couple was provided with a part of the ship’s value, and future seizures of Korean merchant shipping to meet the remainder of the American family’s claim remain possible under U.S. law.[24] The seizure of the ship, one of North Korea’s largest, represented a considerable loss to its fleet and complemented the effects of ongoing Western sanctions to undermine the country’s economy.

The significance of the Warmbier case is that it provides a strong precedent for the U.S. Military, should China inevitably refuse to pay the hundreds billions expected to be demanded in compensation, to engage in effective state level piracy against Chinese merchant shipping to provide funds for its increasingly struggling economy.[25] With trade war having failed to significantly slow Chinese economic growth and foreign trade, which had been its primary goal,[26] more drastic means may be adopted for the same end using the Coronavirus crisis as a pretext. Other similar recent cases do exist, including unilateral seizure and sale of Iranian government owned properties by the Canadian government in 2019 to compensate alleged victims of terror of conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas. This was despite neither of these being UN recognised terrorist organisations and Iran’s support for these non-state actors being entirely legal under international law.[27] The fact that these properties were on Canadian soil and governed under Canadian law however, rather than in international waters, makes this a considerably less provocative case than the Warmbier case or than what is being proposed against China.

Further evidence that the U.S. would consider unilateral commandeering of shipping against China was provided by the U.S. Naval Institute, which in April published an important paper titled ‘Unleash the Privateers’ highlighting that it remained legal under American law for U.S. security firms to be tasked with commandeering and either sinking or capturing and selling Chinese merchant ships in the event of conflict. It highlighted that China was the largest trading nation in the world with a merchant fleet several times the size of its American counterpart – and that this provided a vulnerability the U.S. should be willing to exploit.[28] Taken together, the circumstances surrounding claims against China and moves to strip it of its sovereign immunity, the Warmbier precedent, the well timed and extremely radical naval institute paper and above all America’s need to reverse its losses and undermine China’s growing trade and economic prosperity to perpetuate its own hegemony, between them point to a high possibility of the U.S. adopting state level piracy against Chinese shipping as a future policy. While evidence strongly contradicts claims that China is responsible for the Coronavirus and the massive fallout the U.S. is now experiencing – much as evidence from American coroners and forensic scientists contradicted the claims of the Warmbier family – these inconvenient facts are highly unlikely to prevent the U.S. from taking action to secure its perceived rightful place as the leader of the global economy by seizing what it sees as its rightful property through attacks on Chinese trading vessels.

It is by no means a certainty that the United States will engage in such an escalatory course of action, and the nature of the overall Western response beyond the current harsh rhetoric and unfounded accusations is yet to be seen. It is important at this stage, however, to highlight the not insignificant possibility such a course will be taken by the U.S. and other Western parties to reverse the trend towards a decline in their economic positions relative to China. Repercussions from such seizures will almost certainly be far more severe than the relatively muted global response to the seizure and sale of a commandeered North Korean ship two years prior. While China’s Navy is concentrated in the Western Pacific and is poorly placed to defend its trade routes from the global reach of Western warships, Beijing and its allies have a wide range of means to retaliate which could deter the Western powers from taking such a course of action.

  1. ‘Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak,’ New York Times (accessed April 16, 2020). ↑
  2. Staracqualursi, Veronica and Davis, Richard, ‘Commerce secretary says coronavirus will help bring jobs to North America,’ CNN, January 30, 2020. ↑
  3. Bradsher, Keith, ‘Coronavirus Could End China’s Decades-Long Economic Growth Streak,’ New York Times, March 16, 2020. ↑
  4. Davidson, Helen, ‘Coronavirus deals China’s economy a “bigger blow than global financial crisis,”’ The Guardian, March 16, 2020. ↑
  5. Koettl, Christoph, ‘Coronavirus Is Idling North Korea’s Ships Achieving What Sanctions Did Not,’ New York Times, March 26, 2020. ↑
  6. Graham-Harrison, Emma, ‘Coronavirus: how Asian countries acted while the west dithered,’ The Guardian, March 21, 2020.Inkster, Ian, ‘In the battle against the coronavirus, East Asian societies and cultures have the edge,’ South China Morning Post, April 10, 2020. ↑
  7. Chandler, Kim, ‘Some states receive masks with dry rot, broken ventilators,’ Associated Press, April 4, 2020. ↑
  8. Glasser, Susan B., ‘How Did the U.S. End Up with Nurses Wearing Garbage Bags?,’ The New Yorker, April 9, 2020. ↑
  9. ‘US Seizes Ventilators Destined for Barbados,’ Telesur, April 5, 2020.Willsher, Kim and Holmes, Oliver and. McKernan, Bethan and Tondo, Lorenzo, ‘US hijacking mask shipments in rush for coronavirus protection,’ The Guardian, April 3, 2020.

    Lister, Tim and Shukla, Sebastian and Bobille, Fanny, ‘Coronavirus sparks a ‘war for masks’ as accusations fly,’ CNN, April 3, 2020. ↑

  10. Crane, Emily, ‘Workers in full Hazmat suits bury rows of coffins in Hart Island mass grave as NYC officials confirm coronavirus victims WILL be buried there if their bodies aren’t claimed within two weeks after death toll rises to 4,778,’ Daily Mail, April 9, 2020. ↑
  11. ‘Special Report: How Korea trounced U.S. in race to test people for coronavirus,’ Reuters, March 18, 2020.‘Once the biggest outbreak outside of China, South Korean city reports zero new coronavirus cases,’ Reuters, April 10, 2020. ↑
  12. Johnson, Ian, ‘China Bought the West Time. The West Squandered It,’ New York Times, March 13, 2020. ↑
  13. ‘New York coronavirus outbreak originated in Europe, studies show,’ The Hill, April 9, 2020. ↑
  14. De Souza, Alison, ‘Asian Americans tell harrowing stories of abuse amid coronavirus outbreak in the US,’ Straits Times, April 1, 2020.Chapman, Ben, ‘New York City Sees Rise in Coronavirus Hate Crimes Against Asians,’ Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2020. ↑
  15. Schultz, Maarisa, ‘Sen Hawley: Let coronavirus victims sue Chinese Communist Party,’ Fox News, April 14, 2020. ↑
  16. Wang, Yanan, ‘New virus cases fall; WHO says China bought the world time,’ Associated Press, February 15, 2020.Johnson, Ian, ‘China Bought the West Time. The West Squandered It,’ New York Times, March 13, 2020. ↑
  17. ‘Special Report: How Korea trounced U.S. in race to test people for coronavirus,’ Reuters, March 18, 2020.‘Once the biggest outbreak outside of China, South Korean city reports zero new coronavirus cases,’ Reuters, April 10, 2020. ↑
  18. Cole, Harry, ‘China owes us £351 billion: Britain should pursue Beijing through international courts for coronavirus compensation, major study claims as 15 top top Tories urge “reset” in UK relations with country,’ Daily Mail, April 5, 2020. ↑
  19. Stradner, Ivana and Yoo, John, ‘How to Make China Pay,’ American Enterprise Institute, April 6, 2020. ↑
  20. Nedelman, Michael, ‘Coroner found no obvious signs of torture on Otto Warmbier,’ CNN, September 29, 2017. ↑
  21. Lockett, Jon, ‘Tragic student Otto Warmbier ‘may have attempted suicide’ in North Korean prison after being sentenced to 15 years for stealing poster,’ The Sun, July 28, 2018.Basu, Zachary, ‘What we’re reading: What happened to Otto Warmbier in North Korea,’ Axios, July 25, 2018.

    Tingle, Rory, ‘Otto Warmbier’s brain damage that led to his death was caused by a SUICIDE ATTEMPT rather than torture by North Korean prison guards, report claims,’ Daily Mail, July 25, 2018.

    Fox, Maggie, ’What killed Otto Warmbier?’ NBC News, June 20, 2017.

    Tinker, Ben, ‘What an autopsy may (or may not) have revealed about Otto Warmbier’s death,’ CNN, June 22, 2017.

    Nedelman, Michael, ‘Coroner found no obvious signs of torture on Otto Warmbier,’ CNN, September 29, 2017. ↑

  22. Tinker, Ben, ‘What an autopsy may (or may not) have revealed about Otto Warmbier’s death,’ CNN, June 22, 2017.Nedelman, Michael, ‘Coroner found no obvious signs of torture on Otto Warmbier,’ CNN, September 29, 2017. ↑
  23. Brookbank, Sarah, ‘Family of Otto Warmbier awarded $500 million in lawsuit against North Korea,’ USA Today, December 24, 2018. ↑
  24. Lee, Christy, ‘U.S. Marshals to Sell Seized North Korean Cargo Ship,’ VOA, July 27, 2019.‘Seized North Korean cargo ship sold to compensate parents of Otto Warmbier, others,’ Navy Times, October 9, 2019. ↑
  25. Blyth, Mark, ‘The U.S. Economy Is Uniquely Vulnerable to the Coronavirus,’ Foreign Affairs, March 30, 2020.Schulze, Elizabeth, ‘The coronavirus recession is unlike any economic downturn in US history,’ CNBC, April 8, 2020.

    Schwartz, Nelson D., ‘Coronavirus Recession Looms, Its Course “Unrecognizable,”’ New York Times, April 1, 2020.

    Davies, Rob, ‘Coronavirus means a bad recession – at least – says JP Morgan boss,’ The Guardian, April 6, 2020.

    Lowrey, Annie, ‘Millennials Don’t Stand a Chance,’ The Atlantic, April 13, 2020. ↑

  26. Wei, Liu, ‘Trump’s Trade War on China Is About More Than Trade,’ The Diplomat, July 20, 2018. ↑
  27. Bell, Stewart, ‘Iran’s properties in Canada sold, proceeds handed to terror victims,’ Global News, September 12, 2019. ↑
  28. Cancian, Mark and Schwartz, Brandon, ‘Unleash the Privateers!,’ U.S. Naval Institute, vol. 146, no. 2, issue 1406, April 2020. ↑

 

April 18, 2020 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iraqi parliament demands Baghdad’s procurement of Russia’s S-400 missile system

Press TV – April 18, 2020

The Iraqi parliament’s security and defense committee has submitted an in-depth study to the country’s caretaker prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, requesting the procurement of the Russian-built long-range, surface-to-air S-400 missile defense system.

“The committee has presented a comprehensive study to the prime minister, demanding approval for the purchase of the advanced S-400 air defense system. The issue has already been discussed with relevant figures at the General Command of Armed Forces, and now awaits the premier’s agreement,” Badr al-Ziyadi, a member of the committee, told Arabic-language al-Sabaah newspaper.

He emphasized that the purchase of the S-400 missile system, with the aim of boosting the country’s defense capabilities, will be finalized once the next Iraqi government is formed and it ratifies procurement of the system.

“The approval to acquire such a sophisticated system requires large financial allocations and a political decision in order to diversify the sources to get the weapons as we cannot just rely on the Western camp, but rather need to incline towards the Eastern camp as well,” Ziyadi pointed out.

The Iraqi lawmaker went on to say that his parliamentary committee “will support the next Iraqi government’s decisions in this regard, and will present relevant proposals and pieces of advice to it.”

Back on March 18, Ziayadi said US and Israeli arms firms were putting pressure on the Baghdad government not to discuss the purchase of sophisticated military equipment with other states, and sign arms contracts with them.

“There are companies and traders pushing to prevent Iraq from concluding contracts to purchase weapons from developed countries,” he told Arabic-language al-Maalomah news agency in an exclusive interview at the time.

The same Iraqi parliamentarian said on January 20 that the Baghdad government was planning to send delegations to Russia, China and Ukraine to hold negotiations over the acquisition of advanced air defense missile systems to protect its territory from any possible act of aggression.

“The delegations intend to visit countries like Russia, China and Ukraine to negotiate the purchase of modern systems to protect Iraq’s airspace,” he told al-Sabaah daily then.

The lawmaker added, “The Iraqi parliament is right now forming a joint executive and legislative delegation to visit developed countries and sign contracts on procuring advanced weapons.”

The United States has already warned Iraq of the consequences of extending military cooperation with Russia, and striking deals to purchase advanced weaponry, particularly S-400 missile systems.

Former US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on February 22, 2018 that Washington has contacted many countries, including Iraq, to explain the significance of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), and possible consequences that would arise in the wake of defense agreements with Moscow.

On August 2, 2017, US President Donald Trump signed into law the CAATSA that imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

April 18, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Moscow Aware of US Offer to Tbilisi to Expand Military Research in Lugar Biolab

Sputnik -April 18, 2020

Moscow is aware of Washington’s offer to Georgia to expand military research in the Richard Lugar biological laboratory, located not far from Tbilisi, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said on Friday.

“According to the information that we have, high-ranking Pentagon representatives have just recently paid a new visit there, to offer to Georgian authorities to expand the range of research conducted there. Meanwhile, it cannot be excluded that Americans work on creating and modifying different dangerous disease pathogenic agents, including with military aims, in reference laboratories in third countries,” Zakharova said at a briefing.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, at the US-Georgian Richard Lugar Public Health Centre in the suburbs of Tbilisi, Georgia’s US partners had taken the initiative to expand the range of studies.

“We noticed, and we cannot help but pay attention to the strengthening of the American biological (weapons development) presence abroad directly,” she said at a briefing. She noted that, in particular, she was talking about the former Soviet republics, where under the pretext of combating bioterrorism, the US Department of Defence was organizing dual-purpose biological research laboratories.

The lab was opened in the Georgian capital in 2011 and has been at the center of controversy for allegedly trying to weaponize diseases. Russia said last fall it was part of a network of research labs that the US military was running in former Soviet republics.

April 18, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

34 US-Backed Militants Surrender, Hand Weapons to Syrian Army – Reports

Sputnik – April 18, 2020

28 militants and six drivers from the Jaysh Maghawir al-Thawra (‘Revolutionary Commando Army’) rebel group arrived in Palmyra, handed over all their weapons and equipment and surrendered to take advantage of the Syrian government’s recent amnesty decrees, SANA has reported, citing a source said to be involved in the process.

Earlier, the Russian Defence Ministry’s Centre for Syrian Reconciliation confirmed that over two dozen militants trained at a US military base in Syria had surrendered to the Syrian Army after breaking out of the US-controlled At-Tanf area and engaging in a shootout with other militia members.

The group’s evacuation from the At-Tanf area, a blob of US-held territory in southern Syria near the Jordanian and Iraqi border, was facilitated following over four months of planning, according to authorities.

SANA’s source said that the haul of surrendered equipment included eight vehicles, some of them fitted with heavy machine guns, along with a small number of automatic weapons, sniper rifles, 2 RPG launchers and a grenade launcher, along with communications equipment and binoculars.

Ghannam Samir al-Khedair, the group’s leader, said he and his comrades had been displaced from Sweida by Daesh (ISIS) and crossed the border into Jordan, where they were trained, after which they were sent to guard the Rukban refugee camp. Al-Khedair also revealed that his men were demoralised after finding out that much of the relief supplies meant for the camp, which once held as many as 45,000 people, was being sold to Daesh, and discovering that other Jaysh Maghawir al-Thawra militants also supported the terrorists.

Khaled Samir al-Khedair, another former militant from the At-Tanf base, said that US occupation forces were training militia to attack Syrian Army positions, as well as civilian infrastructure and oil and gas fields. Salah Rashid al-Zaher, another militant, confirmed that this training for sabotage ops was taking place. According to al-Zaher, in addition to much of the Rukhban camp aid being sold to Daesh, some of it was also traded on the black market to camp residents at exorbitant prices.

The SANA report comes two days after confirmation by the Russian military that a group of over two dozen militants trained at At-Tanf had surrendered to the Syrian Army. The militants began their journey to Palmyra on the night of 13 April, but had to fight off a detachment of Jaysh Maghawir al-Thawra forces to escape, arriving in the ancient city on 14 April.

Rukban Disaster

Officials in both Damascus and Moscow and the Syrian and Russian militaries have repeatedly expressed concerns about the disastrous humanitarian situation at the Rukban refugee camp over the course of many years, and have reported on the Pentagon’s use of the At-Tanf military base to retrain former extremists to renew their struggle against the Syrian government.

Damascus has stressed repeatedly that the only solution which could end the al-Rukban refugees’ suffering would be for the US to withdraw from At-Tanf and leave Syria. At the moment, it’s estimated that there are still as many as 13,500 people at the camp, among them 6,000 militants, and members of their families. At least 150 US troops are estimated to remain at At-Tanf.

The US moved in to take control of the At-Tanf area in early 2016, just as the Syrian Army began its counteroffensive against Daesh militants in the sparsely populated desert areas of central Syria. US forces formally established the Jaysh Maghawir al-Thawra militia after dissolving its predecessor, the so-called ‘New Syrian Army’ militant group, in late 2016. Syria and its allies have repeatedly demanded that the US withdraw from the Arab Republic’s sovereign territory. The area has seen repeated deadly clashes between Syrian forces and entrenched US forces and their militia allies.

April 18, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

US quietly recalls ALL B-52 bombers from Guam just DAYS after staging ‘show of force’

© US Air Force / Staff Sgt. Divine Cox
RT | April 18, 2020

All five nuclear-capable B-52 strategic bombers departed their forward base on the Pacific island of Guam just days after taking part in an ‘elephant walk’ show of force. The US Air Force says it wants to be more unpredictable.

The B-52H Stratofortresses departed Guam on Thursday, ending the Continuous Bomber Presence Mission that began in 2004, according to the War Zone blog. They were spotted flying over to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, with callsigns spelling “see you.”

The redeployment was in line with the new National Defense Strategy, calling for the bombers to return to their permanent base and keep the forward deployments less predictable, US Strategic Command spokesperson Major Kate Atanasoff told the War Zone.

“US strategic bombers will continue to operate in the Indo-Pacific, to include Guam, at the timing and tempo of our choosing.”

For the past 16 years, that place was the Andersen AFB on Guam, where the B-52 bombers as well as their newer B-1B and B-2 cousins, would do six-month stints. Under the Trump administration, however, the USAF began experimenting with “Dynamic Force Deployment,” sending B-2s to Wake Island amid their deployment at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

The bombers’ departure was accidentally revealed by the Pentagon on April 14, when a photo of them was captioned”Last Continuous Bomber Presence Mission on Guam” on the official Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) website. The caption was later changed to “Andersen remains ready.”

That was the same caption that was used for the “elephant walk” publicity stunt the day before, when the five B-52s lined up on the runway with six KC-135 Stratotankers, an RQ-4 Global Hawk long-range surveillance drone and the Navy’s MH-60S Knighthawk helicopter.

The show of force was interpreted by the media as a message to China, North Korea and even Russia not to get any ideas about challenging US global hegemony. The main tool of US force projection in the region, the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, has been very publicly sidelined by the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, with its crew quarantined on Guam.

April 17, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

Taxes Paid By Billionaires Decreased 79 Percent Since 1980, as Percentage of Their Wealth

By Bob Lord – Chuck Collins | CounterPunch | April 16, 2020

Conventional economic wisdom says a time of crisis is not the moment to enact tax increases. But, as Eric Toder at the Tax Policy Center recently pointed out: “[Tax experts] can begin to think of the time after the pandemic passes and how government should respond to massive increases in the public debt, and the new tax increases that Congress will need to enact to fund them.”

Initial tax increases should hold harmless working- and middle-class families who will be the most economically vulnerable coming out the pandemic. The first several trillion in new revenue should come from America’s wealthiest households, those who have seen their taxes slashed over past decades.

At the top of the list of new tax increases should be a wealth tax on our billionaire class.

A new Institute for Policy Studies Inequality briefing paper, authored by Bob Lord, reveals that between 1980 and 2018, the taxes paid by America’s billionaires, when measured as a percentage of their wealth, decreased a staggering 79 percent.

The only appropriate metric by which to measure the tax burden on billionaires, the briefing paper explains, is the rate of tax they pay on their wealth. Unlike the rest of us, the living expenses of billionaires do not constrain their accumulation of wealth. Nor do they rely on their work to generate additional wealth. For billionaires, the accumulation of wealth is driven forward almost exclusively by the growth of their existing wealth and constrained almost exclusively by the tax they are required to pay. No matter how the taxes imposed on billionaires are determined – by income, consumption, property ownership, transfers by gift or bequest – they function only as a tax on wealth.

By allowing the tax burden of billionaires, as a percentage of their wealth, to plummet since 1980, policy makers have caused the nation’s wealth to concentrate obscenely at the very top. In the 12 years between 2006 and 2018, IPS reports, nearly 7 percent of America’s real increase in wealth, measured in 2018 dollars, went to the top 400 billionaires. If the pattern of the past four decades does not change, an even greater share of the nation’s newly created wealth over the next 12 years will flow to the billionaire class.

As we emerge from this pandemic with trillions of additional debt on the nation’s balance sheet, substantial tax increases are inevitable.  Early out of the box should be a 10 percent surtax on the incomes of the top 0.1 percent of households, including on capital income. We should also strengthen the estate tax to limit the intergenerational transfers of wealth of billionaires.  But central to the program should be a tax that limits the further accumulation – that is, hoarding – of wealth by the billionaire class. That, the IPS report concluded, requires a wealth tax:

Only an annual wealth tax — a direct tax on billionaire wealth — can reliably limit the Billionaire Class rate of wealth accumulation to a level no greater than wealth accumulation for the population at large. Other forms of taxation have valid purposes. But to rein in the Billionaire Class we need something more. And rein in we must.

April 16, 2020 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

U.S. Government’s $3.7 Million Grant to Wuhan Lab at Center of Coronavirus Outbreak

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Chairman, Children’s Health Defense | April 15, 2020

The Daily Mail reported that it has uncovered documents showing that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) gave $3.7 million to scientists at the Wuhan Lab at the center of coronavirus leak scrutiny. According to the British paper, “the federal grant funded experiments on bats from the caves where the virus is believed to have originated.”

Background: Following the 2002-2003 SARS coronavirus outbreak, NIH funded a collaboration by Chinese scientists, US military virologists from the bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick and National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists from NIAID to prevent future coronavirus outbreaks by studying the evolution of virulent strains from bats in human tissues. Those efforts included “gain of function” research which is “accelerated viral evolution” to create COVID Pandemic superbugs, enhanced bat borne COVID mutants more lethal and more transmissible than wild COVID.

Fauci’s studies alarmed scientists around the globe who complained, according to a December 2017 NY Times article, that “these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic.” Dr. Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard School of Public Health’s Communicable Disease Center told the Times that Dr. Fauci’s NIAID experiments “have given us some modest scientific knowledge and done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemic, and yet risked creating an accidental pandemic.”

In October 2014, following a series of federal laboratory mishaps that narrowly missed releasing these deadly engineered viruses, President Obama ordered the halt to all federal funding for Fauci’s dangerous experiments. NIAID-funded gain of function research continued after the moratorium in a Wuhan-based laboratory. Congress needs to launch an investigation of NIAID’s mischief in China.

[Addendum after our story ran: CNN reports that: “An intelligence official familiar with the government analysis said a theory US intelligence officials are investigating is that the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and was accidentally released to the public. Other sources told CNN that US intelligence hasn’t been able to corroborate the theory but is trying to discern whether someone was infected in the lab through an accident or poor handling of materials and may have then infected others.”]

This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

April 16, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

NYT flip-flops on Covid-19 contact tracers – because now it’s not China

‘Mao-style social controls’ or benign citizen ‘armies’?

Protesting is a “non-essential” activity, citizen! © Reuters / Kevin Lamarque
By Helen Buyniski | RT | April 16, 2020

The same citizen virus-tracing corps the New York Times decried in China as Maoism incarnate is being tried in Massachusetts and San Francisco, and the outlet has decided that what’s bad for Beijing is good for democracies.

Massachusetts and San Francisco – as well as the Republic of Ireland – are deputizing citizens to track down contacts of people infected with coronavirus, the Times reported on Thursday, describing the programs in glowing terms. After a blow-by-blow of a phone call between one of the newly-hired Massachusetts virus-trackers and her target, who gratefully gives up a file’s worth of data, we learn that the state plans to hire 1,000 caring professionals just like her to fill out its “fleet of contact tracers, charged with tracking down people who have been exposed to the coronavirus, as soon as possible, and warning them.”

The article emphasizes the bonds of “trust” between contract-tracer and coronavirus victim. There’s no talk of imprisoning people in their homes, of “keeping away outsiders” or of “arbitrary” enforcement. Indeed, one has to read to the end of the article to find out that the Massachusetts program was heavily informed by data from Wuhan and techniques from South Korea.

Massachusetts gets the warm-fuzzy treatment… © New York Times

There is just one slight problem: the NYT had already described a similar program in an article from February saying that “Mao-Style Social Control” was “blanketing” China. That piece sketched out an oppressive world in which “battalions of neighborhood busybodies, uniformed volunteers and Communist Party representatives” conducted “one of the biggest social control campaigns in history.” The goal, as the outlet melodramatically put it back then, was “to keep hundreds of millions of people away from everyone but their closest kin.”

… while China’s equivalent is “coercive” and “arbitrary” © New York Times

Stripped of the linguistic fireworks, the story described Beijing deputizing citizens to enforce quarantines by (among other things) tracing who infected persons had been in contact with, in order to keep the infected separate from the rest of the population. Not a bad idea, given the unreliability of testing and the highly-infectious nature of the coronavirus. It’s not surprising it’s catching on in the West.

San Francisco is training an all-volunteer group of 150 contact tracers, while Ireland plans to repurpose 1,000 furloughed government workers to trace contacts. Former US Centers for Disease Control director Thomas Frieden has even recommended a national “army” of 300,000 contact tracers, while other public health experts have praised the idea. It’s difficult to see how – other than the shift in vocabulary – these incarnations of what Mike Ryan of the World Health Organization called “shoe-leather epidemiology” differ from what the Times described as “Mao-style social control” in China.

With the question of how to end lockdowns still unresolved in many ‘democracies,’ human contact-tracing may emerge as the “lesser evil” with regard to preserving individual rights. While Bill Gates touts his “digital certificates” and dubious vaccines, and Apple and Google collaborate on a digital contact-tracing platform – an approach laden with privacy pitfalls that has already been used in Singapore and South Korea – that ‘Mao-style social control’ is starting to look like the most freedom-friendly option.

April 16, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Will This Pandemic Finally Mark the End of the US Carrier Fleet?

The Saker • Unz Review • April 16, 2020

Frankly, I have never considered USN carrier strike groups as a “Cold War capable” element of the US Navy. Yes, in theory, there was the notion of forward deploying these carriers to “bring the war to the Soviets” (on the Kola Peninsula) before they could flush their subs and aircraft through the GUIK gap and into the Atlantic. In theory, it should have been a 600 ship navy too, but that never happened. In reality, of course, US strike groups were the ultimate “colony disciplining” instrument which Uncle Shmuel would park off the coast of a country disobedient to the demands and systematic plundering of the USA. Since most countries in the 20th century could not sink a US carrier or prevail over the comparatively advanced aircraft deployed on them, this was, all in all, a very safe game to play for the USA.

As for “bringing the war to the Soviets”, the truth is that had it ever come to a real war, the US carriers would have been kept far away from the formidable Soviet cruise missile capability (delivered simultaneously by aircraft, surface ships and submarines) for a very simple reason: every time such an attack was modeled a sufficient number of Soviet missiles successfully passed through the protective cordon around the carrier and successfully hit it with devastating results (while sinking a carrier is not that easy, damaging it and making it inoperable does not take that many missile hits).

And that was long before hypersonic missiles like the Kinzhal or the Zircon!

Truly, as an an instrument to deter or defeat the Soviets the USN strike groups were already obsolete in the 1980s, that is long before the the Russians deployed their hypersonic missiles which, as my friend Andrey Martyanov explained in his books (see here and here) and on his blog (see here), basically made the entire US surface fleet obsolete not only to fight Russia, but also to fight any country which possesses such missiles. Such countries already include India and China, but there will be many more soon, probably including Iran!

Today, however, I won’t discuss the missile issue, but what happened recently on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which you probably know about: her captain got fired for writing a letter (according to his accusers, bypassing the chain of command) asking for help because his crew got infected by the virus. His letter was published by the San Francisco Chronicle and you can read it here.

Interestingly, when the captain, Navy Capt. Brett Crozier, left the ship, his sailors gave him a standing ovation:

Next, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly called Captain Crozier “stupid.” That also became public, and he had to apologize and resign (clearly, Modly is not exactly a genius himself!). Then even more of the crew of the carrier got sick, including Crozier himself!

This is what is known in the US military jargon as a “clusterbleep”…

There is, however, also a lot of interesting stuff coming out from this story.

First, the obvious: USN carriers cannot operate effectively under a bio-attack (a truly weaponized virus would both be much more transmissible than SARS-COV-2 and it would be far more deadly). This also indicates that they would probably do no better under a real chemical warfare attack either.

Considering that in reality USN carriers are an instrument of colonial repression and not ships to be engaged against the USSR (which had real biowarfare capabilities), this makes sense (while most university labs & the like could produce some kind of virus and use it as a weapon, truly weaponized viruses, the kind effectively used in special delivery systems, can only be produced by a limited list of countries). However, in theory, all the formations/units/subunits/ships/aircraft/armor/etc of a military superpower should be trained to operate in case of a nuclear, chemical and biological attack. Clearly, this is not the case with US carriers, most likely because nobody in the USA really expected such an attack, at least not during the Cold War.

For the current situation, however, I think that the lesson is clear: the USN simply does not have an effective capability to operate under NBC attack conditions.

By the way, this appears to also be true of the French, whose only carrier has 30% infected sailors!

Second, I agree that going outside the chain of command is wrong, but let’s also consider the following here: the fact that the USS Theodore Roosevelt was having a large number of infected sailors is not something which could have been kept secret anyway, especially while in port. Not only that, but how do we know that Capt. Crozier did not write other memos through the regular chain of command before he wrote the one which became public? After all, any such memos could very easily be classified and never made public.

Finally, I will admit that my sympathies are squarely with the man who placed the lives of his men and women above all else, and not with the bureaucratic drone who put procedures and ruffled feathers above the lives of sailors and called the real officer “stupid” for his actions (wait! a USN carrier captain stupid?! Somehow I don’t think so…..).

At the time of writing (April 14th) there have been 600 sailors from the Theodore Roosevelt who contracted the virus and one death.

Finally, over 4000 sailors have now been evacuated from the ship (1000 are still onboard to operate the nuclear reactor and other key systems).

In other words, the USS Theodore Roosevelt is now completely inoperable!

The quoted CNN article concludes with:

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten told reporters Thursday the US military needed to plan for similar outbreaks in the future as the Defense Department works to cope with the virus’ impacts. “I think it’s not a good idea to think the Teddy Roosevelt is a one-of-a-kind issue. We have too many ships at sea, we have too many deployed capabilities. There’s 5,000 sailors on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. To think it will never happen again is not a good way to plan. What we have to do is figure out how to plan in these kind of Covid environments,” Hyten said.

Yet more proof that the USN never took a bioattack threat seriously.

To be honest, it seems that the US Army has similar problems, here is a map of affected US bases I found on Colonel Cassad’s blog:

It appears that the US-based forces never expected any real attack (other than maybe one by terrorists equipped with small arms) so NBC security was never a priority.

Note, in Russia, at least so far (April 14th), there are zero cases of servicemen infected with the virus. This will almost inevitably change in the future, but for the time being, this is true, in spite of having Russian military units helping to fight the virus both in Russia and outside. Just saying…

However, this is not a fair comparison. First, bases located on land have far more interactions with the outside world than ships, even ships in port. Second, and much more importantly, in case of a pandemic or chemical/biological attack, bases located on land can better isolate those affected, bring in more resources or quickly disperse the personnel to better protect them. You can’t do that on a ship. In fact, the bigger the ship, the more it looks like an “armed cruiseliner” which, as we now all know, is a gigantic Petri dish.

Questions such as those above will only increase in number as the pandemic finally sheds much-needed light on the shocking reality about “the best! most powerful! best equipped! and best trained military force in the Galaxy!”: it can’t even protect itself from a relatively weak virus, never-mind defeat a competent enemy.

Will we get answers? Eventually, probably yes. But for the time being, the US is all about covering your ass while pointing fingers and blaming others (especially China, Russia and even the WHO!). This strategy has been an abject failure for the past decades and it will be an abject failure in the future.

Trump’s latest decision to defund the WHO (to whom the US already owes a ton of money anyway) is arguably his worst act of “international PR seppuku” which will further increase the disgust the USA already inspires worldwide. As for our Israeli friends, they are proud that their Mossad actually steals medical equipment from other countries: after all, every Israeli know that Jewish blood is sacred, while goy blood is worthless. Another case of self-inflicted “international PR seppuku” for “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

But since that is all US politicians know how to do, this is not stopping anytime soon. Likewise, what is known as the “carrier fiction” will be upheld for as long as possible, especially since there is a lot of money involved for the US ruling classes.

April 16, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

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