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Iraqi military confirms attack on Taji base, says it shouldn’t be pretext for foreign ops on its soil

RT | March 14, 2020

A military base in Iraq housing US troops has been targeted in a rocket attack that severely injured Iraqi soldiers, the nation’s military confirmed. It also warned that the strike does not warrant a retaliation by foreign powers.

As many as 33 Katyusha rockets have been launched at the Taji base north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The strike left several Iraqi air defense soldiers “critically injured,” according to the military statement. It is unclear if any US personnel have been affected.

The military urged all foreign forces to implement the national parliament’s resolution, passed after the US killing of Iranian top general Qasem Soleimani, and withdraw troops from Iraq.

The incident comes two days after the US launched its own airstrikes against an Iranian-backed Shia militia in Iraq, which it blames for the previous assault on a base where Western forces are stationed. The attack claimed the lives of three soldiers, two American and one British.

The move sparked angry reaction in Baghdad, which said it would file a complaint to the UN Security Council over the issue while the targeted militia called it a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.

March 14, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

US Intel Agencies Played Unsettling Role in Classified and “9/11-like” Coronavirus Response Plan

By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | March 13, 2020

As the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis comes to dominate headlines, little media attention has been given to the federal government’s decision to classify top-level meetings on domestic coronavirus response and lean heavily “behind the scenes” on U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon in planning for an allegedly imminent explosion of cases.

The classification of coronavirus planning meetings was first covered by Reuters, which noted that the decision to classify was “an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion.” Reuters further noted that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, and his chief of staff had “resisted” the classification order, which was made in mid-January by the National Security Council (NSC), led by Robert O’Brien — a longtime friend and colleague of his predecessor John Bolton.

Following this order, HHS officials with the appropriate security clearances held meetings on coronavirus response at the department’s Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF), which are facilities “usually reserved for intelligence and military operations” and — in HHS’ case — for responses to “biowarfare or chemical attacks.” Several officials who spoke to Reuters noted that the classification decision prevented key experts from participating in meetings and slowed down the ability of HHS and the agencies it oversees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to respond to the crisis by limiting participation and information sharing.

It has since been speculated that the decision was made to prevent potential leaks of information by stifling participation and that aspects of the planned response would cause controversy if made public, especially given that the decision to classify government meetings on coronavirus response negatively impacted HHS’ ability to respond to the crisis.

After the classification decision was made public, a subsequent report in Politico revealed that not only is the National Security Council managing the federal government’s overall response but that they are doing so in close coordination with the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. military. It states specifically that “NSC officials have been coordinating behind the scenes with the intelligence and defense communities to gauge the threat and prepare for the possibility that the U.S. government will have to respond to much bigger numbers—and soon.”

Little attention was given to the fact that the response to this apparently imminent jump in cases was being coordinated largely between elements of the national security state (i.e. the NSC, Pentagon, and intelligence), as opposed to civilian agencies or those focused on public health issues, and in a classified manner.

The Politico article also noted that the intelligence community is set to play a “key role” in a pandemic situation, but did not specify what the role would specifically entail. However, it did note that intelligence agencies would “almost certainly see an opportunity to exploit the crisis” given that international “epicenters of coronavirus [are] in high-priority counterintelligence targets like China and Iran.” It further added, citing former intelligence officials, that efforts would be made to recruit new human sources in those countries.

Politico cited the official explanation for intelligence’s interest in “exploiting the crisis” as merely being aimed at determining accurate statistics of coronavirus cases in “closed societies,” i.e. nations that do not readily cooperate or share intelligence with the U.S. government. Yet, Politico fails to note that Iran has long been targeted for CIA-driven U.S. regime change, specifically under the Trump administration, and that China had been fingered as the top threat to U.S. global hegemony by military officials well before the coronavirus outbreak.

A potential  “9/11-like” response

The decision to classify government coronavirus preparations in mid-January, followed by the decision to coordinate the domestic response with the military and with intelligence deserves considerable scrutiny, particularly given that at least one federal agency, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), will be given broad, sweeping powers and will work closely with unspecified intelligence “partners” as part of its response to a pandemics like COVID-19.

The CBP’s pandemic response document, obtained by The Nation, reveals that the CBP’s pandemic directive “allows the agency to actively surveil and detain individuals suspected of carrying the illness indefinitely.” The Nation further notes that the plan was drafted during the George W. Bush administration, but is the agency’s most recent pandemic response plan and remains in effect.

Though only CBP’s pandemic response plan has now been made public, those of other agencies are likely to be similar, particularly on their emphasis on surveillance, given past precedent following the September 11 attacks and other times of national panic. Notably, several recent media reports have likened coronavirus to 9/11 and broached the possibility of a “9/11-like” response to coronavirus, suggestions that should concern critics of the post-9/11 “Patriot Act” and other controversial laws, executive orders and policies that followed.

While the plans of the federal government remain classified, recent reports have revealed that the military and intelligence communities — now working with the NSC to develop the government’s coronavirus response — have anticipated a massive explosion in cases for weeks. U.S. military intelligence came to the conclusion over a month ago that coronavirus cases would reach “pandemic proportions” domestically by the end of March. That military intelligence agency, known as the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), coordinates closely with the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct “medical SIGINT [signals intelligence].”

The coming government response, the agencies largely responsible for crafting it and its classified nature deserve public scrutiny now, particularly given the federal government’s tendency to not let “a serious crisis to go to waste,” as former President Obama’s then-chief of staff Rahm Emanuel infamously said during the 2008 financial crisis. Indeed, during a time of panic — over a pandemic and over a simultaneous major economic downturn — concern over government overreach is warranted, particularly now given the involvement of intelligence agencies and the classification of planning for an explosion of domestic cases that the government believes is only weeks away.

March 13, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

China does not rule out US role in coronavirus outbreak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pompeo slams Iran’s ‘biological defense’ against Covid-19, sidesteps Khamenei’s ‘biological attack’ claims

RT | March 13, 2020

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has criticized Iran’s efforts at “biological defense” against Covid-19, but conspicuously avoided addressing Ayatollah Khamenei’s claim that the virus was a “biological attack.”

Khamenei all but accused the US of weaponizing coronavirus in a speech on Thursday, announcing the establishment of a military “Health and Treatment Base” to fight the disease. He declared that the facility “may also be regarded as a biological defense exercise… given the evidence that suggests the likelihood of this being a ‘biological attack.'”

Khamenei repeated the inflammatory claim in a series of tweets, echoing the words of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Hossein Salami, who last week floated the “possibility” that coronavirus was the “product of a biological attack by America which initially spread to China and then to Iran and the rest of the world.”

But instead of responding to the cleric’s accusations, Pompeo merely chided him for not “telling the Iranian people the truth about the Wuhan virus when it spread to Iran from China” in a tweet on Friday, suggesting Tehran missed an opportunity for “the best biological defense” when it failed to curtail flights from Wuhan and “jailed those who spoke out.” He made no mention at all of the virus as a “biological attack” – American or otherwise.

Other Iranian officials have avoided openly accusing Washington of deploying the virus as a weapon, focusing instead on how US sanctions have contributed to the epidemic’s devastating effects. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif slammed the Trump administration’s “medical terrorism” earlier this week, pointing out that artificially-induced shortages have put a major strain on hospitals’ resources. More than two dozen Iranian officials have fallen ill with the coronavirus in the weeks since it first surfaced in Iran in what appears to be an especially virulent form.

While the virus now known as Covid-19 first gained international attention in Wuhan, where it was thought to have originated in an open-air meat market, further research appears to disprove that hypothesis – opening the matter to speculation. And the Iranians are not alone in suggesting US responsibility for the epidemic, which has spread to 116 countries and killed over 5,000 people globally as of Friday.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian came forward on Thursday to suggest that a US military delegation had brought the virus to Wuhan in October during the World Military Games, tweeting as his “proof” a video of the director of the US Centers for Disease Control admitting that some patients thought to have died of the flu later tested positive for the coronavirus.

March 13, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Fourth OPCW whistleblower: Staff ‘frightened into silence’, watchdog brought into ‘shameful disrepute’ over Douma probe

RT | March 13, 2020

A fourth whistleblower has come forward to defend two senior OPCW inspectors who revealed the watchdog tried to cover up evidence in the Douma chemical weapons probe, saying that other employees were “frightened into silence.”

In a statement to the Grayzone, the latest whistleblower said they were “horrified” but “unsurprised” by recent events within the organization, describing the “mistreatment” of “two highly regarded and accomplished professionals” as “abhorrent.”

The employee wrote that he is “one of many who were stunned and frightened into silence by the reality how the organization operates,” and that the “threat of personal harm” to those who speak out is “not an illusion.”

The fourth whistleblower emerged after the OPCW leadership attempted to smear and discredit veteran inspector Ian Henderson and an individual known as ‘Alex’ who challenged the organization’s narrative on the alleged Syrian government attack on Douma in 2018. A third whistleblower has also previously defended the integrity of the first two who spoke out and expressed concern for the safety and security of those who dissent from the official narrative.

The Grayzone said it had independently verified the identity of the fourth whistleblower and their position at the OPCW, but granted them anonymity “to protect them from potential retaliation.”

Last week, Henderson and ‘Alex’ both wrote to OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias, accusing the organization of trying to “smear” their reputations and questioning why two top inspectors with “impeccable records” would suddenly “go rogue.” The letters followed an effort by the chemical weapons watchdog to discredit them, rubbish their serious concerns, and frame them merely as two disgruntled former employees.

“I fully support their endeavors, in that it is for the greater good and not for personal gain or in the name of any political agenda,” the fourth whistleblower wrote, adding that the inspectors are “trying to protect the integrity of the organization which has been hijacked and brought into shameful disrepute.”

After a detailed study, Henderson, who led the probe on the ground in Douma, concluded that gas cylinders found at the scene had likely been manually placed, which suggests the attack may have been a false flag staged by anti-government militants. The incident, however, was swiftly used to justify US, UK and French airstrikes on Syria before OPCW investigators had even arrived at the scene.

Yet, the OPCW disregarded Henderson’s evidence without explanation and in its official report implied that the gas cylinders were dropped by Syrian military planes – allegedly after “unacceptable pressure” was applied by the US government.

March 13, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Corona & the Cost of Doing Nothing

By Anatoly Karlin • Unz Review • March 12, 2020

There is a three in a million chance that a Boeing 737 MAX won’t arrive at its destination in one piece. At the end of the day, this isn’t that big of a deal – as late as the 1980s, this was the average for the commercial airline industry, and risks were twice as high in 1970. But people don’t tolerate such numbers such risks these days, as the value attached to human life has gone up. As a result, this model has been grounded across the world, with attendant consequences for Boeing’s bottom line.

But while it may not be that big of a deal, it is still probably not a great idea to take 500 flights in a Boeing 737 MAX within a year if one can possibly help it. Why 500 Boeing 737 MAX flights? Because even though it is a disease that overwhelmingly affects the elderly, that happens to be the equivalent risk of dying from COVID-19 for people in their 30s. Moreover, when you board a plane, you are only risking your own life. People with a cavalier “iT’S JuSt lIkE ThE FlU” are presumably more likely to spread it to elderly people, for whom a brush with COVID-19 is equivalent to a round of Russian roulette (mortality is ~1/6 for over 80 year olds). Moreover, it would even be reasonable to pay money to avoid such risks, even if it involves some inconveniences.

For this novel coronavirus threatens to fundamentally degrade the global demographics of human mortality, the effects of which may last years or decades.

This graph shows q(x), or the probability of dying at any age “x”. It is calculated by taking a hypothetical cohort, usually fixed at 100,000 at the age of 0, and dividing the number of deaths by the number of survivors by age group.

The green line represents the probability of dying in the US as of 2017.

The other lines represent the effects of various epidemic shocks: An approximate doubling in severity of the average flu season (yellow); a 10% COVID-19 infection rate (orange); and a 70% COVID-19 infection rate (red).

These figures were obtained by taking the percentage chances of dying from the flu/COVID-19 and adding them to the q(x) percentages for the US in 2017 at the mortality.org database.

The mortality stats for the flu were taken from the CDC, as reported in Business Insider. They also helpfully compare the age-specific death rates to COVID-19 mortality, as derived from an investigation earlier this month by Russell et al. based on numbers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. The extrapolated total CFR (case fatality rate) was pegged at 1.1%, but note that this applied to situation where quality healthcare was readily available (ventilators, IV drops, antibiotics, etc.). In situations where the epidemic overwhelms the healthcare system, things are going to be much worse.

Note from the outset the near insignificance of flu as a cause of mortality; under 65’s are basically two orders of magnitude as likely to die from COVID-19 as from the flu. In other words, for the younger generations, “the flu” is just 2-3x Boeing 737 MAX flights per year, as opposed to 500x for COVID-19. While the absolute numbers for the elderly are horrific, the disparity between flu and COVID-19 mortality for them is actually considerably less – just about a single order of magnitude – though even so, that’s still the difference between a ride on the Space Shuttle (flu) versus a round of Russian roulette (COVID-19). I’d rather take the Space Shuttle, thank you.

In another study by Riou et al. 2020 analyzing data from Wuhan, a total CFR of 1.6% was estimated, with a larger sample allowing for a more precise breakdowns by age (see above). As such, I will be using the numbers from this study to adjust q(x) in the different COVID-19 scenarios. Apart from that, the Wuhan scenario is likely to be more typical than the Diamond Princess scenario, if we are talking about large-scale outbreaks that partially overwhelm the capacity of healthcare cities.

There isn’t much evidence that we can hope for substantially lower mortality rates, even in developed OECD countries; contra Western stereotypes, medical care in Wuhan seems to have been highly sophisticated, with dozens of people being ventilated in the average hospital, and complex procedures such as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (“removing blood from a person’s body and oxygenating their red blood cells”) through ECMO machines being available in cases where ventilation didn’t work. Consequently, it can’t be excluded that mortality in most of the rest of the world – even in the OECD – may well end up higher than in China. For instance, England only has 28 and the US has 250 of these ECMO machines, whereas even provincial hospitals in China have been reported to have 5 of them each.

The healthcare system in Lombardy – one of the most developed regions in the world – is already on the cusp of collapse. Unless there are draconian quarantines implemented right about now, most of the rest of Western Europe and the US seem set to join it in its misery in another 10 days to two weeks. Cost-cutting “optimization” in healthcare has drastically reduced the number of hospital beds per capita throughout the West in the past two decades. At this point, I would certainly not wager on “the West” mounting a better or more competent response to COVID-19 than the Chinese.

Another cardinal difference between “the flu” and COVID-19 is that the latter is far more contagious. The standard measure of how many other people each person with a given disease infects in turn, r0, seems to be ~4 under “normal” conditions, versus just 1.3 for the flu. Moreover, as a novel coronavirus, people do not have any preexisting immunity to COVID-19 that might mitigate its virulence, and it has far greater contagiousness. Consequently, professional epidemiologists have predicted that as much as 70% of the world population may eventually become infected with COVID-19, a number which has been repeated by Angela Merkel and the British government in recent days. As such, I will be modeling a 70% COVID-19 infection rate – which presupposes millions of deaths – as a “worst case” scenario.

One final “blackpill” about COVID-19 is that, should we fail to control it, many epidemiologists expect it to become a new seasonal disease – that is, a fifth endemic coronavirus, just like the common cold. But far deadlier. The flu infects about a tenth of the population every year. What would be the impact if COVID-19 was to reach similar intensities?

This graph shows l(x), or the number of survivors at any age “x”. It can be calculated by recursively applying the aforementioned q(x) to the initial, hypothetical cohort of 100,000 newborns.

As before, we can see that even doubling the flu season – adding mortality from an average flu season to the existing probability of dying – barely nudges the curve.

However, even a 10% COVID-19 infection rate moves the curve visibly left, and the change is extremely traumatic once you get to 70% infection rates – the sort of numbers that multiple European governments are now bandying about.

This graph shows the changes in life expectancy at different ages. It is calculated from two values derived from the above data: The total number of person-years lived by any particular cohort, or T(x), divided by the number of survivors, or l(x), in that cohort. T(x) is the sum total of person-years, or L(x), lived by any particular cohort up until all its members have died. That, in turn, is given by the following formula: L(x) = l(x+1)*d(x)*a(x), where l(x+1) refers to the quantity of that cohort’s survivors in the next year, d(x) refers to the number of deaths during that interval (or, in other words, l(x+1) – l(x) ), and a(x) is a constant that is usually equal to 0.5 (except in the very first and the very last year of life).

Here is a summary of the results:

  • US life expectancy at birth was 78.86 years in 2017 (via mortality.org). There is a minor discrepancy with the official CDC figure of 78.6 years.
  • Modeling a typical flu epidemic “on top” of that (so, in practice, a ~doubling of the flu season severity) would reduce US life expectancy to 78.63 years, translating to a reduction of ~0.25 years (three months).
  • Modeling a 10% COVID-19 infection scenario with Riou et al. (2020) age-specific mortality rates – the sort of numbers we may expect should it become endemic – reduces US life expectancy to 76.15 years , translating to a reduction of ~2.5 years.
  • Modeling a 70% COVID-19 infection scenario with Riou et al. (2020) age-specific mortality rates reduces US life expectancy to 66.79 years, translating to a reduction of a cool ~12 years.

Now this is not the end of the world, as I make sure to emphasize by including the historical mortality profiles for Russia in 1994 and Sweden in 1751 across all three of these graphs.

The year 1994 marked the single worst time for Russian mortality in its post-1956 history, when rampant alcohol abuse, violence, and the despair of the 1990s reduced life expectancy to a local minimum at 63.93 years; during that time, middle-aged male mortality was equivalent to that of Imperial Russia and Sub-Saharan Africa. This is probably the worst mortality profile ever observed in a major industrialized nation outside of wartime.

Mortality rates in the preindustrial world – Sweden has the earliest comprehensive records dating back to 1751 – jumped wildly year to year, depending on the state of the harvest and the virulence of the bugs going around in that particular year. The biggest difference relative to industrialized societies, though, even ones as collapsed as Russia in the 1990s, is that deaths during infancy and childhood were mundane, not freak occurrences. Hence why life expectancy actually goes up as children live through (survive) their infanthood.

As we can see, in terms of mortality, a serious COVID-19 epidemic should be broadly equivalent to living in 1990’s Russia – and for people under the age of 50, it would be notably safer than living in a preindustrial society, such as 18th century Sweden. It will be a shock relative to current expectations colored by more than a century of “Pinkerian” progress in safety and survivability, but there were people who lived their entire lives under similar or worse mortality profiles, and that didn’t prevent many of them from finding joy and meaning in them.

However, even though the pandemic “shock” will pass, if the epidemiologists are correct and COVID-19 becomes an endemic, seasonal disease, then we may permanently lose the equivalent of about 25 years worth of progress in raising life expectancy (American life expectancy was last below 76.15 years in 1996). In this scenario, the graph of future US life expectancy may look like something above, dipping sharply this year and stabilizing at a new, lower normal in subsequent years.

In the long-term, there may be even more years lost – perhaps 3 years – in many West European countries, and perhaps in developed East Asia as well, should this pandemic veer out of control and make it impossible for them to preserve their current achievements at checking COVID-19 (I assume that even disciplined East Asian societies cannot maintain Corona-suppressing “social distancing” behaviors indefinitely). That is because, thanks mainly to America’s opiates epidemic, the West European countries now have substantially better mortality profiles than the US, so the extra “shock” of COVID-19 will depress their life expectancy to a relatively greater extent. Though, curiously enough, most of these same countries will “lose” fewer years of progress relative to the US, since American life expectancy has basically stood still for the past decade due to the opioids epidemic.

Meanwhile, industrialized countries with worse mortality profiles, such as Russia, will not actually see as big of a drop in life expectancy as the US; as of 2014, the last year for which I can find life tables for Russia, a 10% COVID-19 infection scenario translates to a 1.7 year fall in Russian life expectancy (US: 2.5 years), and a 70% infection scenario translates into a drop of 8 years in life expectancy (US: 12 years). However, due to strong gains in Russian life expectancy since 2014 – it has risen from 70.9 years in 2014 to 73.4 years in 2019 – the effects of COVID-19 will actually now be stronger (if still not as strong as in the US).

(Reminder: This is all assuming that both infection rates and the age-specific mortality rates from COVID-19 are the same across these countries – this will almost certainly not be the case due to local specifics).

Moreover, there will be multiple other factors that will either ameliorate or depress the above estimates:

  • COVID-19 is going to kill off the frailest people in this current wave, in which up to 70% of people may be infected; but this will soften its long-term impact, since you can only die once.
  • In subsequent years, when ~10% annual infection rates may become the new norm, healthcare systems will adjust and everybody should receive adequate care, lowering CFR from the ~4% currently observed when healthcare systems are overwhelmed, to the 0.5%-1.0% rates seen in South Korea and Chinese provinces outside Hubei, which have managed to keep on top of cases.
  • Conversely, people who are intubated now may suffer permanent, long-term insults on their health, making them more vulnerable to subsequent COVID-19 infections in future years.
  • Needless to say, there may well be changes in COVID-19’s contagiousness and virulence in the future.

I am not even going to attempt to model any of this. But the bottom line stands. This virus has the capability to deal a traumatic shock to the world’s population, especially to the older societies of the Global North. In the longer term, it may also permanently depress global life expectancy by about 2 years, robbing millions of future people of their planned retirements and time with their grandchildren.

There are political factions that cynically, and unironically, pray for Corona-chan to do her magic. The Chapo Trap House folks bask in the idea of COVID-19 killing off Drumpf-voting boomers who are keeping them from electing Bernie, instituting M4A, and rescuing the planet, while elements of the Alt Right anticipate the West rediscovering its youthful vigor in the wake of the “boomerpox”. But I would caution both factions against premature Schadenfreude – political trends rarely work out the way anyone expects them to. They may get more than they bargained for.

OK, summing up: We should really, really try to avoid COVID-19 veering out of control and becoming endemic.

China has demonstrated that Corona-chan can be contained; its r0 has plummeted by an order of magnitude from 4 to just 0.32, even if it had to bring its economy to a near standstill to do it. As Steve Sailer notes, China hasn’t merely “flattened the curve”. It has crushed it. This means that its success should be replicable, at least in First World nations with epidemics on the scale of peak Hubei, as in Italy.

Even more encouragingly, the nations of East Asia – Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, even middle-income Thailand – have all managed to bring COVID-19 under control at its earliest stages without resorting to China’s drastic measures. As Tomas Pueyo explains, they did this by carefully filtering infectees’ contacts at the earliest opportunity and putting them under quarantine. The main reason that South Korea failed is because its “Patient 31” happened to be a religious “super-spreader”, yet even so, even there, the epidemic is currently under control.

But all their efforts would be in vain if just a few (or even one) defeatist, incompetent, or plain stupidly-run countries decline to take the necessary steps, and thereby cut two years off global life expectancy into the indefinite future.

This stupidity and incompetence takes different forms. In Western Europe, it is the Left’s fundamentalist commitment to open borders, accompanied by bizarre claims that quarantines do not work. In the US, it is the Right’s fundamentalist commitment to free markets, as exemplified by $5,000 copays for coronavirus tests, lack of sick leave, and Trump’s “iT’S JuSt lIkE ThE FlU” mantras to appease Mammon. Meanwhile, in what is perhaps the most “powerful” move of them all, the United Kingdom has set up a cyber-unit to combat “Russian” Corona-chan shitposters while basically admitting that it has no interest in combating, like, the actual coronavirus. Hopefully the British boomers croaking in their deathbeds in another two months’ time will be understanding of HMG’s priorities.

One is almost tempted to wish a pox on all their houses.

Anyhow, while I still hope for the best, I do not expect it.

March 12, 2020 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

‘Where was your patient zero?’ Chinese official speculates AMERICANS may have infected Wuhan at army games & calls to ‘come clean’

RT | March 13, 2020

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lijian Zhao has demanded US authorities reveal what they’re hiding about the origins of Covid-19, going as far as to suggest the coronavirus may have been brought to China by the US military.

Pointing to a video of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Robert Redfield apparently admitting the US had several deaths from Covid-19 before they were able to test for it, Zhao called on the American watchdog to come clean in a tweet posted on Thursday.

“It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan,” Zhao suggested, calling for the CDC – and the US in general – to “be transparent” and share what they know about where and when “Patient Zero” was first diagnosed.

In the video, Redfield acknowledged that some cases of coronavirus were misclassified as influenza as the medics did not have an accurate test for the new epidemic at the time. He did not elaborate on when these misdiagnosed cases first appeared – saying only that “some cases have been diagnosed that way.”

In the absence of any patients’ details or chronology of deaths, speculation has swirled. Zhao’s “theory” in particular focused on the military delegation that traveled to Wuhan in October for the Military World Games, weeks before the city confirmed the outbreak in December. The delegation was part of the 300-member group of American athletes taking part in the multi-sport event held every four years.

Zhao is not the only high-profile political figure to voice suspicions about the timing of the Games and the introduction of the coronavirus in Wuhan. Former Malaysian PM Matthias Chang offered similar speculation back in January, zeroing in on the event as the launch point for what he deemed a biological war waged by the US against China.

The World Health Organization (WHO) states that what is now the Covid-19 pandemic was first reported as a coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, on 31 December 2019. The search for the deadly disease’s origin has been ongoing, with conflicting versions blaming the Wuhan food market and bats – a local delicacy – sold there in particular, while others opined humans might have gotten the virus from pangolins, an endangered scaly mammal.

Less orthodox theories suggest malicious intent, with the head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards sensationally claiming last week that Covid-19 could possibly be “a product of a biological attack by America which initially spread to China and then to Iran and the rest of the world.”

So far, the problem with all of those theories, blaming both animals and humans, is that no direct causal proof has been established, while the identity of China’s “patient zero” also remains unclear. And it’s not China alone: in Washington state – which seemingly identified and successfully isolated its first infected traveler, with dozens of contacts identified and monitored – the virus somehow began spreading anyway. Even Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, at one point claimed he and his wife may have been the US’ “patient zero” after developing a bad cough on return from China. It has since emerged his wife’s diagnosis was “a sinus infection,” however.

Also on rt.com

Bias virus hits New York Times as double standards infect coverage of Covid-19 lockdown measures in China and Italy

March 12, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | | Leave a comment

NATO and COVID-19: a Parasitical Disease in Europe

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

The decision to go-ahead with NATO’s biggest-ever war games in Europe at a time of heightened fears over the coronavirus sure raises questions about the military alliance’s stated purpose of maintaining security.

NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has said the Defender-Europe 20 exercises will not be cancelled due to the flu-like disease which has now spread to every country in the European Union causing hundreds of deaths so far.

Over the next five months some 17 allied NATO members will participate in military maneuvers across seven European states: in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. All of the host nations have reported infections from the COVID-19 virus. “Host” being an operative word when it comes to also talking about the relationship with the U.S.-led NATO alliance.

Germany’s health minister Jens Spahn is quoted as saying that the coronavirus outbreak has “become a global pandemic” and the “worst has yet to come.”

In all, 37,000 troops are involved in the Defender-Europe 20 war games, the biggest contingency since the end of the Cold War nearly three decades ago. The U.S. is sending 20,000 personnel. Most of those troops will return to bases located in at least 20 American states. Thus, the risk factor of spreading the disease across Europe and the U.S. is significantly increased by the NATO events.

Going ahead with the European war games looks especially ill-advised given that U.S. forces in Asia-Pacific have cancelled similar military exercises that were scheduled in South Korea out of fears about coronavirus (COVID-19).

The Defender-Europe 20 events underway come amid reports that the U.S. Commander in Europe, Lt. General Christoper Cavoli, may have been infected after attending a recent military conference in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The top health advisor to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Brig. General Paul Friedrichs has also admitted that the number of COVID-19 cases among the Pentagon’s armed forces may be far higher than is being reported.

The seeming lack of cautionary measures by the U.S.-led NATO alliance is in contrast to growing public concerns for containing the disease. Italy – which has recorded the second highest fatalities worldwide after China – has placed a total lockdown on public travel for its 60 million population. Airlines across Europe have cancelled thousands of flights as some carriers go out of business altogether.

Sporting events across Europe including major soccer matches are being cancelled or will be held without attendance by fans. The six-nations rugby tournament has been thrown into disarray from match fixtures being rescheduled; a big match between Ireland and France due this weekend is postponed until October.

In Britain there are calls for parliament to be suspended after health minister Nadine Dorries was reported to have been infected. Boris Johnson’s government has been accused of complacency in dealing with the virus.

U.S. President Donald Trump has also come under fire for not taking sufficient containment measures or providing adequate resources such as testing kits. The official number of U.S. cases of COVID-19 is relatively low so far, but that is thought to be due to limited testing.

It would therefore seem reasonable in this context of pandemic risk that such a multinational event like NATO’s Defender-Europe 20 be called off. As it proceeds, the war games appear to a perfect vector for accelerating disease spread between two continents and beyond. Indeed, not parking these war games seems the height of carelessness.

How fitting that NATO should be so unresponsive to real need. This lumbering 29-nation military organization which consumes a combined annual budget of $1 trillion is a creature of habit and slavish ideology. Nearly 30 years after the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the world has moved on. But not, it seems, NATO. It continues to hold its war games supposedly defending Europe from “Russian invasion”.

If NATO can’t adjust to such glaring world realities as the end of the Soviet Union three decades ago, then no wonder its response to coronavirus is hardly fleet-footed. It’s the military equivalent of a dinosaur whose functioning is no longer supported by its environment.

The irony is that NATO’s obscene military largesse is crushing public finances that would otherwise be more usefully spent, such as building up healthcare infrastructure that would help mitigate crises like the coronavirus. Many other societal needs are chronically neglected because of exorbitant military budgets among NATO members. Donald Trump brags that he has cajoled European allies to fork out hundreds of billions more dollars on military budgets.

The coronavirus is but a stress-test on whole societies that have become hollowed out by excessive militarism and the corporate capitalist super-structure it serves.

Even before the coronavirus problem emerged in China earlier this year, the NATO war games in Europe (and elsewhere) have been a cause for much criticism. The geopolitical tensions that this U.S.-led militarism is engendering towards Russia and China have been deplored. Moscow has denounced the Defender-Europe 20 event as a “rehearsal for war” which is completely disconnected from reality. The inveterate Cold War ideology that drives NATO is imposing insecurity and risk of war on Europe in a way that makes a mockery of NATO claims about being dedicated to “security and defense”.

The reckless risk-taking with regard to inflaming a coronavirus pandemic is typical of NATO’s obsolete purpose. Like the disease itself, NATO is a parasite on host nations draining vital public resources. This organization should be “self-isolating”… 30 years too late.

March 12, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US

By Larry Romanoff | Global Research | March 11, 2020

It would be useful to read this prior article for background:

China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?

By Larry Romanoff, March 4, 2020

***

As readers will recall from the earlier article (above), Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists and pharmacologists have determined that the new coronavirus almost certainly originated in the US since that country is the only one known to have all five types – from which all others must have descended. Wuhan in China has only one of those types, rendering it in analogy as a kind of “branch” which cannot exist by itself but must have grown from a “tree”.

The Taiwanese physician noted that in August of 2019 the US had a flurry of lung pneumonias or similar, which the Americans blamed on ‘vaping’ from e-cigarettes, but which, according to the scientist, the symptoms and conditions could not be explained by e-cigarettes. He said he wrote to the US officials telling them he suspected those deaths were likely due to the coronavirus. He claims his warnings were ignored.

Immediately prior to that, the CDC totally shut down the US Military’s main bio-lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, due to an absence of safeguards against pathogen leakages, issuing a complete “cease and desist” order to the military. It was immediately after this event that the ‘e-cigarette’ epidemic arose.

Screenshot from The New York Times August 08, 2019

We also had the Japanese citizens infected in September of 2019, in Hawaii, people who had never been to China, these infections occurring on US soil long before the outbreak in Wuhan but only shortly after the locking down of Fort Detrick.

Then, on Chinese social media, another article appeared, aware of the above but presenting further details. It stated in part that five “foreign” athletes or other personnel visiting Wuhan for the World Military Games (October 18-27, 2019) were hospitalised in Wuhan for an undetermined infection.

The article explains more clearly that the Wuhan version of the virus could have come only from the US because it is what they call a “branch” which could not have been created first because it would have no ‘seed’. It would have to have been a new variety spun off the original ‘trunk’, and that trunk exists only in the US. (1)

There has been much public speculation that the coronavirus had been deliberately transmitted to China but, according to the Chinese article, a less sinister alternative is possible.

If some members of the US team at the World Military Games (18-27 October) had become infected by the virus from an accidental outbreak at Fort Detrick it is possible that, with a long initial incubation period, their symptoms might have been minor, and those individuals could easily have ‘toured’ the city of Wuhan during their stay, infecting potentially thousands of local residents in various locations, many of whom would later travel to the seafood market from which the virus would spread like wildfire  (as it did).

That would account also for the practical impossibility of locating the legendary “patient zero” – which in this case has never been found since there would have been many of them.

Next, Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease expert at Georgetown University in Washington, said in an article in Science magazine that the first human infection has been confirmed as occurring in November 2019, (not in Wuhan), suggesting the virus originated elsewhere and then spread to the seafood markets. “One group put the origin of the outbreak as early as 18 September 2019.” (2) (3)

Wuhan seafood market may not be source of novel virus spreading globally.

Description of earliest cases suggests outbreak began elsewhere.

The article states:

“As confirmed cases of a novel virus surge around the world with worrisome speed, all eyes have so far focused on a seafood market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the outbreak. But a description of the first clinical cases published in The Lancet on Friday challenges that hypothesis.” (4) (5)

The paper, written by a large group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

In the earliest case, the patient became ill on 1 December 2019 and had no reported link to the seafood market, the authors report. “No epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases”, they state. Their data also show that, in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace. “That’s a big number, 13, with no link”, says Daniel Lucey . . . (6)

Earlier reports from Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization had said the first patient had onset of symptoms on 8 December 2019 – and those reports simply said “most” cases had links to the seafood market, which was closed on 1 January. (7)

“Lucey says if the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019 – if not earlier – because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing. If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan – and perhaps elsewhere – before the cluster of cases from the city’s now-infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was discovered in late December. “The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace”, Lucey asserts.

“China must have realized the epidemic did not originate in that Wuhan Huanan seafood market”, Lucey told Science Insider. (8)

Kristian Andersen is an evolutionary biologist at the Scripps Research Institute who has analyzed sequences of 2019-nCoV to try to clarify its origin. He said the scenario was “entirely plausible” of infected persons bringing the virus into the seafood market from somewhere outside. According to the Science article,

“Andersen posted his analysis of 27 available genomes of 2019-nCoV on 25 January on a virology research website. It suggests they had a “most recent common ancestor” – meaning a common source – as early as 1 October 2019.” (9)

It was interesting that Lucey also noted that MERS was originally believed to have come from a patient in Saudi Arabia in June of 2012, but later and more thorough studies traced it back to an earlier hospital outbreak of unexplained pneumonia in Jordan in April of that year. Lucey said that from stored samples from people who died in Jordan, medical authorities confirmed they had been infected with the MERS virus. (10)

This would provide impetus for caution among the public in accepting the “official standard narrative” that the Western media are always so eager to provide – as they did with SARS, MERS, and ZIKA, all of which ‘official narratives’ were later proven to have been entirely wrong.

In this case, the Western media flooded their pages for months about the COVID-19 virus originating in the Wuhan seafood market, caused by people eating bats and wild animals. All of this has been proven wrong.

Not only did the virus not originate at the seafood market, it did not originate in Wuhan at all, and it has now been proven that it did not originate in China but was brought to China from another country. Part of the proof of this assertion is that the genome varieties of the virus in Iran and Italy have been sequenced and declared to have no part of the variety that infected China and must, by definition, have originated elsewhere.

It would seem the only possibility for origination is the US because only that country has the “tree trunk” of all the varieties. And it may therefore be true that the original source of the COVID-19 virus was the US military bio-warfare lab at Fort Detrick. This would not be a surprise, given that the CDC completely shut down Fort Detrick, but also because, as I related in an earlier article, between 2005 and 2012 the US had experienced 1,059 events where pathogens had been either stolen or escaped from American bio-labs during the prior ten years – an average of one every three days.

***

Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/CjGWaaDSKTyjWRMyQyGXUA

(2) https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6477/492.full

(3) Science; Jon Cohen; Jan. 26, 2020
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally

(4) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext

(5) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext

(6) http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020011109036

(7) http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020011509040

(8) https://sciencespeaksblog.org/2020/01/25/wuhan-coronavirus-2019-ncov-qa-6-an-evidence-based-hypothesis/

(9) http://virological.org/t/clock-and-tmrca-based-on-27-genomes/347

(10) http://applications.emro.who.int/emhj/v19/Supp1/EMHJ_2013_19_Supp1_S12_S18.pdf

Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Global Research, 2020

March 12, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Syria says will stand by allies on resistance axis to expel US from Western Asia

Press TV – March 12, 2020

A senior adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad hails “constant coordination” between Damascus and its allies in the fight against terrorism, saying the Arab nation will stand by the resistance front to help drive the US out of not only Syria but the entire Middle East region.

Assad’s political and media adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, made the remarks in an interview with Lebanon-based Arabic-language al-Mayadeen TV channel on Wednesday.

She said that Washington has been supporting the Takfiri al-Qaeda and Daesh terrorist groups, and that its sponsorship for the al-Qaeda-inspired al-Nusra Front terrorist outfit is of no surprise.

The Syrian people living east of the Euphrates River have been fighting against American occupation forces and enjoy the Damascus government’s backing for their resistance, she added.

Shaaban also stressed that the battle on eastern bank of the Euphrates is complicated and takes time, noting, however, that the Syrians will eventually expel US troops from their homeland.

The Syrian army has the backing of Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement in its battle against a host of militant groups, which have been wreaking havoc on the country since 2011.

Thanks to that support, the Damascus government has managed to win back control of almost all regions from the foreign-sponsored militants.

Syria has been engaged in a liberation operation in Idlib Province, the last major bastion of terrorists in the country.

Shaaban further emphasized that her country supports its allies on the regional resistance axis to drive American military personnel out of the entire West Asia region.

Syria in constant coordination with Iran, Hezbollah

There is complete and constant coordination between Damascus on one side and Tehran and the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement on the other side in political and military spheres, the Syrian official pointed out.

She hailed Tehran-Damascus relations as historical and strategic, reiterating that both Iran and Russia prioritize Syria’s sovereignty and independence.

Taking advantage of the mayhem in Syria, the US has deployed troops to Syria under the guise of fighting Daesh. It has been running military bases in the eastern part of the country, which many reports have revealed serve as training camps for terrorists.

The US has also been supporting anti-Damascus Kurdish militants in the country’s northeastern regions, calling them allies in the so-called fight against Daesh, which lost its territorial rule in the Arab country in late 2017.

In recent months, Washington has also deployed more troops and military equipment near Syrian oil fields to “secure” them, in what Damascus, Tehran and Moscow have denounced as an attempt to steal Syria’s crude resources.

In turn, Turkey supports militants fighting to topple the Damascus government. Those elements continue to target Syrian troops and allied Russian personnel.

Last week, Russia and Turkey agreed on a ceasefire to stop clashes in Syria’s northwestern Idlib Province that brought the two countries close to direct confrontation amid a Moscow-backed Syrian counter-terrorism operation.

Idlib truce paves ground for more Syrian gains

Elsewhere in her interview, Shaaban said the Idlib truce has no confidential terms and paves the way for the liberation of the districts of Arihah and Jisr al-Shughur.

In recent weeks, she added, the Syrian army wrested control over 2,000 kilometers of the country and inflicted casualties on militants and Turkish forces.

Shabban also slammed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for serving Israel’s interests in the region.

Erdogan, she added, uses the Palestine issue as a mere bargaining chip and dreams of occupying Syria.

A meeting between Assad and Erdogan is not possible as long as Turkey occupies parts of the Syrian territory, she said.

Syria keen to forge ties will all Arab states

Additionally, Assad’s aide stressed that Syria welcomes relations with all Arab countries, referring to recent visits by Egyptian and Libyan delegations.

She also hailed Algeria’s position on Syria, adding, however, that there are no exchanges between the two states.

March 12, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

This Isn’t a “Saudi-Russian” Oil War. It’s a Saudi & Russian War on Shale

MBS couldn’t get Russia to join him in aggressive cuts, so he forced it to join him in aggressive pumping — but Russia is not his target

By Marko Marjanović | Anti-Empire | March 11, 2020

The media is so eager to see Putin behind everything that it can’t see it is the Saudis who started this, and it’s US oil they’re targeting exactly as they already did once before.

At OPEC+ in Vienna Russia offered to extend the current cuts for another three months and then meet again. Saudi Arabia instead wanted to take another 1.5 million bpd from the market.

When Russia balked the Saudis made a 180-degree turn and declined the extension of existing cuts, slapped a big discount on their oil, and started warming up their spare capacity to start flooding the market come April 1st when the current OPEC+ quotas expire.

The 67-year old Putin wanted to continue the current neither here nor there approach. The 34-year old MBS wanted to try something radical and new. At least ostensibly he wanted more cuts that could lift all producers for which he needed Russia’s cooperation. When he couldn’t get it he instead went the flooding route for which he did not.

The media did MBS a huge favor by failing to notice it was he — the supposed US ally — who blew up the OPEC+ cuts and not Putin. (A typical headline: How Putin spurned the Saudis to start a war on America’s shale oil industry)

The media committed another mistake. It keeps deluding itself this is “Saudi-Russian” war where US energy is merely collateral damage:

This is silly. Just because MBS started flooding after talks with Russia didn’t go his way the media assumes his pumping is directed against Russia. When in fact every indication is that he wanted Russia as a partner, if not in radical cuts for which he needed its acquiescence, then at least in radical pumping for which he did not.

Whatever Russia’s previous preferred path it now has no choice but to fight for market share which will only increase the pressure on shale further. In other words, despite Moscow’s unwillingness the Saudis have in the end added Russian strength to their own, just for a different strategy.

Sure enough, Saudi Arabia is not in a great state to wage a long campaign, but it may not have to. Shale has never been weaker. The Saudis tried to drive it out before, between 2014 and 2017, and failed. Frackers found ways to slash cost and financial markets propped them up with even more loans.

Neither is likely this time around. Most cost-cutting that was possible has likely already been made, and with the next great recession and a drop in demand around the corner financial markets aren’t standing in line to get into energy that barely makes sense even now

Riyadh needs $85 oil to balance its budget. It can not hope to outlast Russia which can live on $40. But a 6-month flooding campaign to see if it can’t, together with Russia, collapse US shale isn’t the dumbest idea ever.

In fact, precisely the fact MBS needs oil at $85 is what would make him more desperate to try radical means to get there, whether they’re deep cuts or unrestricted production.

Call it the MBS stress test of the US oil bubble in an election year. Truly Trump has great friends…

March 11, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

US Army Cites Cybersecurity Concerns In Scrapping Planned Purchase of Israeli Military Tech

By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | March 11, 2020

After spending $373 million to buy two batteries of the Israeli-made Iron Dome missile defense system, the U.S. Army has announced that it is unable to integrate the batteries it purchased with its other air defense systems because Israel has refused to provide the Army with the source code. The Army asserted that without the source code, the system could not be integrated without causing grave cybersecurity vulnerabilities. As a result, the Army has now scrapped its plans to purchase an additional $600 million worth of Iron Dome components.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the Iron Dome system itself was largely financed by U.S. taxpayers after Congress authorized over $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds to be used by Israel for the development and production of the Iron Dome system, which has suffered from a series of embarrassing failures since it entered the market.

It remains to be seen if the other countries that have signed deals with Israel to purchase Iron Dome, including Azerbaijan and India, will take notice of the U.S. Army’s decision and similarly scrap those plans given Israel’s apparent refusal to provide the source code to even its closest military ally following purchase.

News of the Army’s decision was made public last Thursday when Gen. Mike Murray, commander of Army Futures Command, spoke to the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. “We believe we cannot integrate them into our air-defense system based upon some interoperability challenges, some cyber[security] challenges and some other challenges. So what we ended up having is two stand-alone batteries that will be very capable, but they cannot be integrated,” Murray told the subcommittee.

Murray further stated that it would prove “exceptionally difficult to integrate Iron Dome into our layered air-defense architecture [and] to get Iron Dome to talk to other systems [and] other radars, specifically the Sentinel radar.” “What you’re probably – almost certainly – going to see is two stand-alone systems. And if the best we can do is stand-alone systems, we do not want to buy another two batteries,” Murray added.

If future international purchases of Iron Dome are to be impacted by the U.S. Army’s decision, it will not only be a setback for Israel’s defense industry, but also that of the United States, given that U.S. weapons manufacturer Raytheon produces some of the system’s components and markets the systems within the United States. Notably, current U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is a former lobbyist for Raytheon, a company that closely collaborates with Israel’s defense industry on other systems as well, such as “David’s Sling.”

Esper’s history may be a factor in a potential reversal of the Army’s recent decision, which was urged by Israel’s Defense Ministry following Gen. Murray’s statements before Congress. Israel’s Defense Ministry asked the Army to reconsider their decision to halt future purchases and overlook the existing cybersecurity hurdles in integrating those already purchased “as it would express confidence and recognition of the system’s ‘exceptional capabilities’ and the quality of Israel’s defense industries,” the Jerusalem Post reported.

Israel’s decision to not reveal the source code of a system the U.S. helped finance and subsequently purchased is striking, particularly given that their refusal to do so has resulted in the loss of considerable revenue and the potential collapse of future international sales of the system. Israel’s history of using backdoors in software for intelligence and military purposes, including at sensitive U.S. government facilities, raise obvious concerns about the motive for such a decision.

Yet, while the U.S. Army has raised cybersecurity concerns about the lack of transparency regarding Iron Dome’s source code, the same company that creates Iron Dome’s software has its software running on critical infrastructure systems throughout the United States. Indeed, Iron Dome’s software was created by mPrest, whose largest stakeholder is Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which in turn is a state-owned company. Rafael is also the principal developer of the Iron Dome system.

In just the past few years, mPrest has become a major provider of software to U.S. utility companies across the country — from California to New York — and has also entered the European and Australian markets. It remains to be seen if the scrutiny over mPrest’s code for the Iron Dome system and the motives behind it will lead to scrutiny of the software that is being used at critical points of the U.S. power grid, particularly at a time when government officials and private companies (including Israeli-American cybersecurity company Cybereason) are warning that “foreign actors” are targeting the U.S. power grid with malicious intent.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

March 11, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | Leave a comment

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