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US gives 1 million masks to Israel as American troops have to make their own amid COVID-19 outbreak

Press TV – April 8, 2020

The US Department of Defense has reportedly supplied 1 million surgical masks to the Israeli regime for distribution among soldiers, despite the fact that the Pentagon has recently introduced a measure requiring U.S. personnel to make their own masks to combat the spread of the new coronavirus.

The Israeli English-language Jerusalem Post reported that the masks were procured from China, and a plane carrying the medical equipment intended for Israeli soldiers landed in Ben Gurion Airport on Tuesday night.

“In the past two weeks, we have purchased and flown to Israel tens of thousands of swabs, masks, protective suits for medical staff and more,” Limor Kolishevsky, head of the New York Purchasing and Logistics Division, said.

“A million masks, procured in China, were quickly flown to Israel with the intention that the Israeli military will be using them within the next few days,” he added.

The Jerusalem Post had initially published the article headlined “US Department of Defense give 1 million masks to IDF for coronavirus use,” and this is still visible in the article’s hyperlink on Twitter posts.

The newspaper, however, changed the headline shortly afterwards to read, “Israel brings 1 million masks from China for IDF soldiers,” in a possible attempt at downplaying the role of Washington in spite of shortages in protective equipment, including face masks, in the United States.

An Israeli military reporter even published on his Twitter page images of the shipment of masks as they arrived in the occupied lands.

On April 5, American weekly news magazine Newsweek reported that the US military had told its personnel to make their own masks to fight coronavirus.

“As an interim measure, all individuals are encouraged to fashion face coverings from household items or common materials, such as clean T-shirts or other clean cloths that can cover the nose and mouth area,” it added. “Medical personal protective equipment such as N95 respirators or surgical masks will not be issued for this purpose as these will be reserved for appropriate personnel.”

The decision to implement such guidance has already drawn criticism.

“While I applaud DoD for taking the initiative to order this action, you can’t help but wonder how the most powerful military in the world seems to be making up a response to this pandemic as they go each day,” Fred Wellman, a retired US Army officer who serves as CEO of veteran and military-focused research firm ScoutComms, told Newsweek.

“We have plans on the shelf for every possible thing on Earth. How was there not one for this and if there is, why aren’t we following it?” he added.

1,800 Israeli travelers stranded across the world 

Meanwhile, there are reports that over 1,800 Israeli travelers are still stranded in countries around the world amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry on Monday said 1,863 travelers from the occupied territories were stranded mostly in Thailand, New Zealand and Australia, due to the virus pandemic and seeking to return.

According to the ministry, 200 people were in Thailand, 179 in Australia, 164 in New Zealand, 144 in Argentina, 74 in Ukraine, 63 each in Mexico and Jordan, 55 in the Philippines, 51 in India, 31 in Colombia and 18 in Brazil.

The developments come after the head of Mossad’s technology department, identified only as “Het,” revealed that the Israeli spy agency has been running clandestine operations to sneak the medical supplies ordered by countries fighting the coronavirus outbreak into the occupied territories.

Het said last week that Tel Aviv had ordered Mossad to procure up to 130,000 objects related to fight the COVID-19 outbreak in Israel, ranging from protective gear to test kits, medicine, and ventilators.

“I have overseen many operations in my life, and I’ve never dealt with such a complex operation,” the Mossad officer remarked.

He claimed that countries are locked in a covert battle to take control of a limited supply of ventilators needed amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The number of Israelis infected with the coronavirus rose to 9,404 on Wednesday as health authorities confirmed 156 new cases. Meanwhile, the death toll rose to 72, as another seven people died from complications related to coronavirus.

Globally, approximately 1.5 million people are known to have been confirmed infected with the virus and more than 83,000 have died, according to figures from the www.worldometers.info website, which collates data from around the world.

April 8, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 3 Comments

‘Entire case is criminal conspiracy’: Ecuador’s Correa reveals ‘fraud’ behind corruption case against him to RT

RT | April 8, 2020

The bribery case against top Ecuadorian officials was a political ploy with a predetermined outcome, so it’s natural that the court wouldn’t allow any evidence that would crumble it, Ecuador’s ex-president Rafael Correa told RT.

On Tuesday, an Ecuadorian court convicted Correa and 17 others on charges of accepting bribes and spending them on political campaigning. The former president, who was tried in absentia, said the prosecution relied on fraudulent evidence while the judges would not accept proof of fabrication.

“[The prosecution] showed files from aide’s computer. We’ve managed to obtain them. A Colombian firm confirmed that they were obtained through hacking in 2016 and modified in 2018,” he told RT.

He was referring to files gathered from one of the defendants, Laura Teran, which were presented by prosecutors as evidence in the case. Teran worked for another defendant, Pamela Martinez, a former aide of Correa. Both women received reduced sentences in the case after pleading guilty.

After the trial started in February, Correa said the original files had been analyzed for his defense team by Adalid, a cybersecurity firm, but the court rejected the results.

“They would never accept this evidence. Because they are afraid of the truth.”

There are plenty of indicators that the prosecutors and the court worked hand-in-glove to hand down the guilty verdict, Correa insists. One of the justices had a personal connection to a secretary working at the attorney general’s office, he said. There was also a publication in alternative media of what was purported to be the pre-written verdict for the court to read. All these details point to a ‘processual fraud,’ according to Correa.

Correa said the government of President Lenin Moreno, his handpicked successor who made a policy U-turn after coming to power and became his fiercest accuser, simply wanted to eliminate competition. The sentence bars the former president from running for public offices for 25 years.

Ecuador is set to have two rounds of general elections in February and April next year. Correa remains a popular politician in the country, with the decade of his rule remembered for distancing the state from neoliberal policies and a rapid reduction of poverty. Moreno switched back to big-business-friendly governance and saw his support dwindle amid several corruption scandals and, more recently, poor handling of the coronavirus epidemic.

April 8, 2020 Posted by | Deception | | Leave a comment

International Solidarity Movement statement on reported FBI probe

International Solidarity Movement | April 7, 2020

Recently, the Intercept published a report of a surveillance investigation conducted by the FBI on the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The highly invasive investigation targeted ISM activists, their associates, and other organizations ISM worked with, from 2004 – 2006, using informants as well as physical and telecommunications surveillance.

We, at the International Solidarity Movement, denounce this shameless abuse of power and misuse of public funds in an attempt to criminalize Palestinian solidarity and anti-occupation activism, as well as the current ongoing campaign in some American states to criminalize the BDS movement. ISM activists have been secretly spied on and targeted by various intelligence services, including British, Israeli, and U.S.,  for over 19 years, merely for standing up for the rights of Palestinians.

We call on those who believe that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity to take action and raise awareness about local, state, and national attempts to criminalize nonviolent resistance such as BDS and Palestinian advocacy, and boycott those profiting off the Occupation of Palestine.

According to the Intercept report, an FBI investigation was launched after an American volunteer with ISM was shot and wounded by Israeli forces at a protest in Occupied Palestine. Instead of investigating the foreign army that injured an American citizen exercising his First Amendment-protected right to peaceful protest, the FBI’s response was to probe the survivor. While the 2 primary investigations were launched by the Los Angeles and St. Louis FBI Field Offices, agents from at least 11 cities were involved in spying on various ISM activists and related organizations. Using far right and extremist news sources, the investigation attempted to link ISM to international terrorism.

After two years of investigation, multiple rights and privacy violations, hundreds of pages of reports and tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars wasted, the investigation only proved what we have always maintained: ISM is a non-violent movement committed to ending the Occupation of Palestine through non-violent means.

Notably, the investigation began in March 2004, shortly after the murder of American Rachel Corrie and Briton Tom Hurndall (2003) by the Israeli army. The probe coincided with an Israeli government campaign to de-legitimize ISM and discredit Palestinian rights activists. It also reflects the increase in recent years of FBI investigations into non-violent activist organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Antiwar.com. Today, lobby groups, politicians, and leaders in the United States continue to violate First Amendment-protected rights to free speech through criminalizing non-violent Palestinian activism, such as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“The fact that ISM was under this kind of extensive investigation is ridiculous and a complete waste of taxpayer money. ISM has always been open and transparent about who we are, what we do, and what we stand for, which is purportedly what this country stands for — freedom and human rights.” — ISM co-founder Huwaida Arraf

“In Dr. King’s time, surveillance was justified in terms of alleged Communist influence; in recent years, surveillance has been justified by alleged association with terrorists. In both cases, U.S. citizens were employing nonviolent action to confront injustice and oppression.” — ISM activist spied on by the FBI, Mark Chmiel

April 8, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | 3 Comments

OPCW Investigators Say Syrian Air Force Responsible for March 2017 Attacks on Ltamenah

Sputnik -April 8, 2020

The OPCW’s newly-formed body in charge of identifying the perpetrators of chemical attacks said in its first report on Wednesday that the Syrian Arab Air Force’s aircraft had dropped bombs containing sarin and chlorine on the town of Ltamenah in Hama province in March 2017.

The Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) was established in 2018. Russia opposed the move, warning against expanding the OPCW’s competence from conducting probes to attributing blame and saying that only the UN Security Council is eligible to make such judgments.

“[T]he IIT has concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the perpetrators of the use of sarin as a chemical weapon in Ltamenah on 24 and 30 March 2017, and the use of chlorine as a chemical weapon on 25 March 2017 were individuals belonging to the Syrian Arab Air Force”, IIT Coordinator Santiago Onate-Laborde said in a statement.

According to him, “attacks of such a strategic nature would have only taken place on the basis of orders from the higher authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic military command”.

“In the end, the IIT was unable to identify any other plausible explanation”, he added.

Commenting on the report, OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias said that the IIT is “not a judicial or quasi-judicial body with the authority to assign individual criminal responsibility, nor does the IIT have the authority to make final findings on non-compliance with the Convention.”

“It is now up to the Executive Council and the Conference of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention, the United Nations Secretary-General, and the international community as a whole to take any further action they deem appropriate and necessary”, he stated.

The IIT explains its mission as identifying and reporting “on all information potentially relevant to the origin of those chemical weapons in those instances in which the OPCW’s Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) determines or has determined that use or likely use occurred”.

The FFM concluded back in June 2018 that sarin and chlorine were “very likely used as a chemical weapon” in Ltamenah on 24 March 2017, and 25 March 2017, respectively.

Damascus has repeatedly refuted the allegations of the chemical weapons use, saying that the full destruction of its arsenal was confirmed by the OPCW in 2016.

April 8, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 1 Comment

The Project for a New American Century and the Age of Bioweapons: 20 Years of Psychological Terror

By Matthew Ehret | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 8, 2020

A little over 20 years ago, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) conducted a military exercise that involved a “hypothetical scenario” of hijacked planes flying into both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

One year later, on October 24-26, 2000, another “hypothetical” military exercise was played out featuring an airline crashing into the Pentagon killing 341 people followed by yet another May 2001 Department of Defense “hypothetical scenario” which saw hundreds of medical personnel training for a “guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner” crashing into the Pentagon.

What arose from the smoke and debris of September 11, 2001 was unlike anything the sleeping masses or international community expected.

The shock effect so traumatized the masses that quite suddenly, citizens found themselves willing to give up their liberties at home while acquiescing to any retaliatory action desired by their government abroad. The scale of horror was so great that the international community banded together and showed their love and solidarity towards America in the wake of the tragedy with candlelight vigils across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and South America. Humanity’s natural tendency to embrace and aid our fellow man in times of crisis expressed itself like a bright light in a world of confused darkness and a hope for a durable peace awoke in the hearts of many.

Alas, as the world came soon to discover, that hope was short lived.

The Neocon Takeover of America

Police State measures grew swiftly with the Patriot Act and mass internal surveillance under the “crisis management” run by the neocon cabal in the White House. While a new type of regime change war was created abroad, Dangerous protocols for Cheney’s “Continuity of Government” were set into motion and with these procedures, new mandates for Martial Law were created amplifying the powers, financing and deployment of U.S. Military capabilities both within the USA “under crisis conditions” and around the world.

Governments that had no connection to 9/11 were swiftly targeted for destruction using false evidence of “yellowcake” produced in the bowels of MI6, and a broader unipolar military encirclement of both Russia and China was set into motion which President Putin called out brilliantly in his famous 2007 Munich Security Conference Speech.

Of course this should not have been a surprise for anyone who took the time to read the Project for a New American Century manifesto published in October 2000 entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ (RAD).

Under the Chairmanship of William Kristol (a neocon agent today leading the charge to impeach President Trump) and co-authored by John Bolton, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, and Donald Rumsfeld, RAD stated that to “further the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one-absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor”. Going further to describe its Hobbesian agenda, the cabal stated that “the Cold War was a bipolar world; the 21st century world is- for the moment at least- decidedly unipolar with America as the world’s sole superpower”.

While much has been said about the “inside job” of 9/11, a lesser appreciated terrorist act occurred over several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001 killing five and infective 17 in the form of envelopes laced with bio-weaponized anthrax.

The Age of Bioweapons and PNAC

This anthrax attack led quickly into the 2004 Bioshield Act with a $5 billion budget and mandate to “pre-empt and defend further bioweapon attacks”. This new chapter of the revolution in military affairs was to be coordinated from leading bioweapons facility at the Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. Since 2002, over $50 billion has been spent on Bioweapons research and defense to date.

The earlier October 2000 RAD document emphasized the importance which the neocon cabal placed on bioweapons (and other next generation war tech) stating: “Combat will likely take place in new dimensions: In space, cyber-space and perhaps the world of microbes… advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.

Lawyer and bioweapons expert Francis Boyle stated in 2007 that Fort Detrick’s mandate includes “acquiring, growing, modifying, storing, packing, and dispersing classical, emerging and genetically engineered pathogens for offensive weapon programs.” These new post-9/11 practices fully trashed the 1975 UN Convention Against Biological Weapons ratified by the USA by establishing a vast international network of bioweapons labs coordinated from Fort Detrick which would be assigned the role of doing much of the dirty work that the U.S. was “officially” prevented from doing on its own soil.

Where Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag to justify his enabling Acts, the neocons had their 9/11. The difference in the case of America was that Cheney failed to achieve the same level of absolute control over his nation as Hitler captured by 1934 (evidenced by pushback from patriotic American military intelligence circles against Cheney’s Iran war agenda). With this neocon failure, the republic lurched on.

The Rot Continues Under Obama

Obama’s rise was seen as a hopeful light to many naïve Democrats who still had not realized how a “false left” vs “false right” clash had been slowly constructed over the post WWII years. Either camp increasingly found itself converging towards the same world government agenda through using somewhat dissimilar paths and flavors.

It didn’t take long for many of Obama’s more critically-minded supporters to realize that the mass surveillance/police state measures, regime change wars, and military confrontation of Russia and China begun under Cheney not only failed to stop, but even expanded at faster rates than ever.

In the months before Obama left office in July 2016, the classified Directive 40: National Continuity Policy was enacted creating a line of “Devolution authority” for all branches of the government to a “duplicate chain of individuals secreted outside Washington available in a catastrophic emergency”. Days prior to Trump’s inauguration, Federal Continuity Directive 1 was issued to transfer authority to military forces who could be used to suppress “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.”

The Importance of Knowing This History

There are very clearly two diametrically opposing methods of analyzing, and solving the existential crisis threatening our world currently: Multipolar or Unipolar.

While Russia and China represent a multipolar/pro-nation state vision driven by large scale development projects that benefit all- rich and poor alike exemplified by the New Silk Road, Polar Silk Road, Space Silk Road and now Health Silk Road, something much darker is being promoted by the same financial oligarchy that owns both right and left sides of the deep state coin. These later forces have provably positioned themselves to take control of western governments under crisis conditions and are not afraid to use every weapon in their arsenal to destroy their perceived enemies… including bioweaponry. This latter uncomfortable reality was asserted quite candidly by leading officials of Iran and even the Chinese Foreign Ministry just weeks ago.

Admittedly, whether or not the current coronavirus pandemic is a bioweapon is not yet fully proven (although growing body of evidence asserts that it is, as seen here and here and here and here). What we know for certain are the following facts:

Numbers are being systematically misrepresented to convey much greater rates of death vs infections as dozens of leading medical experts have proven. Contaminated test kits have started showing up in the UK on March 30 and countless false results are showing up since covid test kits are often not differentiating between covid-19 and the typical coronavirus strains of the flu that average between 7-14% of flu cases every year. This doesn’t mean that COVID-19 should not be taken seriously, but only that the reported numbers are being artificially falsified to generate heightened panic.

The COVID-19 Task Force at London’s Imperial College has been found to be the singular source of the false “left” vs “right” debate poisoning the west’s response to the pandemic. Teams working out of this British Intelligence nexus have generated BOTH the “do-nothing-and-wait-until-natural-resistance-evolves” herd immunity theory while simultaneously creating the “shut everything down one-size-fits-all” doomsday models being used by the WHO, UN, and leading Deep State assets like Michael Bloomberg, Steve Bannon, Bill Gates and George Soros. In case you doubt the influence of the Imperial College on world policy, a March 17 New York Times article described them in the following terms: “With ties to the World Health Organization and a team of 50 scientists, led by a prominent epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson, Imperial is treated as a sort of gold standard, its mathematical models feeding directly into government policies.”

Investigative Journalist Whitney Webb’s February 2020 research demonstrated conclusively that DARPA had received funding in tandem with Fort Detrick since 2017 on genetic modification of novel coronaviruses (with a focus on bats) as well as the development of never before used DNA and mRNA vaccines which change the structure of DNA both for an individual and potentially for a whole race.

Lastly, and most importantly, the pre-9/11 military exercises were not merely hypothetical scenarios but exercises which led directly into a new “Pearl Harbor” that modified the behaviour of Americans under terror, panic and misinformation like nothing ever seen before. The parallels to today’s coronavirus outbreak cannot be missed for anyone who has taken a serious look at the strange case of the Event 201 Global Pandemic Exercise on October 19, 2019 in New York. Event 201 was sponsored by the Michael Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and World Economic Forum which ran simulations under the “hypothetical” scenario of a novel coronavirus pandemic killing 60 million people. Reviewing just one of Event 201’s many recordings openly available on their official site features some very disturbing parallels to the events unfolding today:

Unipolar Martial Law or Multipolar Marshall Plan?

As I outlined in my previous paper, the mass-panic generated by COVID-19 has created a 9/11-situation with the expected police state laws being passed under the radar of many people who would normally be paying attention to such things. One of the most dangerous measures enacted involved a classified bill in February which formally mandates the head of NORTHCOM (who is also the head of NORAD) to become acting President of the United States under conditions of Martial Law, un-governability of the executive branch or general chaos in America. This later scenario is not terribly unlikely considering the danger of a financial blowout of the banking system combined with economic lockdowns of the west.

China and Russia both understand the nature of the game and both nations have acted responsibly in dealing with the outbreak of Coronavirus with China’s successful containment having won seven consecutive days of no new cases. It is important that unlike the remedies promoted by London’s Imperial College, neither Russia or China have totally shut down their nations, but have rather kept their economies alive by selecting methods for selective quarantines and lockdowns (China only locked down 15 nations plus Wuhan while the remaining 95% of their economy continued to produces and support the recovering component).

We know that President Trump has resisted the pressure by Deep State Experts to shut down America and has stated so repeatedly, but up until his recent conversations with Xi Jinping and Putin, there were very few options available to him beyond those proposed by Dr. Cauci, the Green New Dealing Dems or “bailout everything” monetarists around Mnuchin and Kudlow.

Now that China and Russia have begun sending vital medical equipment to America as part of the Health Silk Road (over the screams of neocons and neoliberal technocrats like), a new possibility for a cure has presented itself. If Trump acts decisively with courage and intelligence, there is still a chance that sovereign nation states may yet stay in the drivers’ seat and use this crisis as an opportunity to force through a debt jubilee, banking reform and new Bretton Woods emergency conference to establish a foundation for a new just economic system. If Trump is unsuccessful in this task, it is more than a little scary to think about what hell will beset the world in the coming months and years.

April 8, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 1 Comment

Trump Regime War Department Concealing Numbers of COVID-19 Infected Military Personnel

By Stephen Lendman | April 2, 2020

On Monday, the Pentagon admitted that over 1,000 US military personnel are infected with COVID-19 — how much over not explained.

On the same day, it ordered commanders on all US bases worldwide to stop revealing numbers of infected personnel on their installations, including ships at sea and in ports.

If the secretive Pentagon admitted to a thousand COVID-19 cases, the number is likely much higher, growing exponentially for military personnel living and operating in close quarters.

At the height of Spanish Flu infections in 1918 during WW I’s final year, up to 40% of US army and navy personnel were ill from influenza and pneumonia — causing more deaths than trench warfare and other combat.

Thousands of troops aboard transport ships to and from France died.

During battlefield operations, commanders prioritize their assigned mission. The health and welfare of military personnel can get short shrift.

If numbers of troops become sick from a contagious disease, it can spread like wildfire to others because they’re in close proximity to comrades in arms.

Texas is home to 15 US military bases, mostly around Corpus Christi and San Antonio.

The latter’s Mayor Ron Nirenberg criticized non-reporting of COVID-19 outbreaks, saying “the public has a right to know,” adding:

“The lack of information is complicating a coordinated pandemic response at the state and federal level.”

“One of the biggest battles that we have is helping people understand the seriousness of the situation.”

According to the NYT, Navy Times, and other media reports, over 100 US military personnel aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt are infected with COVID-19.

The warship’s crew numbers over  4,000, most members working, eating, and sleeping in close proximity to each other, leaving them vulnerable to contagion.

The San Francisco Chronicle broke the story on Tuesday after obtaining a copy of Crozier’s letter, saying:

Capt. Brett Crozier wrote to Pentagon directly because of the threat of rapidly spreading infections.

He explained that outbreaks occurred in less than a week, urgently asking for help because the ship has limited quarantine capacity, adding:

“This will require a political solution… We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors.”

“Due to a warship’s inherent limitations of space the spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating.”

“Removing the majority of personnel from a deployed US nuclear aircraft carrier and isolating them for two weeks may seem like an extraordinary measure.”

“Keeping over 4,000 young men and women on board the TR is an unnecessary risk and breaks faith with those Sailors entrusted to our care.”

“Due to the close quarters required on a warship and the current number of positive cases, every single Sailor, regardless of rank, on board the TR must be considered ‘close contact.’ ”

“Decisive action is required now in order to… prevent tragic outcomes. (O)ur focus now must be on quarantine and isolation.”

The Trump regime war department sent mixed messages in response to Captain Crozier’s plea.

Asked about the issue on Tuesday, Trump dismissively said “let the military make that decision.”

War secretary Esper’s response was similar, saying he didn’t read Crozier’s letter, but doesn’t think evacuating the ship is necessary.

I don’t think we’re at that point,” he said, adding:

“We’re moving a lot of supplies and assistance, medical assistance, out to the carrier in Guam. We’re providing additional medical personnel as they need it.”

In other words, most crew members are likely inadequately treated or getting none at all.

According to chief of naval operations Admiral Mike Gilday, the navy is taking “this threat very seriously,” adding:

“We are confident that our aggressive response will keep USS Theodore Roosevelt able to respond to any crisis in the region.”

None occurred since WW II ended other than US invented ones.

Acting navy secretary Thomas Modly said:

“I know that our command organization has been aware of this for about 24 hours, and we have been working actually the last seven days to move those sailors off the ship and get them into accommodations in Guam.”

“The problem is that Guam doesn’t have enough beds right now and we’re having to talk to the government there to see if we can get some hotel space, create tent-type facilities.”

According to former former NATO supreme allied commander Europe, retired Admiral James Stavridis, “we should expect more such incidents because warships are a perfect breeding ground for coronavirus.”

If most or all crew members remain onboard, they’re all vulnerable to infection, rendering the vessel non-battle ready.

On Friday, Fox News reported two COVID-19 cases aboard the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan.

Given the contagiousness of the virus, the number of infected crew members is likely much higher by now.

The same is likely the case on most or all US bases and ships where large numbers of military personnel are in close contact with each other, social distancing not possible.

The same likelihood applies to military forces of other countries.

A Final Comment

Most worrisome is how fast outbreaks are spreading among members of the US general public and medical staff on the front lines of treating infected and other patients.

Even more worrisome is the failure of the Trump regime and Congress to act responsibly straightaway when outbreaks began and epidemiologists and other medical experts sounded the alarm about the risk of them spreading rapidly.

Containment, testing, and treating the sick should be prioritized above all else at the federal, state and local levels.

The US is the only developed country without some form of universal healthcare.

Millions of laid off workers without pay or company health insurance when provided will be hard-pressed to put food on the table and pay rent or service mortgages if the current crisis continues for months.

If they become ill, they may skip treatment because of affordability and try to tough it out on their own.

Communities with large numbers of infected individuals are breeding grounds for spreading disease to others — even if individuals hunker down and only go out to buy food and essentials.

If the Trump regime responded to outbreaks like China’s imposition of draconian measures in Wuhan, rapidly rising outbreaks in the US might not be happening.

Instead, contagion is spreading through many communities nationwide at an alarming rate.

The more infected people in a nation with a large population like the US and no universal healthcare, the greater the likelihood that millions could be affected and hundreds of thousands could die needlessly.

April 8, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | | 1 Comment

French Navy flagship & its Only carrier ‘Charles de Gaulle’ cuts Middle East op as Dozens of sailors sicken

RT | April 8, 2020

France’s sole aircraft carrier ‘Charles de Gaulle’ had to suspend its Mediterranean Sea mission and turn back to port shortly after around 40 of its crewmembers were placed under medical observation with suspected Covid-19.

All symptomatic sailors have been “isolated” from the rest of the crew and are being constantly monitored by medical staff, the Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

“They have symptoms consistent with a possible Covid-19 infection. These first symptoms have appeared recently.”

The illness struck the crew when the nuclear-powered ship was making its way to the Mediterranean Sea to participate in France’s Operation Chammal, directed against Islamist militants in the Middle East. Now, it will return to the southern French port of Toulon, where it had originally planned to dock on April 23.

Last month, the US Navy had to isolate more than 4,000 personnel on board the aircraft carrier ‘USS Theodore Roosevelt’ off Guam, after around 100 of its crew had tested positive for Covid-19.

April 8, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Head of EU’s top science body quits after Covid-19 response plans get bogged down by Brussels bureaucracy

RT | April 8, 2020

The head of EU’s main science organization has resigned just months after taking the job. He said both the body and EU leadership failed to adopt a robust science-based approach to the Covid-19 outbreak when one was badly needed.

Professor Mauro Ferrari submitted his resignation to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday, effective immediately. His four-year term ended abruptly just months after starting on January 1. Ferrari said he was “extremely disappointed by the European response to Covid-19,” according to the Financial Times, which first reported the news.

Ferrari headed the European Research Council (ERC), a body established in 2007 with a multibillion-euro budget with the goal of supporting scientific discovery in the EU. The ERC’s ‘bottom-up’ approach to distributing grants clashed with Ferrari’s suggestion of launching a large-scale effort to fight the pandemic, which he proposed in March after it became apparent that the outbreak would cause a health crisis in Europe.

“I thought that at a time like this, the very best scientists in the world should be provided with resources and opportunities to fight the pandemic, with new drugs, new vaccines, new diagnostic tools, new behavioral dynamic approaches based on science, to replace the oft-improvised intuitions of political leaders,” he explained.

The proposal was rejected by ERC’s Scientific Council. Ferrari said he tried to get his ideas implemented through von der Leyen, but the very fact of him working directly with the Commission head “created an internal political thunderstorm.”

“The proposal was passed on to different layers of European Commission administration, where I believe it disintegrated upon impact,” he said. He lamented a lack of coordination of national policies in response to the crisis and said his experience completely changed his view of the EU, of which he used to be “a fervent supporter.”

A spokesman for the Commission expressed regret that Ferrari had resigned “at this early stage in his mandate.” He said 50 ongoing or completed ERC projects were contributing to fighting the pandemic.

Ferrari is a US-Italian nanomedicine pioneer focusing on developing new cancer treatments.

April 8, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment