Worldwide Nightmare Theatre, Empire of Chaos Enhanced and Expanded

[kladner]

"This is not an economic policy. It is the collective punishment of civilians. It is an act of biological warfare against children, the elderly, and people of all ages."

Even before the pandemic, Iranian civilians were suffering and dying as a result of US sanctions. A report from Human Rights Watch found that “current economic sanctions, despite the humanitarian exemptions, are causing unnecessary suffering to Iranian citizens afflicted with a range of diseases and medical conditions.”

An article in The Lancet medical journal concluded in November 2018 that sanctions “will inevitably lead to a decrease in survival of children with cancer.”

“A decrease in survival of children.”

An Iranian physician who practices nuclear medicine wrote in another medical journal that sanctions have made it extremely difficult for medical companies to obtain supplies, with nuclear medicine further complicated by its use of material regulated by atomic agencies. The conclusion: “The most critical patients have been affected the worst including children, patients with cancer, hemophilia, cardiovascular disease, asthma and epilepsy.”

That was before the pandemic. And now?

“Iran is Italy,” said a former State Department official, “only on steroids.”

The Iranian people are being deprived of critical medical supplies even as the pandemic strikes in its full force. Sanctions don’t target Iran’s leaders, who will in all likelihood receive the care they need. It targets civilians, which very likely violates international law, and therefore US law.

It clearly violates moral law.

Let's not forget that such crimes are perpetrated against the people of Venezuela as well.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by kladner

"This is not an economic policy. It is the collective punishment of civilians. It is an act of biological warfare against children, the elderly, and people of all ages."

Let's not forget that such crimes are perpetrated against the people of Venezuela as well.

In the first place: Would that be from this article?

In the second place: This is an obvious misapplication of the term "biological warfare." The US didn't bring the virus to Iran.

In the third place: The US offered aid to Iran to help them fight the virus. The Iranians turned it down. And, irony of ironies, the reason excuse Ayatollah Khamenei gave for turning it down, as per this post (note: article cited therein has been moved to here), was precisely that the virus was a biological warfare agent designed by the US and targeting Iranians.

The possibilities of this sort of mindless America-bashing are endless. Suppose Iran has an earthquake. Say the sanctions make it difficult to rescue people, and -- hey presto! the US is conducting geological warfare against Iran! (I note in this regard that, after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the US was in fact accused of causing the earthquake.) Or, say they get a weather-related disaster of some sort. Just say the US sanctions are making recovery difficult, and all of a sudden, the US is waging meteorological warfare against Iran!

So yeah, I say this is overheated rhetoric.

[Till]

"Germany, France, UK circumvent sanctions to send medical goods to Iran"


https://www.jpost.com/International/...to-Iran-623037
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...-iran-medical/

[kladner]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

In the first place: Would that be from this article?

In the second place: This is an obvious misapplication of the term "biological warfare." The US didn't bring the virus to Iran.

In the third place: The US offered aid to Iran to help them fight the virus. The Iranians turned it down. And, irony of ironies, the reason excuse Ayatollah Khamenei gave for turning it down, as per this post (note: article cited therein has been moved to here), was precisely that the virus was a biological warfare agent designed by the US and targeting Iranians.

The possibilities of this sort of mindless America-bashing are endless. Suppose Iran has an earthquake. Say the sanctions make it difficult to rescue people, and -- hey presto! the US is conducting geological warfare against Iran! (I note in this regard that, after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the US was in fact accused of causing the earthquake.) Or, say they get a weather-related disaster of some sort. Just say the US sanctions are making recovery difficult, and all of a sudden, the US is waging meteorological warfare against Iran!

So yeah, I say this is overheated rhetoric.

Your logical rigor totally destroys this uncalled for and erroneous piece of fear mongering. Your level of divine humanitarian concern utterly shames my deviant and counter-productive efforts.

Now please justify the continued, illegal economic warfare against any country. Your concern for tiddly bits of "precision" betrays your habitually expressed US jingoism. Consider developing just a tiny bit of compassion, and just a little bit less chauvinism

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by kladner

Your logical rigor totally destroys this uncalled for and erroneous piece of fear mongering. Your level of divine humanitarian concern utterly shames my deviant and counter-productive efforts.

Now please justify the continued, illegal economic warfare against any country. Your concern for tiddly bits of "precision" betrays your habitually expressed US jingoism. Consider developing just a tiny bit of compassion, and just a little bit less chauvinism

Oh, yes, I am well known as a member in good standing of the Il Duce Fan Club. Keep America Great! Rah-rah! Sis-boom-bah!

As you predicted, your most recent previous misconstruing was not the last.

I was merely pointing out that, by adopting the overheated rhetoric (The US is waging biological warfare!), the Common Dreams piece (I hope I got the citation right) undercut its credibility, at least to anyone outside the echo chamber.

No question the sanctions are causing the deaths of a lot of people from COVID-19 due to lack of resources. The whole Admin policy of scrapping the nuclear deal was IMO stupid.

That stupidity was exceeded, IMO by Khamenei's refusal to accept US Aid.

[kladner]

Well, there is this bit of imperialsim,

The whole Admin policy of scrapping the nuclear deal was IMO stupid.

That stupidity was exceeded, IMO by Khamenei's refusal to accept US Aid.

So after decades of economic war by the US, Iran should have been humbly grateful for some token assistance. If they would just kiss Uncle Sam's derriere thing would be so much better.

[kladner]

This is another example of criminal US sanction causing civilian deaths. Covid-19 came along long after the US embargo of Venezuela had caused tens of thousands of deaths. Causes ranged from lack of all medical supplies, intercepted food shipments, and blockage of international banking. When a world power causes civilian populations to go without medications and food, that is biological warfare. That is a crime against humanity.

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/0...-violent-plot/

UPDATED: Washington’s indictment of Maduro and members of his inner circle has backfired and could lead to the arrest of coup leader Juan Guaidó, reports Leonardo Flores.

Editor’s Update: On Wednesday the U.S. announced it was sending a naval force to the Caribbean supposedly to combat drug trafficking coming from Venezuela. As this piece points out, relatively little drug traffic passes through Venezuela, raising concerns about what the force’s true mission is. In an article written for L’Antidiplomatico on Saturday, Pino Arlacchi, the former executive director of the UN’s Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention , wrote:

“I was also dumbfounded because I have been dealing with anti-drugs for forty years, and I have never met Venezuela along my way. Before, during and after my position as UNODC Executive Director (1997-2002), the UN drug program, I have never had the opportunity to visit that country because Venezuela has always been outside the major traffic circuits. of cocaine between Colombia, the main country, producer, and the USA, the main consumer.

Only in the sick fantasy of Trump and associates is there any illegal narcotic trade between Venezuela and the United States. Just consult the two most important sources on the subject, the latest UNODC report on drugs, and the latest document from the DEA, the American drug police, dated December 2019.”

In addition to the indictments, Attorney General William Barr offered a $15 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Maduro, as well as $10 million rewards for Diosdado Cabello (president of Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly), Tarek El Aissami (vice president for the economy), Hugo Carvajal (former director of military intelligence) and Cliver Alcalá (retired general). [and prominent member of the Venezuelan opposition]

The indictment has backfired already. Hours after the announcement, Alcalá posted videos online that threaten to cause further splits in the opposition and exposed a violent plot that could result in the arrest of Juan Guaidó. Before going into those details, however, it’s important to understand just how politically biased the charges are against Maduro et al.

The myth that Venezuela is a narco-state has already been debunked by the Washington Office in Latin America (WOLA), a think tank in Washington that generally supports U.S. regime change operations in the region, as well as by FAIR, 15 y Último, Misión Verdad, Venezuelanalysis and others. It cannot be denied that Venezuela is a transit country for cocaine, but as the maps above and below show, less than 7 percent of total drug movement from South America transits from Venezuela (the Eastern Caribbean region includes Colombia’s Guajira Peninsula). These maps, produced by the Drug Enforcement Agency and U.S. Southern Command, respectively, immediately raise questions as to why Venezuela is the country being targeted.

[kladner]

https://thesaker.is/will-this-pandem...carrier-fleet/
You can find a fairly extensive autobiography on the Saker. Just his home page is likely to raise some hackles. He was an intelligence analyst, and then worked in IT.
[This column was written for the Unz Review]

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

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

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

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

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

**[It took one modest-by-today's-standards torpedo to jam the Bismark's rudder assembly hard over and hasten its inevitable destruction.]

[kladner]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55099.htm

Nowhere does this war drive find more naked expression than in the massive government bailout that is being organized for the US arms industry. With tens of millions of workers unemployed, many facing hunger, and a drive by both the Trump administration and state governors to force a premature return to work, billions upon billions of dollars are being lavished upon military contractors to sustain their guaranteed profits and the obscene fortunes generated for their major shareholders.

The Pentagon’s top weapons procurer, Undersecretary of Defense Ellen Lord, told a press conference Monday that some $3 billion has already been funneled to the arms makers in the form of early payments for existing contracts, in addition to billions more approved by Congress in the first CARES Act, which pumped trillions of dollars into the financial markets. She indicated that much more will be doled out once Congress passes another stimulus package.

Asked by a reporter how much would be need to insure Washington’s Merchants of Death from any losses due to the coronavirus pandemic, she replied, “We’re talking billions and billions on that one.” Lord added that the first priority for this aid program was the “modernization process of the nuclear triad.”

[ewmayer]

The War Nerd: How Many Dead Yemeni Nobodies Does It Take to Equal 1 Wapo Contributor? | naked capitalism

[garo]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

The War Nerd: How Many Dead Yemeni Nobodies Does It Take to Equal 1 Wapo Contributor? | naked capitalism

So true.