Co-Written by Benjamin Mateus and Patrick Martin
The coronavirus killed at least 812 people in the United States Tuesday, the highest death toll since the pandemic began, while nearly 25,000 new cases were reported, bringing the total number infected to more than 188,000, the largest number in the world by far.
Along with the unprecedented scale of the infection, its sheer speed is staggering. On March 10, there were only 1,000 reported coronavirus infections in the United States. Three weeks later, it is nearing 200 times that level. Another such three weeks would see 40 million people infected in the United States.
The US death toll has not yet reached the level of Italy (12,428) or Spain (8,464), but that is only a matter of days. And White House officials continue to escalate their projections of the total number of deaths in a “best-case” scenario, setting the figure at a staggering 240,000, with Trump himself hinting that the total could be double that.
President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, March 13, 2020, in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci]
Four countries—Italy, Spain, the US and France—have now seen more deaths than China, where the epidemic first broke out in the city of Wuhan last December. After 3,305 deaths, China claims to have largely suppressed the outbreak through systematic testing, contact tracing and quarantining of those exposed to the coronavirus.
The American media and the Trump administration continually describe efforts to counteract the coronavirus as a war, where the frontlines are being drawn in emergency rooms and ICUs throughout the United States, and especially in the New York metropolitan area, where half of all COVID-19 cases are located. On Tuesday the death toll in New York City itself hit 1,096, and 10,000 people were hospitalized, with 2,700 of them requiring ventilators.
But in this war, under the incompetent “commander-in-chief” Trump and his hapless lieutenants among the state governors, the troops are being sent into battle haphazardly, without weapons, and largely without regard for their own safety. Healthcare workers lack sufficient personal protection equipment, and they are being infected and incapacitated at an alarming rate, with many deaths.
In Spain, the healthcare workers accounted for 14 percent of the country’s cases, while in Italy, they accounted for 10 percent. The same process is under way in the United States. NPR reported that 345 employees of Boston’s four largest hospitals have tested positive for COVID-19. In New York City, hundreds of workers have fallen ill. At Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Manhattan, 50 percent of the intensive-care staff have been infected.
The result is that in addition to the shortages of hospital rooms, ICU beds, masks, and ventilators, there is a growing shortage of medical staff who can cope with the increasing volume of patients seeking medical attention.
Meanwhile, hospitals and healthcare systems are threatening doctors and nurses who make their concerns over working conditions public. An emergency room physician, Dr. Ming Lin, in Washington state, was fired because he gave an interview to a newspaper complaining about inadequate protective equipment. Ruth Schubert, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Nurses Association, told Bloomberg, “Hospitals are muzzling nurses and other healthcare workers in an attempt to preserve their image.” Nurses who have spoken under conditions of anonymity with WSW S reporters said that they have been told they would be fired if they talked to the media.
In some cases, state governors have made statements that amount to a confession of bankruptcy. On CNN Live, Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland said, “We are all trying to get more testing, but this is a pinch point on testing, on supplies, and materials, and PPE and ventilators. Everybody in America knows we don’t have enough of these things … and without the tests we are really flying blind. We are guessing about where the outbreaks are, what the infection rates in the hospitals are, and the mortality rates.”
However, the Trump White House manages to combine moronic expressions of optimism (largely in the form of testimonials to Trump’s personal genius) with ever more ominous declarations that the death toll in the United States will reach six or even seven figures.
On Sunday, White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said that 100,000 to 200,000 deaths was a midrange figure that could be substantially lowered if proper measures were taken. On Monday, White House coronavirus coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said that 100,000 to 200,000 was now the floor, the best-case scenario if everything went perfectly, while Trump himself declared that a death toll in that range would represent “a good job” by his administration.
On Tuesday, Fauci and Birx presented a slide show to a press briefing indicating projections that without severe mitigation, total deaths due to COVID-19 could reach 1.2 million to 2.2 million. Birx admitted that even with strict mitigation efforts throughout the month of April, the number of deaths could range as high as 240,000. At the peak of such a “best-case” outcome, 4,000 to 5,000 people would be dying every day.
Shocking as such figures are, even more outrageous is the blithe indifference displayed by Trump personally and his closest aides to the likely results of their own policy of refusing to conduct a serious struggle to contain the pandemic, not merely mitigate it.
Trump himself, towards the end of the press “briefing” that lasted more than two hours—a clear indication, in and of itself, that the White House antivirus campaign is an exercise in political propaganda and media manipulation—made comments that amounted to a self-indictment for criminal negligence on a monumental scale.
“We’re going through the worst thing this country has probably ever seen,” he said. “Look, we had the Civil War. We lost 600,000 people, right? Had we not done anything, we would have lost many times that, but we did something, so it’s going to be hopefully way under that. But you know, we lose more here potentially than you lose in world wars as a country.”
Given that the US death toll in the Second World War was 405,000, Trump is saying, in his semiliterate and meandering way, that the US death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic could well be between 400,000 and 600,000.
There was remarkably little push-back from the journalists of the corporate media who appeared to be in a daze. While several media outlets had taken note that on Tuesday morning, more Americans had died from coronavirus than were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, not even this comparison, inadequate as it is, was made.
The US government’s response is best characterized as malign neglect to a pandemic that was both foreseen and preventable. With complete indifference to the fate of the people, the Trump administration’s primary focus was on ensuring the financial markets were protected. Only when the markets began to implode did the government’s machinery begin to churn to prevent its complete collapse. Everything else was deemed an afterthought.
First, on March 3, the Federal Reserve slashed rates by 0.5 percent, the most significant cut since the 2008 financial crisis. On March 12, the Federal Reserve added $1.5 trillion of liquidity into the banking systems by massively expanding short-term loans to the banks to keep money markets stable and provide banks with cash in hand. When the markets continued to plummet on March 15, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a full percentage point down to almost 0.00 percent. They also resumed quantitative easing by purchasing $500 billion in treasuries and $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities. Then Congress rushed through a record $2.2 trillion economic “rescue” bill, whose main purpose was to provide the Treasury and the Federal Reserve the necessary authority to bail out corporate America and Wall Street.
Comparing the gargantuan and energetic efforts to save the markets with the slapdash, indifferent and grossly incompetent actions in relation to public health, it is easy to see what are the priorities of the American financial aristocracy.
But there is another force to be heard from in this crisis—the working class. Instacart, Amazon, and Whole Foods workers have initiated strike actions against forced work under unsafe conditions. Workers at General Electric have protested, demanding their company begin producing ventilators. Many other workers are rebelling against being forced to remain on the job without protective gear.
As the crisis escalates, the decisive question is for the working class to develop a conscious political response, recognizing that it must fight the capitalist system as a whole, based on a socialist program.
Originally published by WSWS.org
Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, and many other religions groups could be considered tribes; a social division within a society consisting of groupings of individuals having commonality, in this case, their religious views. These tribes share very similar high moral values; love of family, looking out for the poor and downtrodden and obedience of their religion’s dictates. Yet there seems to be conflict between tribes often resulting in bitter disagreements to the point of hatred and armed conflict. If each religious tribe holds high ideals, how can there be such animosity towards other non- affiliated tribes? Is this not puzzling?
Between political groups, the Right and the Left, Conservative and Progressive, bitter disagreement is the usual and consensus between tribes is difficult if not impossible to achieved. Another question; why are homosexuals, people of color and people of differing ethnicity often despised? Why is there such intolerance towards outsiders; those belong to other tribes?
Six million years ago our hominin lineage split from a chimpanzee lineage and went on to inhabit the entire planet. What may be forgotten is that there were dozens of similar hominin species, such as Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster and Homo heidelbergenis to name just a few of the dozens of other hominin species. The last non- Homo sapiens were the Neanderthals who disappeared about 40,000 years ago. What happened to all the dozens of other hominin species? Less fit? Not as intelligent? Victims of some cataclysmic event? Or did Homo sapiens “assist” in the other’s demise?
For more than a million years, we were a tribal species and modern humans remain tribal. This may seem incomprehensible, repulsive, abhorrent or contrary to one’s beliefs, however it is a scientific fact. Evolving in a harsh environment and with limited resources, only the most fit survived. Competition between other hominin species must have been fierce. To become the lone surviving hominid species, one attribute H. sapiens developed was the ability to not only identify members of a different tribe but to hold them in contempt, or worse. We are especially adept at noticing variations in patterns, markings, physical characteristics, behaviors, political or religious affiliations; idiosyncrasies that would lead us to believe those others may be our competitors.
Elimination of competitors has been a time-honored tradition. With modern humans, eliminating members of other tribes usually takes the form of killings and waging war. Tribal leaders have honed the skill of stirring up their base; identifying the “ugly” characteristics of the opposition. And tribal members faithfully follow their leader.
Fear, aggression, greed and compassion are genetic behavioral traits that bind us together, resulting in a stronger and more competitive tribe. Fear is a genetic trait that is ancient. Without this trait we might not assess an incident prudently and hence die. Aggression is a genetic trait that insured that H. sapiens dominated in territorial disputes. Greed ensures that we obtain sufficiency to survive. Compassion holds members together by sharing the resources.
How is tribalism displayed by modern humans? The earth is warming and deniers are belittling not only the science, but directing ridicule towards climate change advocates. President Trump publicly mocked 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg. “So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!” Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro called Ms Thunberg a brat. Millions of their follower echo similar sentiments. Our species has entered the Anthropocene era and consensus is nowhere in sight. Ridicule towards science extends beyond climate change. Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is now a target of Far-Right Vitriol, evidently for contradicting Trump and correcting his falsehoods. There seems to be a concerted effort on the part of Trump supporters to spread misinformation about COVID-19.
Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. Hermann Goering, (1893 – 1946), head of the Nazi army’s equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Head of the Luftwaffe, as stated during the Nuremberg trials, April 18, 1946.
Ron Newby is a retired research biologist of The Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA. He was the founder and director of The Bronowski Art&Science Forum, 1999 – 2012. He has published several books including Homo sapiens, A Liberal’s Perspective, (2014), The Nature Of Humans: Why We Behave As We Do (2016). His latest book is Tribalism, An Existential Threat to Humanity. (2020)
ronnewby34@gmail.com
Global problems like pandemics and climate change demand global cooperation, but US creates hurdles as part of its trade war. It has increasingly displayed chauvinism and racism in recent times.
This summer a tenured physics professor at a Texas university received a letter from his employer expressing concern about the professor’s plans to co-chair a conference in China. The letter noted that he had not submitted paperwork to request foreign travel, the conference was at a university listed as restricted by the US Department of Commerce, and his fellow co-chair was a member of China’s “Thousand Talents” foreign recruitment program. The letter cited financial and reputational risks to the university. The physicist—a US citizen who is not of Chinese descent—co-chaired the conference anyway; so far, at least, he has not suffered any negative consequences.
Franklin Tao, a chemistry professor at the University of Kansas, was indicted on federal charges in July for allegedly holding a paid position in China that he hadn’t disclosed to his US employer or to the US agencies that funded his research. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison and fines of up to $500 000.
A Chinese physicist who has worked in the US for many years recently waited in limbo for months for a visa to reenter the US. Fearing repercussions, he and the Texas physicist each requested that their identities and universities be concealed; several scientists in both the US and China declined to speak with Physics Today for this story.
Such incidents—and many others like them—have cast a chill over scientific collaborations between researchers in the US and China. “There is a bipartisan feeling in Congress that the Chinese are engaging in unscrupulous practices,” says physics Nobel laureate David Gross of the University of California, Santa Barbara; he is president of the American Physical Society (APS) and is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “The effect is to discourage scientific collaboration and mobility completely.”
Denis Simon has studied Chinese science and technology for decades and is executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University, located near Shanghai. “If you are a scientist in the US, irrespective of ethnicity, and you are involved with Chinese counterparts, this is a very difficult time,” he says. “I think it’s reached its worst point in 40 years.”
The Beijing–Washington relationship is “seen now through a national security lens, with deep distrust,” says Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. “We are in a comprehensive competition for influence across every sphere—trade, military, financial, and the development and marketization of technologies.” Science and technology are key to many aspects of dominance—5G, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, quantum computing. That’s why universities are caught in the middle, he says. “How does the US preserve national security and maintain openness without being a complete sucker?”
Security versus openness
In a 16 September letter to the US research community, Kelvin Droegemeier, who heads the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote, “As researchers, we must acknowledge the changing geopolitical and international scientific landscape: United States policies and practices must evolve thoughtfully and appropriately to meet current and future challenges.” He did not explicitly name China.
Singling out recruitment programs sponsored by foreign governments, Droegemeier said that some have features that are “unacceptable and inconsistent with our research values and research principles.” He listed the failure to disclose foreign funding, affiliations, and appointments; diversion of intellectual property (IP) or other legal rights; breaches of contract and confidentiality; unapproved foreign labs; and “surreptitious gaming of the peer-review process.”
His missive followed statements along the same lines by the National Institutes of Health in August 2018 and by the Department of Energy in January and NSF in July of this year. DOE and NSF have restricted participation in foreign recruitment programs.
No one doubts that there have been incidents of people secretly pulling in two salaries (“double dipping”), committing industrial espionage, hacking computers, stealing IP, and engaging in other misdeeds. But the scale of the problem is unknown, says Gross.
“If you have two bad eggs in the middle of hundreds, or thousands, who cares? We [at APS] are trying to inform the agencies of the enormous harm to the US research enterprise if we are no longer attractive to foreign scientists. It won’t be just the Chinese. I am very disturbed by living in a country where the actions of my own government make me afraid of collaborating with scientists from abroad.”
At the moment murky guidelines lead many US institutions and individual scientists to play it safe. “Regardless of citizenship, people don’t want to get into trouble,” says Xiaoxing Xi, “so they reduce their interactions with China.”
A condensed-matter physicist at Temple University, Xi was arrested at his home in May 2015 and charged with sending restricted technology information to China. The charges were dropped four months later, when it turned out that government prosecutors had misinterpreted their own evidence. But by then his career had suffered—he had not been allowed on campus or permitted to talk to his students, and his university had transferred his grants to other principal investigators. His research group has withered from 15 to 3. Now, he says, “with more Chinese scientists being charged and scrutinized, it makes me feel very unsafe.”
Tobin Smith, vice president for policy at the Association of American Universities, points out that the biggest concerns are often ethical, not legal. “We have to find the line that protects us and allows us to maintain openness,” he says. “It starts with the federal agencies being clear about the rules, and the rules should be harmonized across the agencies.”
China with perks
The US is a global leader in higher education and research. That pre-eminence is widely recognized as being due largely to the country’s ability to attract top students and scholars from around the world. In a 4 September letter to US agency heads, some 60 professional societies wrote that “scientific progress and U.S. economic development have been vastly accelerated by bringing international minds together and [have] helped to drive innovation and discoveries” in cancer and genetics, gravitational waves, green chemistry, food safety, and other areas. APS and the American Institute of Physics (AIP), which publishes Physics Today, were among the signatories.
Formal collaborations and student exchanges with China ramped up after a 1979 agreement between the two countries. And for the past few decades, students from China have been among the largest international cohorts in the US. In recent years, non-US citizens have made up roughly half of individuals earning physics PhDs from US institutions, and more than a quarter of them are from China, according to Patrick Mulvey of AIP’s Statistical Research Center. Across all fields more than 360 000 students from China were in the US for the 2017–18 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education.
But Chinese students and scholars are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain visas for the US. For example, at least 20 Chinese scientists missed this year’s APS March meeting because of visa delays. And visas for Chinese citizens now often require annual renewal instead of being valid for 5 or 10 years, as previously; students in robotics, aviation, and high-tech manufacturing are among those affected. Students from China and some other countries may hesitate to go to the US—and US faculty members may hesitate to take them on—given the uncertainty about staying in the country to complete their programs of study.
“I have a postdoc from China, and he hasn’t been home for eight years,” says Andrea Liu, a theoretical physicist at the University of Pennsylvania. “We have collaborations with people in France, but he can’t go there because he might not get back into the US. It’s hurting his career.”
Liu sometimes collaborates with a former postdoc who went back to China nearly a decade ago. “He’s terrific, and he has amazing computational resources that far exceed what we have here,” she says. Robert Ritchie, a materials scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, agrees that nowadays “China has far more resources in terms of money and equipment than we do in the US. Some of the things I want to do, I can’t do here.” But in the past year or so, he says, “everything is coming under increased scrutiny. One feels a bit inhibited now in dealing with Chinese groups.”
The top Chinese students used to stay in the US after completing their studies, says Ritchie, whose collaborations with scientists in China go back at least 15 years. “That’s not true anymore. The situation in China has improved for them, they are attracted back with perks, and they wonder if they can thrive here.”
Haiyan Gao, a nuclear physicist at Duke University, notes that Chinese scientists do not lack opportunities to work with researchers in other countries. “If you are counting on their collaboration, and in the end they can’t get a visa, the US loses out. We have seen more Chinese colleagues devote more effort to Europe.” China has built up its domestic know-how, she says. “To cut things off now is frustrating.”
Tightened rules, heightened fears
Reports of increasing threats and pressure from US government agencies have prompted universities, national laboratories, and funding agencies to tighten their practices and more rigorously enforce existing rules. For international business travel, for example, US government employees and subcontractors are required to obtain a country clearance cable from the State Department that includes information intended to be helpful for their trip. In earlier days, says a DOE-funded scientist who requested anonymity, “no one cared, but now they really pay attention, and there have been times when I didn’t get my cable until I landed in China.” He adds that in a “preemptive move” to avoid having to ask approval from DOE, his institution rejected his request to attend a conference and give talks in China next year.
Many funding agencies and universities now discourage US researchers from accepting hospitality from their Chinese hosts. Betty Tsang, a physicist at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University, says that in the past, “when I would go for collaborative work or conferences to China, I would pay to get there out of my grants, and the Chinese hosts would pay for my expenses while I was there.” By following her lab administration’s recent advice to reject such support, she and her students can’t afford to go as often, she says. “I’m keeping my existing collaborations, but I’m not initiating new ones.” The hassles and uncertainties about what will be allowed are too great, she explains.
Written requirements for hiring Chinese nationals at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have not changed, notes Alan Hurd, who oversees collaborations between the lab and universities. But after DOE released its January memo, he says, “hiring managers are frequently avoiding Chinese candidates.” Even before that, DOE employees felt the crackdown especially keenly. One DOE-funded scientist who was asked by Chinese colleagues to apply for the Thousand Talents program says his institution initially approved his application but later told him to decline the offer. DOE has traditionally valued international collaborations, the researcher says, but currently “they would rather you stay local. At least I can still exchange emails [with Chinese colleagues] without logging them.”
An anonymous Chinese physicist says he has stopped splitting his professional life between the US and China. The same goes for his colleagues, he adds, who are either returning to China or remaining in the US. The arrests, firings, visa delays, and tone from the funding agencies make people nervous. “The gray area is unsafe,” he says.
Adding to the anxiety is that the crackdowns are uneven across subfields and campuses. In fusion research, for example, DOE this year renewed a grant for joint work between scientists in the US and China. Houyang Guo, who is based at the DIII-D tokamak, a national user facility in San Diego, California, and coordinates US–China fusion activities for DOE, says he has experienced no problems. Even so, when he traveled to China in May, he took a company loaner laptop for the first time instead of his own, and when he returned he was debriefed both by US Customs and by General Atomics, the company contractor that runs DIII-D for DOE. Both events were firsts for him.
Fu-Chun Zhang, director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Sciences in Beijing, says new US restrictions haven’t affected his institute, although he did hire a postdoc earlier this year whose offer to go to LANL was rescinded. And Zhang noted lower-than-usual participation by US colleagues at a workshop in China in September 2019 on strongly correlated electronic systems. At least one physicist was denied approval from DOE to attend the workshop, he says. “It will take time to see the real effects of the US clampdown. It’s not positive. Scientific exchange is important for both the US and China.”
Liu says she is “extremely concerned about what is going on.” As an APS board member, she attended an unclassified briefing in February by the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence requested by APS. The briefing covered the potential risks of academic espionage, intellectual property theft, and other dangers posed by foreign actors, with a focus on China. “My main concern is that the FBI get it right before they indict someone,” she says. “With Wen Ho Lee they didn’t understand the science,” she says of the LANL scientist who was arrested and charged with espionage in 1999 (see Physics Today, July 2006, page 23). “They got the science wrong with Xiaoxing Xi of Temple University.” It ruins a person’s life, Liu says, and it’s bad for science. “It fosters a climate of distrust and racial profiling. As an ethnic Chinese—I’ve never even been to China—it makes me uneasy.”
Full disclosure
Disclosure is crucial, says Rebecca Keiser, who heads NSF’s Office of International Science and Engineering. Double dipping and foreign talent recruitment programs can be a problem because funding agencies need to know that the scientists named on a proposal have the time to do the work they are proposing, she explains. “We have seen an increase of nondisclosure of other support and appointments that pose conflict and overlap.” And some of the foreign contracts contain clauses that conflict with values of research integrity and openness. For example, she says, US researchers have been asked to sign that they won’t tell their home institution they are taking a second position, or that they will provide their Chinese partners with prepublication information, data, and ideas. “NSF funds basic research,” she adds, “and we want it open, but when it’s ready.”
A few years ago Tsang was offered a position in China that would have let her spend three months there each year. A well-equipped lab and extra manpower would have come with the position, she says. But the fine print said that the Chinese institution would own the copyrights to works, inventions, patents, and other intellectual property she produced during the contract period. “There was no consideration of the contributions from my primary institution, where I would be doing most of the work,” she says. She turned down the offer.
The change in attitude toward China “has been brewing for a while,” says the AAU’s Smith. He attributes the increased wariness to China’s economic rise and its increasingly authoritarian government. And he points to testimony in February 2018 by FBI director Christopher Wray as an “inflection point.” Wray said that China is using university personnel as “nontraditional collectors of information to take back to China, and universities are naïve to the problem.”
Duke Kunshan University’s Simon says that China has moved from the margins to the mainstream to become a maker as well as a taker of scientific knowledge. The chill in the US research community comes, he says, from several sources: the FBI and intelligence agencies visiting universities, the universities in turn warning their faculty, the funding agencies cracking down, and the overarching trade war. The chill creates a cloud over collaborations, he says. “The irony is that when asymmetry dominated, the cooperation proceeded well, and China was the greater beneficiary. But now the US has more to gain, and the US is concerned China may be eating our lunch.”
With a nod to the Cold War, Simon notes that the trust built between scientific communities has withstood tense times and helped to provide continuity despite difficult political relations. But this time, “scientific knowledge is the essence of the political problems.”
Deep dissatisfaction
A growing number of academic leaders are speaking out for academic freedom. In a 30 August column in the Washington Post, “No, I won’t start spying on my foreign-born students,” Columbia University president Lee Bollinger writes that “stewards of major research universities couldn’t contain intellectual freedom even if we wanted to.” He acknowledges that the “unauthorized use of intellectual property by overseas competitors is a serious problem,” but says, “surveillance of foreign-born scholars in this country is the wrong solution.”
In May the Office of Science and Technology Policy formed a committee comprising representatives from science agencies and from security agencies to develop uniform approaches to balancing commercial and national security against open research environments. NSF has requested that JASON, an independent scientific advisory group, conduct an analysis of the risks of espionage and IP theft; the group’s report is expected by the end of the year. And the National Academy of Sciences has begun holding expert roundtables to assess risks and examine possible policy responses.
Still, no balance between security and openness will please everyone, says the Wilson Center’s Daly.
Meanwhile, global problems like pandemics and climate change demand global cooperation.
“The problem is truly new, and it’s full of paradoxes. How much vigilance can openness endure? How much openness can security tolerate? Any tradeoff will be deeply unsatisfactory.”
Toni Feder is an editor of US Journal, Physics Today .
Published : 01 November 2019
Source: Physics Today , 72, 11, 22 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4338
For nearly a century, the U.S. regime has made it its goal to terrorise (defenceless) nations it deemed geopolitically unfriendly to its imperialist dictates. It is a well-financed and deliberate campaign of unprovoked aggression, heinous war crimes and wanton destruction to dominate the world. Without effective deterrence, every nation is at the mercy of U.S. barbarism.
What is terrorism? The U.S. Military Guide to Terrorism in the 21st Century (August 2007) defines terrorism by function, not identity, as: “The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious or ideological.” Western-Zionist mainstream media and Western political establishments have always defined terrorism “by the means used to carry out act of violence rather than the targets of that violence, and have always emphasized the identity [race and religion] of the perpetrators rather than their political motives” to avoid being called hypocrites. (FAIR, 13 Feb. 2020). The decades-long U.S.-led wars of aggression, “Counter Terrorism” and “War on Terror” fit this definition of terrorism. This essay is primarily intended to provide an overview of the U.S. as a leading perpetuator and sponsor of global terrorism.
Nuclear Terrorism
The terrorist attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki was the most heinous war crimes and unnecessary acts of barbaric terrorism. The atomic bombings – with indiscriminate killing of women and children – of Hiroshima (Uranium bomb) and Nagasaki (Plutonium bomb) and the fire-bombings (using incendiaries) of other cities caused the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians – estimated to be between 400,000 and 600,000 civilians. “While at least 67 other Japanese cities, including the capital Tokyo, were reduced to rubble by daily conventional firebombing, including the use of napalm and other incendiaries, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been deliberately spared for the sole purpose of testing the destructiveness of the new atomic device “[1]. The bombing of Hiroshima described as the “greatest thing in history” by no other than former U.S. president, the coward Harry Truman. It was a monstrous act of terror – a war crime – carried out by the U.S. regime. It was deliberate and designed to terrorise and frighten other nations that refuse to submit to U.S. imperialist dictates, including the former U.S.S.R. In other words, it was to bully and intimidate other nations. “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was taught not to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying woman and children,” said former President Harry Truman’s Chief of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy [1]. Today’s Japan is a U.S.-occupied nation.
Globally, the U.S. has over 800 formal military bases in 80 countries, “a number that could exceed 1,000 if you count troops stationed at embassies and missions and so-called ‘lily-pond’ bases, with some 138,000 soldiers stationed around the globe” (The Nation, 24 Jan. 2018). In other words, the U.S. regime has a military presence of some sort in approximately 84% of the nations on this planet. In addition, U.S. Special Operations Forces — Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and Marine Raiders among them — operated in 141 countries, according U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) figures. They deployed to roughly 72% of the nations on this planet
In Japan alone, there are approximately 113 U.S. military bases. The U.S. has more than 60,000 U.S. troops in Japan, as well as a very large contingent of warships and aircraft. Japan is effectively a U.S. aircraft carrier. The U.S. continues to manufacture nuclear bombs and threaten other nations with what the U.S. regimes calls “tactical nuclear attacks”. Japan is used by the U.S. as a staging post from which the U.S. will threat (and possibly attack) other nations, including Russia, China and North Korea.
The North Korean Genocide
After the occupation of Japan by U.S. forces, the U.S. turned its attention to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the DPRK (North Korea). During the U.S. reign of terror on the DPRK in the early 1950s, the U.S. Air Force dropped more bombs on the DPRK than was dropped during the whole of U.S. Pacific War against Japan. The U.S. bombed virtually all of the DPRK territory. It dropped massive quantities of Napalm bombs. The criminal U.S. aggression against the DPRK killed more than 4 million Korean civilians and ravaged a once bountiful nation. It was all-out mass-slaughter of defenceless people aimed at exterminating the entire civilian population of the DPRK.
While destroying irrigation dams, rice fields, bridges and every house, and threatened nuclear attack, the U.S. most criminal war crimes was the use of bacteriological or biological weapons during the U.S. reign of terror on the DPRK. It is well documented that the U.S dropped on the DPRK (and China) insects and feathers carrying anthrax, cholera, encephalitis, and bubonic plague. As always in U.S. terror, it was a deliberate act of genocide against defenceless population. It is well acknowledged today that defenceless is an invitation to U.S. aggression, terrorism and permanent U.S. military occupation.
In his testimony to U.S. Congress in 1951, war criminal General Douglas MacArthur said: “I have never seen such devastation … you are perpetuating a slaughter such as I have never heard of in the history of mankind.” The U.S. political establishment has never been held to account for its war crimes in the Korean Peninsula or elsewhere. It is evident that the U.S. political establishment lacks the compunction about committing war crimes against defenceless civilians. The DPRK survived U.S. barbarism and is standing-up to Anglo-Zionist fascism. The DPRK knows very well how valuable its steadfast commitment to its nuclear program and defensive military strategy. The people of DPRK have built and continue to build their country and their formidable defence force, despite the U.S.-UN-enforced genocidal economic sanctions imposed upon it. These inhumane collective punishment can only be described as economic terrorism.
Economic Terrorism
More than 39 countries are currently under U.S.-imposed economic sanctions – more than a quarter of the world’s population. Every country can be routinely threatened with economic sanctions for the smallest attempt to refuse to submit to U.S. dictates. Hundreds of millions of people livelihoods impacted by geopolitical decisions made half a world away by the U.S. regime. Sanctions are blatant violations of international law. Sanctions are crimes against humanity. As Vanessa Beeley of MintPress explained, “sanctions never protect the people, they deprive the people of basic needs, they decimate essential infrastructure. They are designed to weaken the target state or leadership, to turn the people against the government, to serve U.S.-led foreign policy agendas in the region. Sanctions enable war and destruction, they are taken to bring resistant nations into line with horrifying consequences for the civilian population.” If economic sanctions are not effective enough and the targeted nation is defenceless, the U.S. and its “allies” will resort to Fascism’s old trick of “humanitarian intervention” to terrorise the population by cold-blooded murderous invasion and deliberate wanton destruction on barbaric scales. From Afghanistan to Iraq, the U.S. and its “allies” are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity (Read the links here and here).
The Supreme International War Crime
The 2003 U.S.-Britain illegal and murderous invasion of Iraq was another act of barbaric terrorism, dubbed “Shock and Awe” terror. The ultimate racist atrocity characterised by tyrannous disregard of the lives of the Iraqi people and their cultural and religious heritages. It was a savage act of terrorism, deliberately targeted the civilian population (mass murder) and Iraq’s vital infrastructures, leaving the country without power or drinking water, electricity and sanitation.
The murderous invasion and occupation of Iraq preceded by the 1991 mass murder of Iraqi civilians (disguised as the “Gulf War”) and more than a decade-long genocidal sanctions (U.S.-Britain-imposed economic terrorism) and a vicious propaganda campaign led by Western-Zionist media to demonise Iraq and Muslims in general, and justify a premeditated wanton destruction and slaughter. The sanctions on Iraq were the most heinous of war crimes committed in the 20th century. It is estimated that since 1991, the U.S.-Britain wars of aggression and daily terror against the people of Iraq caused the death of more than 5 million innocent Iraqi civilians. The overwhelming majority of them were women and children. More often, U.S. politicians were bragging about how well the “sanctions are working” and how murdering more than 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five was “worth it”. At least two million Iraqis died as a result of sanctions’ caused contaminated water and infectious diseases (Thomas Nagy, The Progressive; September 2001; T. Nagy’s interview, Democracy Now, 13 August 2001, See also: John Pilger, 04 March 2000).
Thirsty for more Iraqi blood, the Anglo-American regimes (supported by an array of murderous dictators) invaded and occupied Iraq in March 2003. The pretexts to justify the barbaric wanton destruction of Iraq were a pack of lies, concocted by the regimes of Israel, the U.S. and Britain. The accusations that Iraq was in possession of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD) have since been proven completely false, as Iraq was found to have neither the chemical or biological WMD. Iraq was a defenceless nation that lacked any deterrence capability to self-defence. As a result of U.S.-Britain barbarism, Iraq was deliberately destroyed and the lives of millions of Iraqis have been ruined. The so-called “War for Oil” hype propagated by U.S.-Western “anti-war” movements is just a Zionist diversion designed to deflect attention away from Israel and its Jewish Lobby in Washington as the main driving elements in America’s aggressive-interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond.
As the British writer and Nobel laureate, Harold Pinter said: “The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law … How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough. I would have thought. Therefore it is just that [George W.] Bush and [Tony] Blair be arraigned before the international Criminal Court of Justice”. The invasion of Iraq was no different from the Nazis invasion of Poland, France, the U.S.S.R., and so on. The international war crimes in Iraq were no different from the international war crimes committed by the Nazis in Europe. The invasion of Iraq was an illegal act of aggression, the Supreme International War Crime under international law because “it contains within itself the accumulated evil” of all other war crimes. The perpetrators of the crime should be held accountable for committing premeditated war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Since 2003, Iraqis have endured an offensive aggressive U.S.-led foreign occupation coupled with war crimes, including cruelty, sexual violence and torture by U.S.-led forces. There is no democracy in Iraq. It is a colonial dictatorship. It is not much different from the Nazi puppet Vichy regime in France. The current Iraqi “government” – if one can call it government – is based in the U.S.-fortified “Green Zone”. Its (mostly males) members and their affiliates are the corrupted expatriate dogs and traitors that the U.S. flew in with its invading forces in 2003, as Nicholas Davies observes. Together with the Kurds – imperialism’s most obedient dogs –, they are nurturing instability and chaos in Iraq to serve U.S.-Zionist interests at the expense of the Iraqi people. The U.S. colonial occupation stripped Iraq of its sovereignty, forced families to flee their homes, and tore Iraqi communities apart, including Christian and many other communities. Once a prosperous nation and a leader in energy export, Iraq is on the brink of energy crisis and has to import gas and one third of its electricity needs from Iran. This dependency is used by the U.S. to control Iraq’s lifeline. The U.S. allows Iraq a “sanctions waiver”, which the U.S. just renewed to allow Iraq to import electricity and gas from Iran. The waiver is now limited to only 30 days. If the waiver is not renewed, Iraqi hospitals will go dark just when the Coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic will reach its zenith. (More on COVID-19 later).
After destroying the Iraqi state and preventing its reconstitution, the U.S.-led (NATO) forces are deliberately keeping Iraq in the worst condition it has been since the barbaric (Hulagu Khan) Mongol invasion of 1258. The U.S. paid no reparations for its illegal aggression and wanton destruction of Iraq. The U.S. is intentionally destabilising the country and hindering foreign investments to rebuild Iraq, because peace and stability would be a major strategic blow to the Anglo-Zionists’ agenda of controlling the Middle East. The destruction of Iraq continues. On Friday 13 March 2020, the U.S. military attacked and destroyed the newly built Karbala Airport, killing a number of Iraqi civilians, soldiers and police officers in flagrant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.
The situation of the Iraqi people did not improve with the fall of the Government of Saddam Hussein, but it is getting worse. The once proud and progressive nation, where education and health services were free, and women enjoyed equal rights, is now a nation in ruins occupied by murderous U.S.-led foreign forces. Despite concerted efforts by Iraqis to free themselves and their nation from U.S. violent oppression, the U.S. finds pretext to continue the occupation. The U.S.-led occupation have never brought anything good to Iraq. It brought untold suffering upon the Iraqi people, as millions were senselessly murdered and denied their rights to live in peace, freedom and dignity. Among colonialism paraphernalia that the U.S. brought into Iraq, a U.S. culture of moral decadence, including rampant corruption, paedophilia, rape, murder, extortion, injustice, the destruction of woman rights, kidnapping, racism, and more importantly terrorism and military occupation. Child mortality, poverty and homelessness are very common in Iraq today. Iraqis dream of the days under President Hussein rule. Most Iraqis see the U.S. as a reviled contagious virus and hate the U.S. as a nation and as a people. Iraqis most fervent wish is that the U.S. as the world’s most barbaric occupier stops destroying their lives and leave their country. The U.S. should admit its criminal war, pays reparation, compensates Iraqis and leave Iraq.
It is revealed recently that, Trump threatened to kill the Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi if he does not cancel a deal with China to rebuild Iraq’s electricity grid and other vital infrastructures that have been deliberately destroyed by the U.S.-led foreign forces and U.S.-sponsored “Islamic State” IS or ISIS (Daesh) and al-Qaeda terrorists. It is important to note that, the destruction of Iraqi cities, including the cultural City of Mosul on the pretext of “fighting ISIS” where more than 40,000 Iraqi civilians were killed was deliberate because most of the terrorists were deployed safely to Syria. It was not “fighting terrorism” that triggered the wanton destruction; it was the Iraqi resistance to U.S. occupation and its proxy al-Qaeda/ISIS terrorists. Cities like Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria occupied by U.S.-sponsored terrorist organisations like al-Qaeda and ISIS served as pretexts for the U.S.-led forces to commit wanton destruction and war crimes.
In September 2019, Trump demanded that Iraq pays for completion of key infrastructure projects destroyed by recent U.S. bombing and ISIS acts of terrorism by paying the Trump’s Zionist regime 50% of Iraqi oil revenues, an outrageous demand. Iraq refused U.S. demand and continues the discussion with China to rebuild Iraq (Read the recent Analysis by Whitney Webb). As Iraqi Prime Minster Abdul Mahdi explained (Please read carefully). Essentially, the U.S. is carrying out economic terrorism and blackmail in order to advance its imperialist interests and in keeping Iraq’s economy hostage.
The U.S. regime’s aim is to keep Iraq in ruins (after nearly three decade-long reign of terror, genocidal sanctions and murderous invasion and occupation) and forever unstable. The destruction of Iraq was part of the Anglo-Zionist (Jewish) plan for the Middle East, which is to foment sectarian strife, sow political disorder and economic chaos, and keep the region defenceless and forever backwards on behalf of Israel. Furthermore, the Trump’s Zionist regime has threatened to impose harsh economic sanctions on Iraq “as they have never seen before” if the Iraqi government vote against expel all U.S.-led forces and end the occupation. And in a “pure mobster-style intimidation”, Trump threatened Iraq will risk losing access to its government bank account if Iraq goes through with its decision to expel U.S.-led foreign forces from the region and, the U.S. will confiscate 35 billion dollars of Iraqi fund held at the Jewish-controlled Federal Reserve Bank in New York. U.S. Extortionist-in-Chief has reiterated that if Iraqis insist on ending the murderous U.S.-led occupation that caused the death of millions of innocent Iraqi civilians, they will first have to “payback” the cost of the murderous invasion and occupation of their country, “otherwise we’ll stay there”. It is as if Adolf Hitler asking the Jews to pay for the so-called “Jewish Holocaust”. By comparison, the U.S. is an evil and a corrupt society plunges deep into the Dark Ages. The primary aim of U.S. occupation of Iraq is to use Iraq as a staging post from which to attack Iran and Syria, and to defend the Fascist state of Israel. The Iraqi people have the legal right to take up arms to liberate their nation from U.S.-led foreign forces. The U.S. is an illegal occupier and cannot claim self-defence. The best-self-defence is to withdraw its military forces from Iraq and end a murderous occupation.
Recently, the Iraqi Parliament voted overwhelmingly to remove all U.S.-led foreign forces from Iraqi soil. Two weeks after the vote, over four million Iraqis demonstrated against the U.S.-led occupation and demanded the removal of the repugnant U.S.-led foreign forces from Iraq. Despite the mayhem and hardship it is causing in Iraq, the U.S. is ignoring Iraqis request and refusing to withdraw its troops from Iraq and refusing to even discuss a withdrawal with Iraqi officials, U.S. so-called “commitment to train Iraqi forces” remains dubious.
The U.S. regime thrives on violence and on the suffering and slaughter of defenceless women and children. It is naked fascism with human face. The preaching of artificial constructs of “human rights”, “freedom” and “democracy” by the U.S.-led regimes is not a mere hollow rhetoric but a steady diet of false propaganda (lies) coupled with racism and chauvinism to tranquilize and brainwash the largely bewildered U.S.-Western populations. The results were growing appetites for mass killings of dark-skinned people (mostly Muslim women and children) and a self-induced ignorance to the daily war crimes and terrorism that are committed in their names. The U.S. will not leave Iraq unless Iraqis step up their anti-occupation armed resistance attacks to free their nation from U.S.-led military occupation and regain their real independence and sovereignty.
Sponsoring Terrorists in Syria
It is now common knowledge that the U.S., Israel, Turkey, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, among others, (Read the Report) have been arming, training, financing, equipping, and defending ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra terrorists. In fact, on 03rd March 2020, two senior U.S. officials (U.S. representative to UN, Kelly Craft and U.S. Special Envoy for Syria, the Zionist James Jeffrey) sneaked into Syria illegal to meet with and pledged $108 million aid to the so-called White Helmets, the group which is affiliated with the al-Qaeda terrorists and acts as the propaganda arm for the terrorists in Syria. In fact, James Jeffrey has admitted that the U.S. goal in Syria is to defend the terrorists and make it difficult for Russia and the Syrian Government to defeat the terrorists. He said: “Our goal is to make it very difficult for them to do that by a variety of diplomatic, military, and other actions.” There is no doubt that the U.S.-led regimes against Syria are the root of the conflict and its dire humanitarian consequences, including the current refugee’s crisis.
The war on Syria is not a “civil war” as it is often depicted by Western-Zionist propaganda, the “news” media. This is because the initiators, financiers and the terrorists come from abroad. The terrorists were recruited from more than 80 countries, and were labelled and relabelled as “Rebels”, “Freedom Fighters”, “Moderate Opposition” and “Jihadists” – to associate terrorism with Islam – to suit the U.S.-led Anglo-Zionist agenda (The Syrian Deception). Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva in Armswatch.com, and Irish author Finian Cunningham in Sputniknews.com have uncovered hard evidence linking the terrorists to the U.S. and its “allies”. The Trump’s Zionist regime claims the occupation of Iraq and Syria is necessary in the “fight against ISIS”, but the so-called “fight against terrorism” is a concocted pretext to justify the ongoing U.S. military presence and occupation of the region.
The truth is that the U.S., Turkey and Israel are the main defenders of the terrorists. For example, as the defeat of the terrorists in Syria near complete, the U.S. is acting as a mediator to negotiate a truce and spare the terrorists from definitive military defeat, further demonstrates the allegiance between the U.S., its “allies” and the terrorists. It is naïve to suggest that the U.S. is “fighting terrorism”. To the contrary, the U.S. spreads terrorism, and it is terrorism life lines. The U.S. is not only the world’s leading perpetrator and sponsor of global terrorism. The U.S. recruits, supports, arms and finances terrorists around the world. That is why wherever the U.S. goes terrorism follows. It is ironic that the U.S. and its terrorism-sponsoring “allies” are not on the list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism”.
The Murder of General Soleimani
The gangland-style assassination of Iranian Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad Airport on 03 January 2020 was a cowardly act of global terrorism. He was a leading General in the fight against terrorism in Syria and Iraq. General Soleimani was carrying a diplomatic passport (with immunity) on his flight into Baghdad Airport which is controlled by U.S.-led occupation forces. There was no intelligence involved. The U.S. depends heavily on its Iraqi expatriate dogs to conduct its ongoing criminal assassination of anti-U.S. resistance leaders. The International Association of Democratic Lawyers, in an assessment of the Soleimani killing condemned the murder as an illegal extrajudicial killing and an act of aggression by the U.S. toward Iran and Iraq. According to Irish author Finian Cunningham: “Neither Trump nor his senior regime officials have presented any evidence to link General Soleimani with the rocket attack on U.S. military base at Kirkuk. U.S. regime officials say their information is classified and therefore cannot be disclosed publicly. According to Iraqi military, it was ISIS-staged terror attack. The New York Times quoted Iraq’s Brigadier General Ahmed Adnan as saying: “‘All the indications are that it was Daesh… We as Iraqi forces cannot even come to this area unless we have a large force because it is not secure. How could it be that someone [Iran-linked Khataib Hezbollah] who doesn’t know the area could come here and find that firing position and launch an attack?’” It sounds and smells like premeditated false lag terror attack designed to implicate Iran.
General Soleimani was murdered merely on the say-so of the Israeli fascist regime. General Soleimani was widely credited with being the master strategist of the successful campaign to defeat the U.S.-Israel-sponsored terrorists (ISIS, al-Qaeda and affiliates) in Syria and Iraq. In fact, the Israeli fascist regime and ISIS/Daesh terrorists have celebrated and praised Soleimani’s murder. General Soleimani was to attend the funeral of 31 Iraqi security forces killed by the U.S. near the Syrian border. They were securing the crossing into Syria from ISIS terrorist. General Soleimani was on a peace mission – invited by the Iraqi Prime Minister – to go to Saudi Arabia. As Iraqi PM said: “Soleimani arrived in Iraq at my request to receive a response from Saudi Arabia to Iran’s peace initiative. Trump killed a foreign officer and an envoy of peace who landed on a territory (Trump supposed to protect) at the request of the Prime Minister.”
The murder of General Soleimani was orchestrated to provoke war with Iran on behalf of Israel, a war the Israeli fascist Benyamin Netanyahu is craving for. “Soleimani was not only the second most powerful man in Iran and the main figure in its foreign policy; he was idolized by millions of the most strongly nationalist citizens of the country. Killing him in a drone strike was an open invitation to the military confrontation Israeli fascist Benyamin Netanyahu and former C.I.A. director and current U.S. Secretary of State Terror, the self-proclaimed liar Mike Pompeo so desperately sought”, writes investigative journalist Gareth Porter. As a “serial murderer” with a global reach, like the U.S., the Jewish entity has an alarming history of violence, terrorism and anti-Muslim/anti-Arab hatred. The world’s two largest terrorism organisations are the Israeli Mossad and the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.). The two entities are unaccountable secret armies that have been involved in everything from assassinating foreign leaders, to overthrowing democratic governments, from kidnapping and torturing people, to running drug trafficking operations, and to covertly recruiting, training, arming, and funding terrorists (ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their affiliates) and to fomenting violence and fabricating fake news. “We had knowledge of what they were doing, what they were plotting”, said Robert Scheer, editor of Truthdig. They are responsible not only for the murder of General Soleimani and other high-profile leaders but also the recent killing of 300 Iraqi demonstrators. President Trump, just like his predecessors, is a hostage to the Zionists in the White House. And just like his predecessors, Trump is merely acting as Anglo-Zionist propagandist-in-chief. He is surrounded by Zionist Jews and completely controlled by the Jewish power in the United States. “The White House looked like Habayit Hayehudi [“Jewish Home”] the other day, awash in Kippot and Yiddishkeit. Does one have to be an “anti-Semite to wonder about this?” writes Gideon Levy in Haaretz, 30 January 2020). With their vast money and control of global finance, Jews own Trump, just like they own America. Trump’s foreign policy is made by Jews in Israel. The pro-Israel Jewish Lobby (wealthy Jews) bought and owned every politician and government official in the U.S. They write Trump’s policies and speeches. Just like the New York Times depicted Trump relation to Jews, they guide him on a leash like a blind dog. He is the most obedient Gentile president in history. This was not the first time the U.S. and Israel have conspired to commit acts of terrorism and murder a foreign leader. There have been countless acts of terrorism committed by the U.S. and Israel, where political, religions and humanitarian leaders (and their loved ones) have been murdered in broad daylight. The U.S. and Israel are engaging in “Murder Incorporated” to silence anyone (guilty or innocent) who resists U.S. and Israel terrorism.
There was no evidence that General Soleimani was planning any violent act against the U.S. Those claims have been discredited. Indeed, U.S. Defence Secretary Mark Esper admitted that he did not see specific evidence from intelligence officials that Iran was planning to attack U.S. embassies, though Trump has since claimed whether or not Soleimani or his Iraqi allies posed an imminent threat “doesn’t really matter.” He will destroy “52 cultural and religious sites” in Iran, if Iran will retaliate, putting himself in the same barbaric category as ISIS terrorists and Hitler. Of course, Iran did legitimately retaliate.
Targeting Iran
The U.S. and Israel are accusing Iran of “developing” nuclear weapons. It is an atrocious lie. There is no evidence (zilch) that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Iran has consistently refrained from pursuing the production of nuclear weapons. “The Pentagon and 16 major U.S. intelligence agencies supported by the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) confirmed that Iran is NOT developing nuclear weapons and poses NO military threat. Even the IAEA, a U.S.-controlled imperialist tool, has failed to provide hard evidence to prove that Iran is engaged in developing nuclear weapons.” It is Israel that has been stealing nuclear secrets (from the West) and covertly making nuclear and chemical weapons since the 1950s (The Guardian, 16 January 2014). Today, Israel is defended and allowed to produce hundreds of nuclear bombs in its U.S.-paid large arsenal of WMD, including chemical and biological weapons. It is Israel which is threatening and violently attacking other countries. According to American counter-intelligence agencies, Israel is considered to be one of the U.S.’s worst threats. Israel was listed as one of the five “priority targets” of counterintelligence: “China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, and Israel.” There is no denying that the nature of U.S. terrorism in the Middle East is to terrorise Muslims and defend Israel’s persecution of the Palestinian people as it is doing on a daily basis.
To avoid the fate of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, Iranian leaders should pursue a defensive military strategy by emulating the DPRK’s formidable defence capability model (achieved despite genocidal U.S. and UN-enforced sanctions) to stop any U.S. acts of terrorism against their nation. The DPRK knows very well how valuable its steadfast commitment to its nuclear program. It is within Iran’s right to seek and develop the most effective deterrence to counter U.S.-Israel’s terrorism. The U.S. and Israel only understand force, and therefore Iran must show that it is willing to use force against its criminal enemies. The U.S. and Israel will not attack a nation that they know it possesses effective defence capabilities to defend its independent.
Iran is under illegal genocidal sanctions (economic terrorism), where thousands of Iranians are dying from preventable diseases and malnutrition even as the COVID-19 strikes in its full force. In particular, the survival of Iranian children with cancer has decreased significantly because the U.S. denies them critical medical supplies. In October 2018, the United Nations’ International Court of Justice found that the U.S.-imposed barbaric sanctions were unlawful and violate humanitarian law. The U.S.-imposed sanctions are an obstacle to prevent Iran from importing vital humanitarian supplies. By hindering the supplies of medicine and medical equipments to Iran, Syria and Venezuela, the U.S. regime is committing a crime against humanity by indiscriminately targeting the civilian population, including the sick. One of the primary goals of the U.S. regime is to destroy the health care system of the targeted nations and kill the civilian population en masse (Sara Flounders, Workers World 10 March 2020). The decade-long genocidal sanctions against the people of Iraq is a case in point. As of writing, Iran is being denied the right to import basic medicines and medical supplies to fight the current outbreak of COVID-19 infections.
COVID-19
As nations around the world are collaborating in solidarity to prevent the spread of Coronavirus, COVID-19 – a stronger mutation of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS Virus) genetically engineered in a laboratory, rather than evolved naturally – infections in bid to save lives, the U.S. regime – with its utter contempt for humanity – is waging aggression, plotting economic terrorism (more sanctions) on Iran Syria and Venezuela, and is doing its best weaponising the Virus to cause immense human suffering globally, coupled with a deliberately instilled fear to control an already ignorant and easily manipulated public.
Moreover, there is mounting evidence (Read the links here and here) that COVID-19 pandemic originated in the U.S. and may have been a terror attack perpetuated by the U.S., which is pursuing a massive expansion of biological weapons program. “It also may be a coincidence that the primary U.S. bioweapons lab, Fort Detrick, was shut down in summer 2019 over fears that weaponized pathogens might escape. It may be a coincidence that absurdly under-performing U.S. military athletes came to Wuhan for the World Military Games in October and have since been accused by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of being the source of the COVID-19 pandemic. It may be a coincidence that at the same time those ‘athletes’ were in Wuhan, the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and other Establishment titans were hosting a pandemic simulation called Event 201”, writes scholar Kevin Barrett. Event 201 focused on simulating a worldwide epidemic, which was coincidentally based on the SARS outbreak and called 2019-nCoV, the name first given to the outbreak in China, before WHO changed it to a more generic form, COVID-19. The simulation resulted over an 18-month period in 65 million deaths worldwide, a stock market dive of 15%-plus and countless bankruptcies and unemployment. Just a few weeks later, the first 2019-nCoV infected person was identified in Wuhan. “It may be purely coincidental that the virus appeared in Wuhan, home of China’s biggest biodefense laboratory, and China’s biggest transportation hub, just in time for the Chinese New Year, when most Chinese travel to visit relatives. Likewise, it could be coincidental that the real-life COVID-19 pandemic almost perfectly mimics Lockstep, the Rockefeller Foundation’s recipe for a global police state emerging on the back of a coronavirus-style pandemic”, added Kevin Barrett. The U.S. regime unleashed this disease on the world, and the U.S. regime has to be held accountable.
Furthermore, the so-called “China Virus” or “Wuhan Virus” is part of the U.S. regime’s anti-China disinformation campaign. “Labelling COVID-19 the ‘Chinese virus’ is entirely in keeping with Donald Trump’s pattern of dog-whistling. The term is designed to trigger racist fears of foreigners (Chinese and Muslims as disease-carriers), while preserving plausible deniability” (FAIR, 24/03/2020). Moreover, it is a convenient misnomer designed: 1) to deflects attention away from U.S. criminal actions; 2) to demonise the Chinese people in the same way 9/11 was used to demonize Muslims and Islam; and 3) to offer the Trump’s regime a cover about a bioweapon terror attack gone awry. Moreover, the only country with Italy’s variety of COVID-19 is the U.S. and more than 80% of all infections in Australia occurred in the U.S. then travelled home (Read the link here). Furthermore, Chinese, Japanese and Taiwanese studies point to the U.S. as the most likely source of COVID-19. It is possible that, China and Iran were the intended targets. Both nations are the subject of U.S. hostility. Washington’s Mafia Secretary Pompeo has exploited COVID-19 pandemic to impose more genocidal sanctions on the Iranian people while bullying other nations and international businesses to prevent urgently needed medicine and medical supplies from entering Iran. Pompeo called OVID-19, “a live military exercise”. He added: “This is not about retribution … This matter is going forward – we are in a live exercise here to get this right” (Read the link here). It follows that the U.S. – not China – is the “Sick Man” of the world who feeds on the misery and death of others using economic terrorism. Unlike the U.S., China managed to contain the Virus (Nature, 17/03/2020) and has begun helping others nations, including Italy, Spain, Serbia, Iraq and Iran, among others to do the same. Like China, Cuba – even though the small nation has been under seven decades of U.S.-imposed economic terrorism – and Russia are doing the same. By contrast, the U.S. (the epicentre of CIVID-19 outbreak) remains exceptionally vulnerable because of its uniquely broken healthcare system. The regime has enough bombs to terrorise people around the world, but not enough ventilators, respirators, face masks or even beds to accommodate the flood of sick Americans. Why emulate the U.S. when it failed in its most basic duty to serve its citizens? COVID-19 has exposed the exploitative nature of Western Capitalism which is built on inequality and enforced by wars and economic terrorism.
Conclusion
It is paramount for all independent nations especially Muslim-majority and Arab nations, threatened by the U.S. and Israel to develop defensive capability and acquire superior weapons to deter any U.S.-Israel aggression. Solidarity between Muslim-majority nations is needed more than ever. Instead of fighting among themselves and bleeding each other to advance Anglo-Zionist agenda, Muslim-majority nations need to work together to confront U.S.-Israel aggression against their fellow Muslims.
A century-long of needless acts of terrorism, the U.S. proved to be the world’s leading perpetrator of global terrorism. The U.S. will only stop perpetrating terrorism if peace-seeking nations stand up for international law and fight U.S. terrorism by building effective defence capabilities against U.S. terrorism.
Ghali Hassan is a researcher and an independent political analyst.
Notes:
[1] Claypool, J. (1984). Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New York: Franklin Watts.
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