FILE – This Sept. 30, 2011 file photo shows a reflection of the Department of Homeland Security logo in the eyeglasses of a cybersecurity analyst at the watch and warning center of the Department of Homeland Security’s secretive cyber defense facility in Idaho Falls, Idaho. The center is tasked with protecting the nation’s power, water and chemical plants, electrical grid and other facilities from cyber attacks. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)
Language within the embattled Cybersecurity Act of 2012 parallels that of a proposal made by Russia and China to the U.N. in 2011, which argued for international regulation of the Internet to fight cybercrime.
The proposal called for international cooperation on defeating cybercrime and political dissension, as well as a truce in the use of cyberweapons.
States that agreed to the code would also agree to “bolster bilateral, regional and international cooperation, promote the United Nations’ important role in formulation of international norms, peaceful settlement of international disputes, and improvement of international cooperation in the field of information security, and enhance coordination among relevant international organizations.”
The proposal — hailed by the Chinese government as “the first relatively comprehensive and systematic document in the world … to formulate international rules to standardize information and cyberspace behavior” — was created in anticipation of an international telecommunications conference to be held in December 2012 in Dubai, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12).
It was heavily criticized by U.S. policymakers, however, as political cover for internal crackdown of political dissidents.
It also prompted a House committee to pass a resolution led by California Republican Rep. Mary Bono Mack opposing the notion of international regulation of the Internet. Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio introduced a similar measure in the Senate at the end of June.
Scratching just below the surface of the Western media’s headlines are stories carrying greater implications – stories the West believes are better left untold.
“Operation Damascus Volcano” Followed Weeks of Warnings of Impending NATO Psy-Op.
Beginning last week, headlines were overrun by a coordinated NATO-backed “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) offensive and an assassination bombing in Damascus, timed so close to each other and the UN Security Council vote on sanctions, the vote was pushed back a day. The attacks dubbed, “Operation Damascus Volcano” were clearly coordinated with the assassination bombing, designed for psychological impact, and when Syrians reacted with resolve, they quickly collapsed.
What went unreported until over a week later, were warnings of a potential NATO psychological warfare operation, matching hijacked satellite channels broadcasting false reports with an initially violent but ultimately futile militant offensive to stampede the Syrian government out of power on a wave of confusion and panic. It appears “Damascus Volcano” was just that operation.
The Western media would not cover this story until a week later, when security operations in Damascus concluded in the favor of the government and Syrian state television repeatedly made warnings to its viewers about further potential disinformation campaigns. Even then, reports were limited to “Tweets” by Western journalists and headlines in China’s English news.
Dissent in the UN Security Council Not Confined to Only Russia and China
Another big story was the UNSC resolution that was vetoed by Russia and China. The US and UK were quick to condemn the two nations, portraying them as the sole obstructions to resolving a conflict of the West’s own creation. But, what has gone largely unreported by the West, is the abstaining of Pakistan and South Africa – revealing wider opposition upon the Security Council than was portrayed, illustrating an erosion of Western influence its media houses would rather not discuss.
Image: We all know that Russia and China vetoed the US-British backed UNSC resolution paving way for military intervention. What many do not know is that Pakistan and South Africa abstained in protest of the resolution.
Arab League Ultimatum Rejected by Syria…. and Iraq. Al Qaeda Promptly Punishes
There is also the Arab League which, speaking on behalf NATO, attempted one last chance to lure Syria into quick capitulation, offering sanctuary to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad if only he would step down immediately. Ultimately Syria rejected these demands, illustrating its state institutions are not as near “crumbling” as the West insists.
What has gone largely unreported is the fact that the “Arab League’s” demands were made by the despotic governments of mainly Qatar and Saudi Arabia who are openly arming and paying the salaries of the FSA – essentially Gulf State mercenaries – to whom the League is asking Syria to surrender. Tunisia, under the US-installed President Moncef Marzouki had been the one specifically to offer President Assad “safe haven,” further illustrating the absurdity of the Arab League’s proxy demands.
Image: Sadr City, Baghdad – the aftermath of Monday, July 23, 2012′s bombing & shooting spree, which Al Qaeda has taken responsibility for. It is designed specifically to spark off another destructive and divisive sectarian conflict – similar to the one the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia are fueling in Iraq’s northern neighbor, Syria. The attack was carried out the same day Iraq rejected the Arab League’s (primarily Saudi Arabia and Qatar) demands that Syria’s president step down immediately.
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Furthermore, Iraq wholly rejected the “Arab League” demands made on Monday, and almost immediately suffered the consequences as sectarian extremists under the Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) banner declared a new campaign of violence against the Iraqi government, beginning with a bombing and shooting spree leaving over a hundred dead in one day. It should be noted by readers that Al Qaeda was initially created by the United States and Saudi Arabia and has since been used to execute Western foreign policy up to and including both NATO’s recent operations in Libya, and now in subverting Syria.
Al Qaeda’s campaign most likely was inevitable, as Iraq drifts ever further away from US, Israeli, and Saudi influence, but its public condemnation of the Arab League’s demands verses Syria made for impeccable timing as AQI launched its most recent strike.
Turkey Crushes Own Rebels While Backing FSA Terrorists in Syria
Finally, reports of a Turkish military helicopter going down in the Hakkari province, just north of Iraq in operations against Kurdish rebels located there, indicates that another Turkish military operation against its own Kurdish population is underway – albeit very quietly.
Image: A Turkish Blackhawk (reported as an S-70 Sikorsky) like the one pictured above was downed in the Hakarri province where security operations are targeting Kurdish rebels there, and across the border with northern Iraq.
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Turkey has pursued an exceedingly hypocritical foreign policy as of late – arming, funding, training, and sheltering FSA terrorists in their efforts to undermine and destroy neighboring Syria, while carrying out a brutal campaign against Kurdish rebels rising up against the Turkish government. Turkey over the last 10 years has rolled tanks against Kurdish rebels, and strafed suspected rebel towns from the air, both within Turkey, and astonishingly deep within northern Iraq. The latest airstrikes being carried out as late as last week.
A recent deployment of military equipment along the Turkish-Syrian border by the Turkish military arrived in Mardin, the province facing Syria’s Kurdish dominated northeast, not the fighting taking place toward the West in Aleppo and Idlib.
It would appear that Turkey is engaged in combat operations against its own population, while disingenuously berating the Syrian government over its security operations against the FSA. It would also appear that Turkey has repeatedly violated Iraqi airspace in recent weeks to pursue rebels over its borders – a scenario it and NATO have stated would constitute a war provocation should Syria pursue a similar policy.
Turkey is not only conducting security operations against its own Kurdish population, but against Kurds in Iraq, and is staging military equipment across the border from Syria’s Kurds. That this is not being covered in the Western media, demands further scrutiny and indicates that a wider conflict is already beginning – not because of Syria’s President Assad, but because of NATO and Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan .
At the outset, Chen seemed to be just another Chinese dissident brutally treated by the authorities; however, there is more to it.
In the opening statement at the Council on Foreign Relations (31 May, 2012), Professor Cohen of New York University made it clear that Chen “had never studied law” when “the State Department” asked him to meet Chen nine years ago (that is, in 2003).
Despite such an open piece of information linking Chen to the “State Department” in a forum that was packed with journalists, I only managed to find the full content of Cohen’s opening statement via YouTube, theCouncil on Foreign Relations and NYU websites.
Amazingly, as far as my research is concerned, none of the news media during and after the forum appear to show any interest in persuading or reporting the relationship between the State Department and Chen. Just a few examples (none of these media report a thing on the content of Cohen’s opening statement):
Interestingly, while Chen has never being a lawyer, soon after the public forum at the Council on Foreign Relations, many journalists and writers continued to call Chen the ‘blind lawyer’, ‘bare-foot lawyer’ or ‘self-taught lawyer’. Such misinformation is so widespread that an article in the Ethnics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention (12 June) went to the extent of calling Chen the “Blind Attorney.”
In short, the news media appears to have reached some kind of unspoken understanding on what to say and what not to say about Chen. We could perhaps call this an ‘inter-media agenda setting’. As a result, I have noticed that there are more than a dozen of contradictory and murky stories on how Chen “escaped” from his village without any mainstream media making any effort to clarify the facts.
I believe that below is another area of Chen’s story that lacks credibility.
The brutal “beating” of Chen and his wife – How true are the claims?
In the YouTube video released after his “escape”, Chen has a detailed account on how he and his wife were being beaten up in his own home. The translation by the Shanghai List and a Chinese blogger would probably be the only two comprehensive transcripts one could find on the internet. Both transcripts omitted certain minor details, so I will extract the appropriate part from each and add a few words of my own in “bold” to form a complete translation. The following is what Chen says about the beating:
“Some 70 to 80 officials “entered my home”, none of them were wearing uniforms, beat my family without any legal approvals and forbid my family from seeking medical assistance despites injuries … more than a dozen men assaulted my wife. They pinned her down and wrapped her in blanket, beating and kicking her for several hours. They did the same to me … My wife’s orbital bone was broken, you could feel it … you could still feel obvious protuberance on her 5th lumbar and her sacrum. Her 10th and 12th ribs also have feel-able protuberance.”
The Washington Post (28 April) reported the YouTube video with a hyperlink but without a transcript to the video, and without mentioning the number of people involved in the beating and the duration of the beating. This is how Washington Post describes the beating: “He (Chen) detailed beatings that had been inflicted on him and his wife, injuring his wife’s back, ribs, elbow and eye, while being denied medical care.”
The Reuters (27 April) quoted a statement from He Peirong, another Chinese dissident: “Chen is passing blood and is very weak” and that “They broke some of his wife’s bones which have yet to heal.”
The Democracy Digest (27 April) quoted a statement made by Phelim Kine, Senior Asia Researcher at the Human Right Watch: “Chen has been in extremely poor health due to severe multiple beatings by his captors.”
The US government funded Radio Free Asia alleged that Chen suffered “20 months of beatings and house arrest”.
[Note: To find more incredible reports on how Chen and his wife been beaten by authorities, simply Google “Chen and wife beaten by authority”.]
When Chen left the US embassy to the hospital, the initial statement made by the embassy is for Chen to treat hisfoot injury (The Telegraph, 2 May). A few days later the Foreign Policy (7 May) claimed that: Chen is known to suffer from “chronic gastroenteritis”, which he “developed during his months in Chinese jail”. An American doctor in the embassy noted that Chen “was found to be bleeding profusely from his rectum” and suspected he could have advanced colon cancer,” forcing the Americans to “transfer Chen to a hospital” quickly.
The irony is, given the severity of Chen and his wife’s “brutal” treatments by the Chinese authorities and their poor state of health, it is hard to understand why there wasn’t any arrangement for Chen and his wife to visit a US hospital for an examination with at least an X-ray of his wife’s fractured bones when they arrived at the U.S..
Contrary to the reports in regards to Chen’s health, Chen’s activities since leaving the US embassy tell otherwise – Chen was not only healthy but energetic:
He spoke to the Washington Post while on his way to the hospital in the embassy van; he reportedly also spoke to Mrs Clinton which he said: “I want to kiss you”; he accepted the Congressional Hearing while in the hospital in Beijing; within days of arriving in the US, he received exclusive interview by individual media such as the CNN andNYR; Chen has again spoken to the Congressional Hearing for the second time in less than two weeks; he faced media in a public forum such as the Council on Foreign Relation; he was reportedly negotiating a book deal through Robert Barnett, a Washington attorney whose clients includes President Obama and Mrs. Clinton. In fact, believe it or not, Chen answer qestions through a spokesman.
Chen spoke a lot since he left the US embassy in Beijing. He repeatedly spoke about his cousin being tortured orbeaten up after his “escape”. However, in an interview with CNN five days after arriving the U.S., Chen declined to reveal details about what happened during his four years of imprisonment from 2006 for “damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic”. Chen also declined to describe the periodic beatings he says he and his wife endured during 18 months of detention in their village. Chen told CNN: “I don’t want to talk about it right now … Let’s just say that my suffering was beyond imagination.”
Perhaps, Chen’s trusted adviser – Prof. Cohen, who “spoke to Chen multiple times” while Chen is in the US embassy comments about Chen on the Morning Sun on 21st May means something: Chen is in “admirable shape.”
Have a look at the photo of Chen and Hu Jia on the Guardian (27 April) released by Hu Jia to the world after he help Chen to produce his YouTube Video. Is there any sign of a poor health Chen, or a stressful Hu Jia?
If the Chinese authorities were so brutal in their treatment of these dissidents, would both of them still be able to appear so relaxed in the photo?
According to the US funded – Reporter Without Border (27 June, 2011) and the New York Times (28 April, 2012), Hu Jia has been “under constant surveillance.” However, like Chen “escape”, Hu appears to be able to move around and meet Chen at will, and then produced and upload the Chen’s video on YouTube.
In fact, while the New York Times reported on the 28th of April that Hu Jia and others who involved in helping Chen escaped are “now at risk”. On the 9th of July, Hu Jia has apparently again managed to “slip through” security surveillance and meet with some petitioners and produces another video on the internet.
Conclusion
Again, we have to ask ourselves: “Can we trust the media?”
Footnote:
The truth is, Chen is not a simple dissident. Cohen short opening statement at the Council on Foreign Relation had given away a series of important information. This is exactly what Cohen said:
“It was just nine years ago this week that I met Mr. Chen and Mrs. Chen here. I told the State — I told the State Department people I was too busy to meet them. This man had never studied law. I hadn’t finished grading my exams. I had to go to China. But they said, this is somebody you’re going to want to meet. So I said, half an hour only. And we ended up talking about four hours and became good friends. And later in the year when I went to China, he came up to Beijing, the Tsinghua Law School, then he invited my wife and me down to their humble village in Shandong province. It was an enlightening experience, and we have been friends since, although for seven years until May 19th, we hadn’t seen each other.”
From the above statement, we now know that:
1) Cohen, a 72 year old professor (at the time) met Chen in person two times in 2003: first time in the US in May for four hours through the arrangement of the State Department; second meeting in China in later part of 2003;
2) Since then, Cohen hadn’t seen Chen in person for 7 years till 19 May, 2012. That means, Cohen continued to see Chen between 2004 and the first five months of 2005.
The questions are:
Who sponsored Chen to the United State?
Besides the arrangement by the State department to meet with Cohen, who else did the state department arranged Chen to meet while he was in the US? For what purpose?
Who set Chen agenda in China since 2003?
What did Chen do before 2003 that attracted the State Department interest in him?
Why are the mainstream media so reluctant to tell Chen story before 2005?
Is Chen a dissident?
Unfortunately, we can only leave these for next time.
Contrary to popular belief the original architect of China’s brutal one-child policy, instituted as official state policy in 1978, was neither Mao Zedong in a power-drunk whim, nor a Party-sadist hatching eugenics in some sub-level torture chamber. According to anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh in her study Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China the inspiration for the tyrannical move by the Chinese Communist Party was inspired first and foremost by the Club of Rome and its UN affiliates in the early 1970s.
Greenhalgh points out that the infamous policy “had roots in missile scientists’ exposure to and import of Club of Rome population concepts through international conferences in the 1970s.”
In 1978, a group of Chinese scientists visited several scientific conferences in Europe, and readily picked up on the ideas distributed by the Club of Rome. At the head of this Chinese delegation was a man credited for introducing China’s notorious one-child policies, source of so much hardship suffered by the Chinese people in the last decades. Robert Zubrin, senior fellow with the center for security policy,published an op-ed in the Washington Times, reaffirming that Greenhalgh’s study is correct. Zubrin wrote:
“In June 1978, Song Jian, a top-level manager in charge of developing control systems for the Chinese guided-missile program, traveled to Helsinki for an international conference on control-system theory and design. While in Finland, he picked up copies of “The Limits to Growthand: Blueprint for Survival”- publications of the Club of Rome, a major source of Malthusian propaganda – and made the acquaintance of several Europeans who were promoting the report’s method of using computerized “systems analysis” to predict and design the human future.”
In fact, the “missile scientists” dr. Song Jian and company, visited several conferences in Europe in the 1970s designed to further the glory and prestige of the People’s Republic of China around the world. They picked up and further developed several methods to calculate population rates on blueprint models used by the Club of Rome to calculate their scams into creation.
The Club of Rome, a think-tank emerging in the late 1960s out of the back alleys of the post-WW2 eugenics movement, was meant from its very conception to be a beacon of light to which all environmentalist ships were supposed to navigate. Its creators knew that the green movement they had set out to create, was specifically designed to blame man for the supposed predicament the earth was in. As a consequence the number of people should be reduced lest the earth crumble under his crushing weight. The only thing to be done, the Club argued, was for a global body of power to enforce depopulation goals as decided upon by the global elite.
In 1972, the self described “group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity” published their (in)famous “The Limits to Growth”. In this document the authors point-blank argue for the population to shrink if mother earth is to survive much longer: “The overwhelming growth in world population”, claim the authors, “caused by the positive birth-rate loop is a recent phenomenon, a result of mankind’s very successful reduction of worldwide mortality.”
This development is highly worrisome, says the Club of Rome. As possible solutions for this “problem” it proposes either the birthrate to be brought down “to equal the new, lower death rate”, or “the death rate must rise again.”
The fact that the Club of Rome and other UN entities stand at the cradle of one-child policies may not come as a complete surprise to those who have read all the policy-papers issued from the seventies onward. The same Malthusian idea that triggered our current green movement and its obsession with man-made global warming, once inspired hardcore involuntary sterilization policies in the decades preceding World War II.
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution,the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
This contrived and purposeful enemy arrived in the shape of man-made global warming. And to think that all of us gullible gadgets were fooled into believing that any climate change was caused by that big lamp in the sky, determining not just earth’s overall temperatures but those of all planets in the solar system.
It just goes to show that the scam is perpetrated on such an unprecedented scale, that up until a few years ago few dared question its validity. The entire thing of course boils down to the old Nazi proverb: the bigger the lie, the easier the sell. The United Nations, the globalist foremost salesman, was designated to carry the message along to all the world’s “regions” and all nation-states falling under its jurisdiction. The division of the UN deemed most qualified to do the job was UNESCO, the scientific arm deciding what educational programs were to be distributed amongst the world’s universities and primary schools. On June 15th of 2010, Martin Lees, Secretary General of the Club of Rome gave a speech to UNESCO– social engineers in which he admits that:
“We in the Club of Rome have had a long relationship with UNESCO. We look forward to developing our future collaboration so that we can advance our understanding and cooperation to promote action on the critical global issues which will determine the future of us all at this difficult moment in history.”
To understand what this collaboration between the Club of Rome and UNESCO specifically entails, Mr. Lees provides us with the agenda leading up to and following the Copenhagen conference in 2009:
“In October 2009, we will focus at our Annual General Assembly in Amsterdam on “Environment, Energy and Economic Recovery” focused on the key issues for the Copenhagen Climate Conference. In February 2010 we will tackle Cluster Three, on International Development. In April 2010 we will focus on Cluster Four, Social Transformation and in July 2010, on Peace and Security. The Programme will conclude with a major event in November 2010.”
The agenda shows that the Copenhagen conference was far from an isolated happening. It is just one piece out of many in the overall global architecture the elite is constructing incrementally and with which it means to consolidate power in the 21st century. Or, as the Secretary General of the Club of Rome puts it:
“Issues of international governance and institutional architecture will be critical in particular to the effective implementation of a post-Kyoto Treaty. To address the underlying drivers of climate change, institutional mechanisms must be introduced or adapted to implement and coordinate new policies in key areas of concentration such as: finance; science and technology; human resource development; information and communications; and capacity building. And the issue of “climate justice” will be central to achieving any agreement and to the acceptance of any treaty.”
Irrespective of these world players’ vested interest in such an architecture, they all dance to the tune of eugenics- whether they are aware of it or not. It can be to further their career or some sadist pleasure in usurping innocence; whatever their motivation, they have openly declared themselves to be on the opposite site of humanity.
After channeling armchair-eugenicist Alan Weisman, who stated: “The intelligent solution (to the problem of population growth) would require the courage and the wisdom to put our knowledge to the test. It would henceforth limit every human female on Earth capable of bearing children to one”, the professor added:
“Started now, such a policy would reduce Earth’s population down to around 1.6 billion by 2100, about the same as the world population in 1900. Had we kept Earth’s population at that level we would not be having this conversation.”
Who is the “we” Peters mentions that would be assigned to keep the earth’s population at any level? As John P. Holdren, Obama’s science czar, wrote in his monstrosity Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment:
“(…) a Planetary Regime- sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. (…). The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.”
Such an agency exists. It is called the United Nations. After all, only a global government with a system-wide, coordinated eugenics-agenda would have the power necessary to impose such laws upon all the peoples of the world. There’s no other way to make it so.
“We can no longer wait for increasing wealth to bring down fertility in remaining high fertility nations; we need policies and incentives to stop growth now”, Peters stated in his little declaration of death.
“Population growth on earth must cease”, Peters argues again. Citing eugenics-front-man Paul Ehrlich and his equation of death (I = PAT), he attempts to disarm critics of the overpopulation mantra with this spell:
“(…) I represents our impact on the Earth, P equals population, A equals affluence (hence consumption), and T stands for technology.”
The professor may argue that the biggest problem is people, I would argue it’s people like Peters that are the problem, advocating for dehumanizing policies, global in scope, imposing restrictions upon people regarding how many children to put on the world. But it is not just the professor that advocates for a global one child policy.
CNN founder Ted Turner, who has openly stated the earth would be better off when 95% of the human population would vanish, has also professed his admiration for the Chinese (read: UN) policies. In 2010 the Globe and Mail quoted Turner as saying:
“the environmental stress on the Earth requires radical solutions, suggesting countries should follow China’s lead in instituting a one-child policy to reduce global population over time. He added that fertility rights could be sold so that poor people could profit from their decision not to reproduce.”
This echoes the views of Jeffrey Sachs, Ban Ki-moon’s “sustainability” advisor. In June of 2011, US congressman Chris Smith rightly announced that the UN and China are working hand-in-hand to export China’s one-child policy to Africa. Sachs told AFP newswire in May of that year he “worries” about Africa’s “ballooning population”. Sachs:
“I am really scared about population explosion in Nigeria. It is not healthy. Nigeria should work towards attaining a maximum of three children per family.”
Again: these are not genuine worries by genuine scientists. They are calculated statements by compromised charlatans.
As I reported on a couple of weeks ago, UN strongman Maurice Strong told an audience of environmentalists at a side-event to the 2012 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro that China is the model-state for the rest of the world to emulate in regards to environmental matters.
“What China does matters to the world”, Strong said, “and what China is doing is actually a tremendous source of encouragement.”
Strong went on to say that “sustainable development” has become a “people’s movement guided by the people’s government.”
Strong is a long-time advocate of the sort of draconian population policis that China has forced upon its people. As far back as the early 1970s, Strong hesitatingly admitted to the BBC that such a thing as a license to have a child is the kind of system he would see implemented globally:
That the Obama administration has resumed funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is another sad, undeniable fact. But we may not be surprised by it, as none other than John P. Holdren occupies the chief science position in the White House.
The more one researches this union between the UN and Club of Rome, forged in the blood of millions in the last century, the more one realizes that the anthropogenic global warming swindle is not just tied to eugenics. It is eugenics. All indicators point to an unsettling conclusion: the UN and its global affiliates are using China as their model-state, hoping to then export its population policies to the rest of the world. Jurriaan Maessen’s post first appeared on his blog, Explosive Reports.
TAIPEI — Dozens of pet birds smuggled from southern China into Taiwan tested positive for the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus and were destroyed, Taiwanese authorities said Tuesday.
The smuggler bought the 38 birds in the Chinese city of Guangzhou and was caught at the Taoyuan international airport in northern Taiwan when he returned via Macau earlier this month, said the Centers for Disease Control.
The birds later tested positive for the H5N1 virus and were killed, it said, adding that nine people who had contact with the birds had not shown any flu symptoms during a ten-day screening.
Taiwan has no recorded cases of the deadly H5N1 strain, although in 2005 health authorities said eight pet birds smuggled from China tested positive for the strain and destroyed.
The island has reported several outbreaks of the H5N2 bird flu, a less virulent strain of the virus, in recent years.
China is considered one of the nations most at risk of bird flu epidemics because it has the world’s biggest poultry population and many chickens in rural areas are kept close to humans.
Base data EDIS Number: BH-20120717-35819-TWN Event type: Biological Hazard Date/Time: Tuesday, 17 July, 2012 at 13:20 (01:20 PM) UTC Last update: — Cause of event: Damage level: Unknown Geographic information Continent: Asia Country: Taiwan County / State: County of Taoyuan Area: City: Taoyuan Coordinate: N 24° 56.255, E 121° 13.011 Number of affected people / Humanities loss Foreign people: Affected is unknown. Dead person(s): — Injured person(s): — Missing person(s): — Evacuated person(s): — Affected person(s): —
Dozens of pet birds smuggled from southern China into Taiwan tested positive for the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus and were destroyed, Taiwanese authorities said Tuesday. The smuggler bought the 38 birds in the Chinese city of Guangzhou and was caught at the Taoyuan international airport in northern Taiwan when he returned via Macau earlier this month, said the Centers for Disease Control. The birds later tested positive for the H5N1 virus and were killed, it said, adding that nine people who had contact with the birds had not shown any flu symptoms during a ten-day screening. Taiwan has no recorded cases of the deadly H5N1 strain, although in 2005 health authorities said eight pet birds smuggled from China tested positive for the strain and destroyed. The island has reported several outbreaks of the H5N2 bird flu, a less virulent strain of the virus, in recent years. China is considered one of the nations most at risk of bird flu epidemics because it has the world’s biggest poultry population and many chickens in rural areas are kept close to humans.
Biohazard name:H5N1 – Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus Biohazard level:4/4 Hazardous Biohazard desc.: Viruses and bacteria that cause severe to fatal disease in humans, and for which vaccines or other treatments are not available, such as Bolivian and Argentine hemorrhagic fevers, H5N1(bird flu), Dengue hemorrhagic fever, Marburg virus, Ebola virus, hantaviruses, Lassa fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, and other hemorrhagic or unidentified diseases. When dealing with biological hazards at this level the use of a Hazmat suit and a self-contained oxygen supply is mandatory. The entrance and exit of a Level Four biolab will contain multiple showers, a vacuum room, an ultraviolet light room, autonomous detection system, and other safety precautions designed to destroy all traces of the biohazard. Multiple airlocks are employed and are electronically secured to prevent both doors opening at the same time. All air and water service going to and coming from a Biosafety Level 4 (P4) lab will undergo similar decontamination procedures to eliminate the possibility of an accidental release. Symptoms: Status: confirmed
The Russian government has finally caught on that its political opposition is being financed by the US taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy and other CIA/State Department fronts in an attempt to subvert the Russian government and install an American puppet state in the geographically largest country on earth, the one country with a nuclear arsenal sufficient to deter Washington’s aggression.
Just as earlier this year Egypt expelled hundreds of people associated with foreign-funded “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) for “instilling dissent and meddling in domestic policies,” the Russian Duma (parliament) has just passed a law that Putin is expected to sign that requires political organizations that receive foreign funding to register as foreign agents. The law is based on the US law requiring the registration of foreign agents.
Much of the Russian political opposition consists of foreign-paid agents, and once the law passes leading elements of the Russian political opposition will have to sign in with the Russian Ministry of Justice as foreign agents of Washington. The Itar-Tass News Agency reported on July 3 that there are about 1,000 organizations in Russia that are funded from abroad and engaged in political activity. Try to imagine the outcry if the Russians were funding 1,000 organizations in the US engaged in an effort to turn America into a Russian puppet state. (In the US the Russians would find a lot of competition from Israel.)
The Washington-funded Russian political opposition masquerades behind “human rights” and says it works to “open Russia.” What the disloyal and treasonous Washington-funded Russian “political opposition” means by “open Russia” is to open Russia for brainwashing by Western propaganda, to open Russia to economic plunder by the West, and to open Russia to having its domestic and foreign policies determined by Washington.
“Non-governmental organizations” are very governmental. They have played pivotal roles in both financing and running the various “color revolutions” that have established American puppet states in former constituent parts of the Soviet Empire. NGOs have been called “coup d’etat machines,” and they have served Washington well in this role. They are currently working in Venezuela against Chavez.
Of course, Washington is infuriated that its plans for achieving hegemony over a country too dangerous to attack militarily have been derailed by Russia’s awakening, after two decades, to the threat of being politically subverted by Washington-financed NGOs. Washington requires foreign-funded organizations to register as foreign agents (unless they are Israeli funded). However, this fact doesn’t stop Washington from denouncing the new Russian law as “anti-democratic,” “police state,” blah-blah. Caught with its hand in subversion, Washington calls Putin names. The pity is that most of the brainwashed West will fall for Washington’s lies, and we will hear more about “gangster state Russia.”
China is also in Washington’s crosshairs. China’s rapid rise as an economic power is perceived in Washington as a dire threat. China must be contained. Obama’s US Trade Representative has been secretly negotiating for the last 2 or 3 years a Trans Pacific Partnership, whose purpose is to derail China’s natural economic leadership in its own sphere of influence and replace it with Washington’s leadership.
Washington is also pushing to form new military alliances in Asia and to establish new military bases in the Philippines, S. Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere.
Washington quickly inserted itself into disputes between China and Vietnam and China and the Philippines. Washington aligned with its former Vietnamese enemy in Vietnam’s dispute with China over the resource rich Paracel and Spratly islands and with the Philippines in its dispute with China over the resource rich Scarborough Shoal.
Thus, like England’s interference in the dispute between Poland and National Socialist Germany over the return to Germany of German territories that were given to Poland as World War I booty, Washington sets the stage for war.
China has been cooperative with Washington, because the offshoring of the US economy to China was an important component in China’s unprecedented high rate of economic development. American capitalists got their short-run profits, and China got the capital and technology to build an economy that in another 2 or 3 years will have surpassed the sinking US economy. Jobs offshoring, mistaken for free trade by free market economists, has built China and destroyed America.
Washington’s growing interference in Chinese affairs has convinced China’s government that military countermeasures are required to neutralize Washington’s announced intentions to build its military presence in China’s sphere of influence. Washington’s view is that only Washington, no one else, has a sphere of influence, and Washington’s sphere of influence is the entire world.
On July 14 China’s official news agency, Xinhua, said that Washington was interfering in Chinese affairs and making China’s disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines impossible to resolve.
It looks as if an over-confident US government is determined to have a three-front war: Syria, Lebanon, and Iran in the Middle East, China in the Far East, and Russia in Europe. This would appear to be an ambitious agenda for a government whose military was unable to occupy Iraq after nine years or to defeat the lightly-armed Taliban after eleven years, and whose economy and those of its NATO puppets are in trouble and decline with corresponding rising internal unrest and loss of confidence in political leadership.http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/pew-study-finds-steep-declines-in-faith-in-politicians-and-capitalism-a-844127.html
The familiar menace of U.S. war drums have resumed at a fevered pitch, as Iran finds itself once again firmly within the Pentagon’s cross hairs.
According to multiple reports, the U.S. is currently in the midst of a massive military build-up in the Persian Gulf on a scale not seen in the region since prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The military surge reportedly includes an influx of air and naval forces, ground troops, and even sea drones. Lest one forgets, the U.S. already has two aircraft carriers and their accompanying striker groups in the region.
A growing sense of Iran war fever can also be seen mounting in Washington. For instance, in an effort to foil ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany), a bipartisan group of 44 U.S. Senators recently sent a letter to President Obama urging the administration to “focus on significantly increasing the pressure on the Iranian government through sanctions and making clear that a credible military option exists.”
Such hawkish posturing occurs despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community (as well as the Israeli intelligence community, for that matter) finds no evidence that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon–the ostensible reason behind Western sanctions and threats of attack. Moreover, as an April Pentagon report states, Iran’s military doctrine remains one of self-defense, committed to “slow an invasion” and “force a diplomatic solution to hostilities.” (Compare this to the U.S. military doctrine rife with notions of global “power projection” and one sees where the credible threat lies.)
The nuclear issue, though, is but a pretext used to veil U.S. imperial designs in the region. As a senior U.S. Defense Department official recently let slip to the New York Times: “This is not only about Iranian nuclear ambitions, but about Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions.” In other words, it is about removing one of the last irritants to U.S. power projection in the resource-rich Middle East.
Of course, Iran already finds itself under siege from a lethal trifecta comprised of U.S.-led cyber attacks, Israeli-led assassinations, and oppressive Western economic sanctions. The latter of which has left ordinary Iranians to confront a toxic mix of ballooning inflation and rampant unemployment. In short, as Conn Hallinan writes at CounterPunch, the West is “already at war with Iran.”
The question, then, is just how far this “war by other means” shall ultimately escalate?
Towards a Dangerous Escalation
Although punitive economic sanctions are frequently sold as an alternative to war, history is replete with evidence to the contrary. In the end, sanctions are often but a prelude to military hostilities. (One only needs to cross over to Iraq and look at the history of Western sanctions and eventual U.S. invasion.)
In fact, a recent report in the New York Times warned of much the same. The current round of Western economic penalties imposed on Iran, the paper wrote, “represent one of the boldest uses of oil sanctions as a tool of coercion since the United States cut off oil exports to Japan in 1940. That experiment did not end well: The Japanese decided to strike before they were weakened.”
But much like the attempted torpedoing of Japan’s economy prior to the Second World War, the current attempt to bring Iran to its knees via economic sanctions may very well be designed to draw an attack from Iran–thus creating a justification for a full-fledged U.S. military campaign to impose “regime change.”
And much the same as in the 1940s, a global crisis of capitalism greases our current path to war. After all, war enables the forcible opening of new markets, along with bounties galore to be wrought via “creative destruction”; both of which are desperately needed for the sustenance of an imperiled economic system predicated on limitless growth and expansion. Indeed, this enduring allure of war has already reared its ugly head amidst the current crisis.
The colonial smash-and-grab that was the 2011 N.A.T.O. intervention into Libya, as Alexander Cockburn has deemed it, was our first evidence that Western elites have settled on war as a means to resolve the current intractable capitalist crisis. But the spoils from Libya have proven to be insufficient to revive growth stymied since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis.
A heavily sanctioned Iran, on the other hand, boasts a G.D.P. over five times larger than pre-“liberated” Libya, while also sitting atop the world’s third largest oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves. A defeated and placated Iran able to be enveloped more fully into the U.S.-dominated capitalist system thus holds great potential for global capitalism’s needed regeneration. Of course, in seizing control over Iran’s energy resources, the U.S. and its allies would also come to possess a monopoly over the Middle East’s energy resources–a strategic key in any future conflict with rivals Russia and China.
And so it is that under the imperative of renewing global capitalism that the U.S. swiftly amasses its military hardware to the Persian Gulf under to cloak of combating nuclear proliferation. The accompanying talk of military hostilities and of using “all options” against Tehran by elites in Washington thus ought not to be taken as idle threats.
Clearly, we stand at the very precipice of outright war.
The Syrian opposition is doing a fine job asdirected by the CIA . The connection between these “rebels” and the US government is uncanny. Mainstream media has downplayed the Western intervention into the Syrian conflict, referring to them as “pro-democracy campaigners” without admitting their political agendas or ties.
The same champions of former President G.W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq are cheering on the sidelines, waiting for Obama’s unconstitutional declaration of war in Syria.
Speaking for the Syrian National Council (SNC) is Bassma Kodmani, who was an attendee at the Bilderberg Meeting this year in Chantilly, Virginia. The SNC have had the closest contact to Obama’s administration and called specifically for US forces to militarily strike Syria early on in the conflict.
Kodmani has declared : “No dialogue with the ruling regime is possible. We can only discuss how to move on to a different political system.” She also has stated : “The next step needs to be a resolution under Chapter VII, which allows for the use of all legitimate means, coercive means, embargo on arms, as well as the use of force to oblige the regime to comply.”
The NATO forces or “armed peacekeepers” have been waiting in the wings for their direction to attack.
Over 10,000 men armed with “highly-sophisticated weapons, including anti-tank missiles” entered into Syria to assist in the conflict and bloodshed. These trained terrorists took up positions in the suburban areas while other armed groups attacked Assad’s military.
In Turkey, while the CIA trains oppositional forces against Assad, there has developed an element of instability within the Kurds against Erdogan, who supports the CIA operatives.
Through Palestinian Intelligence sources, Turkey provided evidencethat Erdogan had direct involvement in the Gaza Flotilla killings. These murders aided the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood who was opposed to military action against Syria.
Could the same forces who have orchestrated uprisings in the Middle East as so-called “Arab Springs” be planning another in Turkey?
The Council on Foreign Relations(CFR) has admitted involvement with the “ Arab Reform Initiative ” (ARI) and the US/Middle East Project that is a consortium of senior diplomats, intelligence officers and financiers that are directed to control regional “policy analysis” to ensure conflict while purporting stability.
To finance the forced regime change in Syria, the CFR have employed the Centre for European Reform (CER), while using advise from Peter Sutherland from Goldman Sachs.
Advisers to the project include:
• Brent Scowcroft, former US National Security adviser • Zbigniew Brzezinski, influential to Obama’s rise to presidency • George Soros, providing monies from his Open Society Foundation • Charles Grant, former defense editor of the Economist
Now the Red Cross has declared that civil war is officially sited as Homs and Hama are noted as war zones. This means that combatants are subject to the Geneva Conventions and possibly be tried as war criminals in international court.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is beginning talks with Russia and China in an attempt to coerce them into supporting the pending military strike against Syria. The US, the UN and Israel are gathering up forces and making ready for the war they have been planning on for quite some time.
The UN has been frustrated with Russia’s continued blockade of resolutions with the ultimate intervention of UN NATO forces against Assad. An anonymous diplomat admits: “the problem here is Russia.”
By declaring civil war in Syria, Assad could, and most likely will, be charged and tried for war crimes. Mohamad Bazzi, adjunct for the CFR, remarked: “Most of the scenarios are really frightening and just lead to more brutality by the regime and more of a counterattack by the opposition. The regime still hasn’t been weakened to the degree where they can be overrun.”
Bazzi claims the declaration of civil war will do little to change the situation. “The regime already opened themselves up to that months ago, and they’ve been rather disdainful of any kind of international accountability for what they’ve done. On the whole, the observer mission has not been particularly successful. It’s something for the UN to focus on but it’s sort of a sideshow.”
As the UN Security Council voices concerns that Russia will come to Assad’s defense if and when military strike occurs, the UN has stated that “we really need to decide if we are prepared to take action . . . We should be supporting the opposition, with weapons, ammunition, training and intelligence – now.”
——————— This article first appeared on Susanne Posel’s site Occupy Corporatism.
The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) ministerial summit broke up yesterday in acrimony after failing to reach agreement over worsening maritime disputes with China in the South China Sea. Without a consensus, no joint communiqué was released for the first time in the organisation’s 45-year history.
The diplomatic impasse is the product of the Obama administration’s aggressive “pivot” to Asia over the past three years, aimed at undercutting China’s influence throughout the region. Encouraged by the US government, the Philippines and Vietnam have taken a more assertive stance over their claims in the South China Sea, leading to heated disputes with China.
The US has put Beijing on the back foot by pushing ASEAN to adopt a common Code of Conduct as the basis for discussions with China over the maritime disputes. This multilateral approach, aimed at strengthening the position of the US and its allies, cuts directly across previous efforts by China to resolve differences with South East Asian countries on a bilateral basis.
At this week’s summit in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, the Philippines provocatively pressed for the final communiqué to include a reference to the country’s two-month standoff with China over the disputed Scarborough Shoal. In a blunt statement issued on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi declared there was “no dispute” about China’s sovereignty over the reef. “China hopes the Philippine side faces the facts squarely and stops creating trouble,” he said.
Efforts to paper over the disagreements within ASEAN failed when Cambodia rejected a compromise wording of the final statement. Cambodia, which currently holds ASEAN’s rotating chairmanship, is closely aligned with China. While not an ASEAN member, China belongs to the associated East Asian Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum.
The failure to reach agreement sparked bitter recriminations between the Philippines and Cambodia. The Philippine foreign ministry issued a statement “deploring” the lack of a final communiqué and blaming Cambodia for opposing any mention of the Scarborough Shoal. A Cambodian Foreign Ministry official denied that his country had come under pressure from China, declaring it an “unfair accusation”.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario inflamed tensions, warning that the increasing assertion by China of sovereignty over areas of the South China Sea “poses a threat to the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region.” He declared: “If left unchecked, the increasing tension that is being generated in the process could further escalate into physical hostilities which no one wants.”
Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa expressed concern over the open divisions within ASEAN. “This is strange territory for me,” he told reporters. “It’s very, very disappointing that at this 11th hour ASEAN is not able to rally around a certain common language on the South China Sea. We have gone through so many problems in the past, but we’ve never failed to speak as one.”
A great deal is at stake in the South China Sea. The area has significant energy reserves and fisheries. It also has key sea routes from Africa, the Middle East and Europe to North East Asia, accounting for about a third of the world’s shipping. The waters are adjacent to China’s southern coast and vital Chinese naval bases.
The Obama administration intervened directly into the maritime disputes in 2010 when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared at an ASEAN summit that the US had “a national interest” in ensuring “freedom of navigation” through the South China Sea. The US navy routinely patrols the area, sailing close to sensitive Chinese military installations.
At this week’s meeting, Clinton allowed the Philippines to play the most confrontational role, creating diplomatic friction. But her comments left no doubt that the US was exploiting the issue to undermine China and consolidate its own influence in the region. Clinton asserted Washington’s right to intervene by declaring that “the United States is a resident Pacific power.” She pointedly criticised “worrisome instances of economic coercion and the problematic use of military and government vessels in connection with disputes among fishermen.”
Clinton’s remarks amounted to a not-so-subtle reference to the standoff over the Scarborough Shoal, as well as the row between China and Japan over the disputed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea. That dispute erupted again this week after Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda suggested last weekend that his government would purchase the rocky outcrops from their current private owner. Not coincidentally, Clinton was in Tokyo last Sunday for talks with Noda and his ministers.
China’s state-owned media held the US responsible for the renewed tensions over the South China Sea. An article in China Daily, entitled “US sows seeds of discord,” branded Clinton’s comments as “inappropriate and ill-intentioned”. It continued: “The US, as a force from outside the region, is not in any position to tell countries in the region how to solve their differences.” The article reiterated that ASEAN meetings were not the appropriate venue to discuss the South China Sea.
The Obama administration’s intervention at ASEAN summits is just one aspect of a broad diplomatic and strategic offensive aimed at strengthening US ties with countries throughout the region. As well as closer relations with military allies and partners such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, India and the Philippines, Washington is making moves to prise countries like Burma, Cambodia and Laos away from their alignment with Beijing.
Clinton became the first US secretary of state in more than half a century to visit Laos this week, in a significant step to strengthen relations with the regime. She held talks with the Cambodian government, holding out the possibility that the US might reach an accommodation on Phnom Penh’s demand for a write-off of more than $400 million in debt accrued under the US-backed military government of Lon Nol. Clinton also met with Burmese President Thein Sein after easing sanctions on US investment in that country.
Clinton’s diplomatic moves are backed by a US military build-up in Asia. The South China Sea and key choke points, such as the Malacca Strait, are central to US strategic planning, which aims to ensure the US navy is capable of cutting off China’s shipping routes from Africa and the Middle East in the event of a conflict. To that end, the Obama administration has secured military basing arrangements with Australia and Singapore, and is seeking a similar pact with the Philippines.
The lack of agreement at this week’s ASEAN summit is just the latest indication that the Obama administration’s strategy is recklessly inflaming regional tensions and thus the danger of military conflict.
Greenhalgh points out that the infamous policy “had roots in missile scientists’ exposure to and import of Club of Rome population concepts through international conferences in the 1970s.”
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