mintpressnews--2020-04-22--Sanctioned Countries Are Now Leading the World in the Fight Against Coronavirus

After weeks of dismissing it as a liberal “ hoax ” designed to unseat the president , brushing the virus off as no big deal and under control , the Trump administration is clearly floundering in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Despite weeks of warning where it could have taken precautionary steps , the United States currently has four times the confirmed cases and twice the deaths of any other country .
At the same time , the countries it is currently placing under economic siege , totaling around a quarter of the world ’ s population , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ global fight against the coronavirus .
China , for instance , the first epicenter of the outbreak , has managed to slow its new COVID-19 cases to a trickle , reopening for business after losing 4,632 people – a number that , in the context of a stark April reality , appears impressively low .
Although much of the discourse in the West condemns the Chinese government ’ s supposedly incompetent or slow response to COVID-19 , the reality is that Beijing alerted the World Health Organization on December 31 , when just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had been identified , with authorities not yet even aware that the condition was a coronavirus .
The country is at the forefront of the production and distribution of protective and medical equipment throughout the world and , along with Russia ( another sanctioned state ) is one of the few nations to fly medical personnel around the world to help other countries .
Russia even sent a planeload of cargo to the United States , despite the American sanctions hurting its economy .
While their actions have been presented in corporate media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” abroad , the aid has been much appreciated in countries suffering under the pandemic .
In contrast , the U.S. has led the world in stealing or requisitioning supplies destined for other nations .
Another sanctioned state exporting doctors across the world during the pandemic is Cuba , the island nation is sending medical staff to neighbors like Haiti , Venezuela , Suriname and Jamaica and also further afield to Italy .
“ This is a global battle and we have to fight it together , ” said nurse Carlos Armando Garcia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Cuban medicine pioneered by Che Guevara , who quipped that , “ The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.
” A Cuban antiviral drug , Interferon Alpha 2b , has also proved successful in boosting patients ’ immune systems , helping them fight off the coronavirus , and is now being used worldwide .
Venezuela , meanwhile , struggling under crippling U.S. sanctions that have claimed the lives of at least 100,000 people according to an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to fight the virus head on .
The country has conducted twice as many tests as any other South American nation , but only 288 COVID-19 cases have been found , leading to only 10 deaths .
Even before any cases were confirmed , President Maduro declared a health emergency , quickly closing public buildings like theaters and restaurants .
His administration rapidly organized a huge online database where citizens could inform authorities of their symptoms .
Medical professionals visited tens of thousands of people in their own homes , distributing test kits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of all rent and utility bills during the crisis , also banning the firing of workers .
A testament to the country ’ s efforts is that thousands of Venezuelan expats in the U.S. , at least 92 percent of whom voted against Maduro in the 2013 elections , came back to the country during the pandemic , suggesting they are far more confident in Venezuela ’ s handling of the crisis .
Meanwhile , Vietnam , a country not currently sanctioned but having faced Washington ’ s wrath for decades , surely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus .
Despite recording its first positive case just two days after the first American one , authorities have managed to limit the outbreak to just 268 cases and zero deaths .
This is not because they are not testing , far from it .
In fact , the country has designed , developed and mass produced multiple test kits all costing less than $ 20 each and giving dependable results in less than 90 minutes .
Those arriving from abroad are quarantined for two weeks while anyone coming to a major city @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Whole villages and towns have been fenced off due to one positive test .
There is certainly an authoritarian element to their response ; those lying about their past whereabouts or found to be spreading false information about the pandemic can face charges .
However , the response has hinged upon the strong collective solidarity of the Vietnamese people , many of whom have likened the present events to the Tet Offensive , where millions united in secret to drive the American invaders back in a surprise attack .
In Iran , one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country that planners in the U.S. were gleefully predicting would fall in on itself under the strain , has managed to get to grips with the pandemic .
The number of new daily cases of COVID-19 has been falling day-on-day since March 30 .
Ironically , Mohammad Morandi , a professor at the University of Tehran , claims the crippling sanctions that blocked Iranian oil exports have inadvertently better prepared them to deal with the total collapse in global oil prices than U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia , the UAE or Qatar .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ their level of human development and the democratic credentials of their governments , they all share one thing in common : they have refused to buy into a U.S.-led neoliberal economic order that appears totally unprepared and unable to come to terms with a globalized pandemic .
Countries that have been the most enthusiastic adopters of neoliberalism have , not coincidentally , found their individualistic ideology that promotes greed and discourages collective solutions sorely lacking in tackling a public health crisis that threatens the entire world .
Feature photo | Staff work at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work on coronavirus testing kits just outside Tehran , Iran , April 11 , 2020 .
Ebrahim Noroozi | AP Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News .
After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books : Bad News From Venezuela : Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age : Still Manufacturing Consent .
He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting , The Guardian , Salon , The Grayzone , Jacobin Magazine , Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and @ @ @

After weeks of dismissing it as a liberal “hoax” designed to unseat the president, brushing the virus off as no big deal and under control, the Trump administration is clearly floundering in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite weeks of warning where it could have taken precautionary steps, the United States currently has four times the confirmed cases and twice the deaths of any other country. At the same time, the countries it is currently placing under economic siege, totaling around a quarter of the world’s population, are faring far better and leading the global fight against the coronavirus.
China, for instance, the first epicenter of the outbreak, has managed to slow its new COVID-19 cases to a trickle, reopening for business after losing 4,632 people – a number that, in the context of a stark April reality, appears impressively low. Although much of the discourse in the West condemns the Chinese government’s supposedly incompetent or slow response to COVID-19, the reality is that Beijing alerted the World Health Organization on December 31, when just 27 cases (and no deaths) had been identified, with authorities not yet even aware that the condition was a coronavirus.
The country is at the forefront of the production and distribution of protective and medical equipment throughout the world and, along with Russia (another sanctioned state) is one of the few nations to fly medical personnel around the world to help other countries. Russia even sent a planeload of cargo to the United States, despite the American sanctions hurting its economy. While their actions have been presented in corporate media as cynically trying to “curry favor” abroad, the aid has been much appreciated in countries suffering under the pandemic. In contrast, the U.S. has led the world in stealing or requisitioning supplies destined for other nations.
Another sanctioned state exporting doctors across the world during the pandemic is Cuba, the island nation is sending medical staff to neighbors like Haiti, Venezuela, Suriname and Jamaica and also further afield to Italy. “This is a global battle and we have to fight it together,” said nurse Carlos Armando Garcia Hernandez, capturing the medical internationalist spirit of Cuban medicine pioneered by Che Guevara, who quipped that, “The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.” A Cuban antiviral drug, Interferon Alpha 2b, has also proved successful in boosting patients’ immune systems, helping them fight off the coronavirus, and is now being used worldwide.
Venezuela, meanwhile, struggling under crippling U.S. sanctions that have claimed the lives of at least 100,000 people according to an American UN Special Rapporteur, has mobilized to fight the virus head on. The country has conducted twice as many tests as any other South American nation, but only 288 COVID-19 cases have been found, leading to only 10 deaths. Even before any cases were confirmed, President Maduro declared a health emergency, quickly closing public buildings like theaters and restaurants. His administration rapidly organized a huge online database where citizens could inform authorities of their symptoms. Medical professionals visited tens of thousands of people in their own homes, distributing test kits and advice. Maduro decreed the suspension of all rent and utility bills during the crisis, also banning the firing of workers.
A testament to the country’s efforts is that thousands of Venezuelan expats in the U.S., at least 92 percent of whom voted against Maduro in the 2013 elections, came back to the country during the pandemic, suggesting they are far more confident in Venezuela’s handling of the crisis.
Meanwhile, Vietnam, a country not currently sanctioned but having faced Washington’s wrath for decades, surely earns the top prize in handling the virus. Despite recording its first positive case just two days after the first American one, authorities have managed to limit the outbreak to just 268 cases and zero deaths. This is not because they are not testing, far from it. In fact, the country has designed, developed and mass produced multiple test kits all costing less than $20 each and giving dependable results in less than 90 minutes.
Those arriving from abroad are quarantined for two weeks while anyone coming to a major city or building has their temperature checked. Whole villages and towns have been fenced off due to one positive test. There is certainly an authoritarian element to their response; those lying about their past whereabouts or found to be spreading false information about the pandemic can face charges. However, the response has hinged upon the strong collective solidarity of the Vietnamese people, many of whom have likened the present events to the Tet Offensive, where millions united in secret to drive the American invaders back in a surprise attack.
In Iran, one of the first global hotspots and a country that planners in the U.S. were gleefully predicting would fall in on itself under the strain, has managed to get to grips with the pandemic. The number of new daily cases of COVID-19 has been falling day-on-day since March 30.
Ironically, Mohammad Morandi, a professor at the University of Tehran, claims the crippling sanctions that blocked Iranian oil exports have inadvertently better prepared them to deal with the total collapse in global oil prices than U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Qatar.
Trump blocked Iranian oil exports & inadvertently prepared Iran for the collapse of the oil market. Are others prepared? Will the Saudi regime survive? UAE? Kuwait? Qatar? US shale? What will happen to the US banking sector & oil industry? The balance of power is shifting. — Seyed Mohammad Marandi (@s_m_marandi) April 20, 2020
While the sanctioned countries vary greatly in their level of human development and the democratic credentials of their governments, they all share one thing in common: they have refused to buy into a U.S.-led neoliberal economic order that appears totally unprepared and unable to come to terms with a globalized pandemic. Countries that have been the most enthusiastic adopters of neoliberalism have, not coincidentally, found their individualistic ideology that promotes greed and discourages collective solutions sorely lacking in tackling a public health crisis that threatens the entire world.
Feature photo | Staff work at a lab in an Iranian medical firm work on coronavirus testing kits just outside Tehran, Iran, April 11, 2020. Ebrahim Noroozi | AP
Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.


mintpressnews--2020-04-22--US Role in Destabilizing Yemen and Somalia Could Spark “Famine of Biblical Proportions”

A new report from the World Food Program warns that the COVID-19 pandemic could spark a massive global famine , leading to over a quarter-billion people falling into acute food insecurity by the end of the year .
While the coronavirus is devastating enough – having ( officially ) killed over 177,000 people worldwide and infected 2.6 million , the upheaval it has caused might trigger far greater damage , as harvests are ruined , supply lines broken , and people lose the ability to pay for food .
“ I must warn you that if we don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ access , avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade – we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months , ” said David Beasley , the World Food Program ’ s Director-General .
However , the report makes clear that not all countries will be affected equally , with those populations already facing food insecurity the hardest hit , chief among them Yemen and the countries of the Horn of Africa – not coincidentally states that the U.S. has been destabilizing for decades .
If famine and war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including the large port city of Aden , has been inundated with floods , causing huge damage to the area and loss of life .
However , little discussed in either the World Food Program ’ s report or corporate media is the Western role in Yemen ’ s destruction .
As Oxfam noted , Yemenis are not starving : they are being starved ; starved by a five-year war sustained by the U.S. and its NATO allies .
The U.S. and Great Britain have provided crucial support , arming , training @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yemen ’ s economy .
The country ’ s Ministry of Agriculture estimates that there have been at least 10,000 airstrikes against farms , 800 against local food markets , and 450 against food storage facilities between 2015 and 2019 .
And thanks to the fuel blockade , hospital and sanitation services are not able to function normally , leading to an enormous waste build up and outbreaks of cholera and other deadly diseases rarely seen in peacetime .
COVID-19 will surely overwhelm the already struggling facilities .
The World Food Program predicts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a prolonged global pandemic and famine ; 16 million people ( the majority of the population ) are already suffering a food crisis , the highest number in the world .
40 percent of Yemeni households had already lost their primary source of income before the pandemic , primarily because of the Saudi-led blockade on the country and its Houthi rebels .
The new report calculates that over half of children born since the conflict started in 2015 are already physically stunted due to lack of food .
Throughout the war , food @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including the World Food Program itself ) have played politics with relief efforts .
Likewise , the West has played a highly destabilizing role in the Horn of Africa , supporting militias and dictatorial regimes across the region .
In addition to the famous Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 , the US has been quietly carrying out a longstanding drone bombing campaign in Somalia , greatly exacerbating the intense economic and societal problems the country faces .
But the connection between foreign intervention and hunger is rarely made by the media or politicians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries in the region , such as Ethiopia , Sudan , South Sudan and Kenya .
4.24 million people in Somalia , it notes , are already facing serious circumstances .
The country ’ s 2.6 million internally displaced refugees also pose a serious problem .
The overcrowded and unsanitary camps they live in – where social distancing and getting enough nutrition is difficult – could be a breeding ground for hunger and COVID-19 .
Those with malnutrition and the health concerns it brings with it are particularly at risk of falling ill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people ’ s citizenship status is often in question , and will likely prevent some from accessing social protections and provisions .

A new report from the World Food Program warns that the COVID-19 pandemic could spark a massive global famine, leading to over a quarter-billion people falling into acute food insecurity by the end of the year. While the coronavirus is devastating enough – having (officially) killed over 177,000 people worldwide and infected 2.6 million, the upheaval it has caused might trigger far greater damage, as harvests are ruined, supply lines broken, and people lose the ability to pay for food. “I must warn you that if we don’t prepare and act now – to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade – we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months,” said David Beasley, the World Food Program’s Director-General.
However, the report makes clear that not all countries will be affected equally, with those populations already facing food insecurity the hardest hit, chief among them Yemen and the countries of the Horn of Africa – not coincidentally states that the U.S. has been destabilizing for decades.
If famine and war were not enough, much of Yemen, including the large port city of Aden, has been inundated with floods, causing huge damage to the area and loss of life.
Flood damage in Crater Aden. This is the second flood in Aden in a month.#SouthYemen #Yemen pic.twitter.com/js6CNNE2aZ — Summer Ahmed (@samwrax) April 21, 2020
However, little discussed in either the World Food Program’s report or corporate media is the Western role in Yemen’s destruction. As Oxfam noted, Yemenis are not starving: they are being starved; starved by a five-year war sustained by the U.S. and its NATO allies. The U.S. and Great Britain have provided crucial support, arming, training and supporting the Saudi coalition in devastating Yemen’s economy. The country’s Ministry of Agriculture estimates that there have been at least 10,000 airstrikes against farms, 800 against local food markets, and 450 against food storage facilities between 2015 and 2019. And thanks to the fuel blockade, hospital and sanitation services are not able to function normally, leading to an enormous waste build up and outbreaks of cholera and other deadly diseases rarely seen in peacetime. COVID-19 will surely overwhelm the already struggling facilities.
The World Food Program predicts Yemen to feel the worst impact of a prolonged global pandemic and famine; 16 million people (the majority of the population) are already suffering a food crisis, the highest number in the world. 40 percent of Yemeni households had already lost their primary source of income before the pandemic, primarily because of the Saudi-led blockade on the country and its Houthi rebels. The new report calculates that over half of children born since the conflict started in 2015 are already physically stunted due to lack of food. Throughout the war, food prices have risen and international agencies (including the World Food Program itself) have played politics with relief efforts.
Likewise, the West has played a highly destabilizing role in the Horn of Africa, supporting militias and dictatorial regimes across the region. In addition to the famous Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, the US has been quietly carrying out a longstanding drone bombing campaign in Somalia, greatly exacerbating the intense economic and societal problems the country faces. But the connection between foreign intervention and hunger is rarely made by the media or politicians. The report expresses grave concern over countries in the region, such as Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Kenya. 4.24 million people in Somalia, it notes, are already facing serious circumstances. The country’s 2.6 million internally displaced refugees also pose a serious problem. The overcrowded and unsanitary camps they live in – where social distancing and getting enough nutrition is difficult – could be a breeding ground for hunger and COVID-19. Those with malnutrition and the health concerns it brings with it are particularly at risk of falling ill and dying. Moreover, internally displaced people’s citizenship status is often in question, and will likely prevent some from accessing social protections and provisions.


mintpressnews--2020-04-22--Human Lab Rats: The US Government’s Secret History of Grisly Medical Experiments

CHARLOTTESVILLE ( Rutherford ) –– I have never known any government to put the best interests of its people first , and this COVID-19 pandemic is no exception .
Now this isn ’ t intended to be a debate over whether COVID-19 is a legitimate health crisis or a manufactured threat .
Such crises can—and are— manipulated by governments in order to expand their powers .
As such , it is possible for the virus to be both a genuine menace to public health and a menace to freedom .
Yet we can ’ t afford to overlook the fact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.S. government , have unleashed untold horrors upon the world in the name of global conquest , the acquisition of greater wealth , scientific experimentation , and technological advances , all packaged in the guise of the greater good .
While the U.S. government is currently looking into the possibility that the novel coronavirus spread from a Chinese laboratory rather than a market , the virus could just as easily have been created by the U.S. government or one of its allies .
After all , grisly experiments , barbaric behavior and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. government , which has meted out untold horrors against humans and animals alike .
For instance , did you know that the U.S. government has been buying hundreds of dogs and cats from “ Asian meat markets ” as part of a gruesome experiment into food-borne illnesses ?
The cannibalistic experiments involve killing cats and dogs purchased from Colombia , Brazil , Vietnam , China and Ethiopia , and then feeding the dead remains to laboratory kittens , bred in government laboratories for the express purpose of being infected with a disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gruesome .
The Department of Veterans Affairs has been removing parts of dogs ’ brains to see how it affects their breathing ; applying electrodes to dogs ’ spinal cords ( before and after severing them ) to see how it impacts their cough reflexes ; and implanting pacemakers in dogs ’ hearts and then inducing them to have heart attacks ( before draining their blood ) .
All of the laboratory dogs are killed during the course of these experiments .
It ’ s not just animals that are being treated like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We the people ” have also become the police state ’ s guinea pigs : to be caged , branded , experimented upon without our knowledge or consent , and then conveniently discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects .
Back in 2017 , FEMA “ inadvertently ” exposed nearly 10,000 firefighters , paramedics and other responders to a deadly form of ricin during simulated bioterrorism response sessions .
In 2015 , it was discovered that an Army lab had been “ mistakenly ” shipping deadly anthrax to labs and defense contractors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incidents have been dismissed as “ accidents , ” you don ’ t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation ’ s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals , injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins .
At the time , the government reasoned that it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society such as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blacks .
In Alabama , for example , 600 black men with syphilis were allowed to suffer without proper medical treatment in order to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis .
In California , older prisoners had testicles from livestock and from recently executed convicts implanted in them to test their virility .
In Connecticut , mental patients were injected with hepatitis .
In Maryland , sleeping prisoners had a pandemic flu virus sprayed up their noses .
In Georgia , two dozen “ volunteering ” prison inmates had gonorrhea bacteria pumped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ penis .
In Michigan , male patients at an insane asylum were exposed to the flu after first being injected with an experimental flu vaccine .
In Minnesota , 11 public service employee “ volunteers ” were injected with malaria , then starved for five days .
In New York , dying patients had cancer cells introduced into their systems .
In Ohio , over 100 inmates were injected with live cancer cells .
Also in New York , prisoners at a reformatory prison were also split into two groups to determine how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first group was made to swallow an unfiltered stool suspension , while the second group merely breathed in germs sprayed into the air .
And in Staten Island , children with mental retardation were given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured .
As the Associated Press reports , “ The late 1940s and 1950s saw huge growth in the U.S. pharmaceutical and health care industries , accompanied by a boom in prisoner experiments funded by both the government and corporations .
By the 1960s , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be used as medical guinea pigs … because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.
” Moreover , “ Some of these studies , mostly from the 1940s to the ’ 60s , apparently were never covered by news media .
Others were reported at the time , but the focus was on the promise of enduring new cures , while glossing over how test subjects were treated.
” How many government incursions into our freedoms have been blacked out , buried under “ entertainment ” news headlines , or spun in such a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a word of caution is paranoid or conspiratorial ?
Unfortunately , these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the atrocities the government has inflicted on an unsuspecting populace in the name of secret experimentation .
For instance , there was the U.S. military ’ s secret race-based testing of mustard gas on more than 60,000 enlisted men .
As NPR reports , “ All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in secret and weren ’ t recorded on the subjects ’ official @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proof of what they went through .
They received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind .
And they were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable discharge and military prison time , leaving some unable to receive adequate medical treatment for their injuries , because they couldn ’ t tell doctors what happened to them.
” And then there was the CIA ’ s MKULTRA program in which hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel were dosed with LSD , some having the hallucinogenic drug slipped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in city bars , at restaurants .
As Time reports , “ before the documentation and other facts of the program were made public , those who talked of it were frequently dismissed as being psychotic.
” Now one might argue that this is all ancient history and that the government today is different from the government of yesteryear , but has the U.S. government really changed ?
Has the government become any more humane , any more respectful of the rights of the citizenry ?
Has it become any more transparent or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law ?
Has it become any more truthful about its activities ?
Has it become any more cognizant of its appointed role as a guardian of our rights ?
Or has the government simply hunkered down and hidden its nefarious acts and dastardly experiments under layers of secrecy , legalism and obfuscations ?
Has it not become wilier , more slippery , more difficult to pin down ?
Having mastered the Orwellian art of Doublespeak and followed the Huxleyan blueprint for distraction and diversion , are we not dealing with a government that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it used to be ?
Consider this : after revelations about the government ’ s experiments spanning the 20th century spawned outrage , the government began looking for human guinea pigs in other countries , where “ clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules.
” In Guatemala , prisoners and patients at a mental hospital were infected with syphilis , “ apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease.
” In Uganda , U.S.-funded doctors “ failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though it would have protected their newborns.
” Meanwhile , in Nigeria , children with meningitis were used to test an antibiotic named Trovan .
Eleven children died and many others were left disabled .
The more things change , the more they stay the same .
Case in point : back in 2016 , it was announced that scientists working for the Department of Homeland Security would begin releasing various gases and particles on crowded subway platforms as part of an experiment aimed at testing bioterror airflow in New York subways .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the subways by the DHS were nontoxic and did not pose a health risk .
It ’ s in our best interests , they said , to understand how quickly a chemical or biological terrorist attack might spread .
And look how cool the technology is—said the government cheerleaders—that scientists can use something called DNATrax to track the movement of microscopic substances in air and food .
( Imagine the kinds of surveillance that could be carried out by the government using trackable airborne microscopic substances you breathe in or ingest .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ same government that in 1949 sprayed bacteria into the Pentagon ’ s air handling system , then the world ’ s largest office building .
In 1950 , special ops forces sprayed bacteria from Navy ships off the coast of Norfolk and San Francisco , in the latter case exposing all of the city ’ s 800,000 residents .
In 1953 , government operatives staged “ mock ” anthrax attacks on St. Louis , Minneapolis , and Winnipeg using generators placed on top of cars .
Local governments were reportedly told that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were being deployed to mask the city on enemy radar.
” Later experiments covered territory as wide-ranging as Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas .
In 1965 , the government ’ s experiments in bioterror took aim at Washington ’ s National Airport , followed by a 1966 experiment in which army scientists exposed a million subway NYC passengers to airborne bacteria that causes food poisoning .
And this is the same government that has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices , surveillance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against us , to track , control and trap us .
So , no , I don ’ t think the government ’ s ethics have changed much over the years .
It ’ s just taken its nefarious programs undercover .
The question remains : why is the government doing this ?
The answer is always the same : money , power and total domination .
It ’ s the same answer no matter which totalitarian regime is in power .
The mindset driving these programs has , appropriately , been likened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jews .
As the Holocaust Museum recounts , Nazi physicians “ conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.
” The Nazi ’ s unethical experiments ran the gamut from freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia , tests to determine the maximum altitude for parachuting out of a plane , injecting prisoners with malaria , typhus , tuberculosis , typhoid fever , yellow fever , and infectious hepatitis , exposing prisoners to phosgene and mustard gas , and mass sterilization experiments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the American people can be traced back , in a direct line , to the horrors meted out in Nazi laboratories .
In fact , following the second World War , the U.S. government recruited many of Hitler ’ s employees , adopted his protocols , embraced his mindset about law and order and experimentation , and implemented his tactics in incremental steps .
Sounds far-fetched , you say ?
Read on .
It ’ s all documented .
As historian Robert Gellately recounts , the Nazi police state was initially so admired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world powers of the day that J. Edgar Hoover , then-head of the FBI , actually sent one of his right-hand men , Edmund Patrick Coffey , to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany ’ s secret police , the Gestapo .
The FBI was so impressed with the Nazi regime that , according to the New York Times , in the decades after World War II , the FBI , along with other government agencies , aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis , including some of Hitler ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousands of Nazi collaborators—including the head of a Nazi concentration camp , among others—were given secret visas and brought to America by way of Project Paperclip .
Subsequently , they were hired on as spies , informants and scientific advisers , and then camouflaged to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler ’ s holocaust machine would remain unknown .
All the while , thousands of Jewish refugees were refused entry visas to the U.S. on the grounds that it could threaten national securi Adding further insult to injury , American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ex-Nazis on the U.S. government ’ s payroll ever since .
And in true Gestapo fashion , anyone who has dared to blow the whistle on the FBI ’ s illicit Nazi ties has found himself spied upon , intimidated , harassed and labeled a threat to national security .
As if the government ’ s covert , taxpayer-funded employment of Nazis after World War II wasn ’ t bad enough , U.S. government agencies—the FBI , CIA and the military—have since fully embraced many of the Nazi ’ s well-honed policing tactics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American citizens .
It ’ s certainly easy to denounce the full-frontal horrors carried out by the scientific and medical community within a despotic regime such as Nazi Germany , but what do you do when it ’ s your own government that claims to be a champion of human rights all the while allowing its agents to engage in the foulest , bases and most despicable acts of torture , abuse and experimentation ?
When all is said and done , this is not a government that has our best interests at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that values us .
Perhaps the answer lies in The Third Man , Carol Reed ’ s influential 1949 film starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles .
In the film , set in a post-WW II Vienna , rogue war profiteer Harry Lime has come to view human carnage with a callous indifference , unconcerned that the diluted penicillin he ’ s been trafficking underground has resulted in the tortured deaths of young children .
Challenged by his old friend Holly Martins to consider the consequences of his actions , Lime responds , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , nobody thinks in terms of human beings .
Governments don ’ t , so why should we ?
” “ Have you ever seen any of your victims ?
” asks Martins .
“ Victims ?
” responds Limes , as he looks down from the top of a Ferris wheel onto a populace reduced to mere dots on the ground .
“ Look down there .
Tell me .
Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever ?
If I offered you twenty thousand pounds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you really , old man , tell me to keep my money , or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare ?
Free of income tax , old man .
Free of income tax — the only way you can save money nowadays.
” As I make clear in my book Battlefield America : The War on the American People , this is how the U.S. government sees us , too , when it looks down upon us from its lofty perch .
To the powers-that-be , the rest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dots on the ground .
To the architects of the American police state , we are not worthy or vested with inherent rights .
This is how the government can justify treating us like economic units to be bought and sold and traded , or caged rats to be experimented upon and discarded when we ’ ve outgrown our usefulness .
To those who call the shots in the halls of government , “ we the people ” are merely the means to an end .
“ We the people ” —who think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stand , who resist , who demand to be treated with dignity and care , who believe in freedom and justice for all—have become obsolete , undervalued citizens of a totalitarian state that , in the words of Rod Serling , “ has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time .
It has refinements , technological advances , and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom.
” In this sense , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ man in Serling ’ s Twilight Zone episode “ The Obsolete Man.
” “ The Obsolete Man ” speaks to the dangers of a government that views people as expendable once they have outgrown their usefulness to the State .
Yet—and here ’ s the kicker—this is where the government through its monstrous inhumanity also becomes obsolete .
As Serling noted in his original script for “ The Obsolete Man , ” “ Any state , any entity , any ideology which fails to recognize the worth , the dignity , the rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do you defeat a monster ?
You start by recognizing the monster for what it is .
Feature photo | Biosafety protective suits are hung up outside a chemical decontamination room in a biosafety level 4 training facility at U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Frederick , Md.
, March 19 , 2020 .
Andrew Harnik | AP John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute .
His new book Battlefield America : The War on the American People ( SelectBooks , 2015 ) is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be contacted at johnw @ rutherford.org .

CHARLOTTESVILLE (Rutherford) –– I have never known any government to put the best interests of its people first, and this COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.
Now this isn’t intended to be a debate over whether COVID-19 is a legitimate health crisis or a manufactured threat. Such crises can—and are— manipulated by governments in order to expand their powers. As such, it is possible for the virus to be both a genuine menace to public health and a menace to freedom.
Yet we can’t afford to overlook the fact that governments the world over, including the U.S. government, have unleashed untold horrors upon the world in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.
While the U.S. government is currently looking into the possibility that the novel coronavirus spread from a Chinese laboratory rather than a market, the virus could just as easily have been created by the U.S. government or one of its allies.
After all, grisly experiments, barbaric behavior and inhumane conditions have become synonymous with the U.S. government, which has meted out untold horrors against humans and animals alike.
For instance, did you know that the U.S. government has been buying hundreds of dogs and cats from “Asian meat markets” as part of a gruesome experiment into food-borne illnesses?
The cannibalistic experiments involve killing cats and dogs purchased from Colombia, Brazil, Vietnam, China and Ethiopia, and then feeding the dead remains to laboratory kittens, bred in government laboratories for the express purpose of being infected with a disease and then killed.
It gets more gruesome.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has been removing parts of dogs’ brains to see how it affects their breathing; applying electrodes to dogs’ spinal cords (before and after severing them) to see how it impacts their cough reflexes; and implanting pacemakers in dogs’ hearts and then inducing them to have heart attacks (before draining their blood). All of the laboratory dogs are killed during the course of these experiments.
It’s not just animals that are being treated like lab rats by government agencies.
“We the people” have also become the police state’s guinea pigs: to be caged, branded, experimented upon without our knowledge or consent, and then conveniently discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.
Back in 2017, FEMA “inadvertently” exposed nearly 10,000 firefighters, paramedics and other responders to a deadly form of ricin during simulated bioterrorism response sessions. In 2015, it was discovered that an Army lab had been “mistakenly” shipping deadly anthrax to labs and defense contractors for a decade.
While these particular incidents have been dismissed as “accidents,” you don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins.
At the time, the government reasoned that it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society such as prisoners, mental patients, and poor blacks.
In Alabama, for example, 600 black men with syphilis were allowed to suffer without proper medical treatment in order to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis. In California, older prisoners had testicles from livestock and from recently executed convicts implanted in them to test their virility. In Connecticut, mental patients were injected with hepatitis.
In Maryland, sleeping prisoners had a pandemic flu virus sprayed up their noses. In Georgia, two dozen “volunteering” prison inmates had gonorrhea bacteria pumped directly into their urinary tracts through the penis. In Michigan, male patients at an insane asylum were exposed to the flu after first being injected with an experimental flu vaccine. In Minnesota, 11 public service employee “volunteers” were injected with malaria, then starved for five days.
In New York, dying patients had cancer cells introduced into their systems. In Ohio, over 100 inmates were injected with live cancer cells. Also in New York, prisoners at a reformatory prison were also split into two groups to determine how a deadly stomach virus was spread: the first group was made to swallow an unfiltered stool suspension, while the second group merely breathed in germs sprayed into the air. And in Staten Island, children with mental retardation were given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured.
As the Associated Press reports, “The late 1940s and 1950s saw huge growth in the U.S. pharmaceutical and health care industries, accompanied by a boom in prisoner experiments funded by both the government and corporations. By the 1960s, at least half the states allowed prisoners to be used as medical guinea pigs … because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.”
Moreover, “Some of these studies, mostly from the 1940s to the ’60s, apparently were never covered by news media. Others were reported at the time, but the focus was on the promise of enduring new cures, while glossing over how test subjects were treated.”
Media blackouts, propaganda, spin. Sound familiar?
How many government incursions into our freedoms have been blacked out, buried under “entertainment” news headlines, or spun in such a way as to suggest that anyone voicing a word of caution is paranoid or conspiratorial?
Unfortunately, these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the atrocities the government has inflicted on an unsuspecting populace in the name of secret experimentation.
For instance, there was the U.S. military’s secret race-based testing of mustard gas on more than 60,000 enlisted men. As NPR reports, “All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in secret and weren’t recorded on the subjects’ official military records. Most do not have proof of what they went through. They received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind. And they were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable discharge and military prison time, leaving some unable to receive adequate medical treatment for their injuries, because they couldn’t tell doctors what happened to them.”
And then there was the CIA’s MKULTRA program in which hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel were dosed with LSD, some having the hallucinogenic drug slipped into their drinks at the beach, in city bars, at restaurants. As Time reports, “before the documentation and other facts of the program were made public, those who talked of it were frequently dismissed as being psychotic.”
Now one might argue that this is all ancient history and that the government today is different from the government of yesteryear, but has the U.S. government really changed?
Has the government become any more humane, any more respectful of the rights of the citizenry?
Has it become any more transparent or willing to abide by the rule of law? Has it become any more truthful about its activities? Has it become any more cognizant of its appointed role as a guardian of our rights?
Or has the government simply hunkered down and hidden its nefarious acts and dastardly experiments under layers of secrecy, legalism and obfuscations? Has it not become wilier, more slippery, more difficult to pin down?
Having mastered the Orwellian art of Doublespeak and followed the Huxleyan blueprint for distraction and diversion, are we not dealing with a government that is simply craftier and more conniving that it used to be?
Consider this: after revelations about the government’s experiments spanning the 20th century spawned outrage, the government began looking for human guinea pigs in other countries, where “clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules.”
In Guatemala, prisoners and patients at a mental hospital were infected with syphilis, “apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease.” In Uganda, U.S.-funded doctors “failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study… even though it would have protected their newborns.” Meanwhile, in Nigeria, children with meningitis were used to test an antibiotic named Trovan. Eleven children died and many others were left disabled.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Case in point: back in 2016, it was announced that scientists working for the Department of Homeland Security would begin releasing various gases and particles on crowded subway platforms as part of an experiment aimed at testing bioterror airflow in New York subways.
The government insisted that the gases released into the subways by the DHS were nontoxic and did not pose a health risk. It’s in our best interests, they said, to understand how quickly a chemical or biological terrorist attack might spread. And look how cool the technology is—said the government cheerleaders—that scientists can use something called DNATrax to track the movement of microscopic substances in air and food. (Imagine the kinds of surveillance that could be carried out by the government using trackable airborne microscopic substances you breathe in or ingest.)
Mind you, this is the same government that in 1949 sprayed bacteria into the Pentagon’s air handling system, then the world’s largest office building. In 1950, special ops forces sprayed bacteria from Navy ships off the coast of Norfolk and San Francisco, in the latter case exposing all of the city’s 800,000 residents.
In 1953, government operatives staged “mock” anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg using generators placed on top of cars. Local governments were reportedly told that “‘invisible smokescreen[s]’ were being deployed to mask the city on enemy radar.” Later experiments covered territory as wide-ranging as Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas.
In 1965, the government’s experiments in bioterror took aim at Washington’s National Airport, followed by a 1966 experiment in which army scientists exposed a million subway NYC passengers to airborne bacteria that causes food poisoning.
And this is the same government that has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.
So, no, I don’t think the government’s ethics have changed much over the years. It’s just taken its nefarious programs undercover.
The question remains: why is the government doing this? The answer is always the same: money, power and total domination.
It’s the same answer no matter which totalitarian regime is in power.
The mindset driving these programs has, appropriately, been likened to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews. As the Holocaust Museum recounts, Nazi physicians “conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.”
The Nazi’s unethical experiments ran the gamut from freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia, tests to determine the maximum altitude for parachuting out of a plane, injecting prisoners with malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis, exposing prisoners to phosgene and mustard gas, and mass sterilization experiments.
The horrors being meted out against the American people can be traced back, in a direct line, to the horrors meted out in Nazi laboratories. In fact, following the second World War, the U.S. government recruited many of Hitler’s employees, adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law and order and experimentation, and implemented his tactics in incremental steps.
Sounds far-fetched, you say? Read on. It’s all documented.
As historian Robert Gellately recounts, the Nazi police state was initially so admired for its efficiency and order by the world powers of the day that J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany’s secret police, the Gestapo.
The FBI was so impressed with the Nazi regime that, according to the New York Times, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen.
All told, thousands of Nazi collaborators—including the head of a Nazi concentration camp, among others—were given secret visas and brought to America by way of Project Paperclip. Subsequently, they were hired on as spies, informants and scientific advisers, and then camouflaged to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler’s holocaust machine would remain unknown. All the while, thousands of Jewish refugees were refused entry visas to the U.S. on the grounds that it could threaten national securi
Adding further insult to injury, American taxpayers have been paying to keep these ex-Nazis on the U.S. government’s payroll ever since. And in true Gestapo fashion, anyone who has dared to blow the whistle on the FBI’s illicit Nazi ties has found himself spied upon, intimidated, harassed and labeled a threat to national security.
As if the government’s covert, taxpayer-funded employment of Nazis after World War II wasn’t bad enough, U.S. government agencies—the FBI, CIA and the military—have since fully embraced many of the Nazi’s well-honed policing tactics, and have used them repeatedly against American citizens.
It’s certainly easy to denounce the full-frontal horrors carried out by the scientific and medical community within a despotic regime such as Nazi Germany, but what do you do when it’s your own government that claims to be a champion of human rights all the while allowing its agents to engage in the foulest, bases and most despicable acts of torture, abuse and experimentation?
When all is said and done, this is not a government that has our best interests at heart.
This is not a government that values us.
Perhaps the answer lies in The Third Man, Carol Reed’s influential 1949 film starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. In the film, set in a post-WW II Vienna, rogue war profiteer Harry Lime has come to view human carnage with a callous indifference, unconcerned that the diluted penicillin he’s been trafficking underground has resulted in the tortured deaths of young children.
Challenged by his old friend Holly Martins to consider the consequences of his actions, Lime responds, “In these days, old man, nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, so why should we?”
“Have you ever seen any of your victims?” asks Martins.
“Victims?” responds Limes, as he looks down from the top of a Ferris wheel onto a populace reduced to mere dots on the ground. “Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax — the only way you can save money nowadays.”
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is how the U.S. government sees us, too, when it looks down upon us from its lofty perch.
To the powers-that-be, the rest of us are insignificant specks, faceless dots on the ground.
To the architects of the American police state, we are not worthy or vested with inherent rights. This is how the government can justify treating us like economic units to be bought and sold and traded, or caged rats to be experimented upon and discarded when we’ve outgrown our usefulness.
To those who call the shots in the halls of government, “we the people” are merely the means to an end.
“We the people”—who think, who reason, who take a stand, who resist, who demand to be treated with dignity and care, who believe in freedom and justice for all—have become obsolete, undervalued citizens of a totalitarian state that, in the words of Rod Serling, “has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom.”
In this sense, we are all Romney Wordsworth, the condemned man in Serling’s Twilight Zone episode “The Obsolete Man.”
“The Obsolete Man” speaks to the dangers of a government that views people as expendable once they have outgrown their usefulness to the State. Yet—and here’s the kicker—this is where the government through its monstrous inhumanity also becomes obsolete. As Serling noted in his original script for “The Obsolete Man,” “Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man…that state is obsolete.”
How do you defeat a monster? You start by recognizing the monster for what it is.
Feature photo | Biosafety protective suits are hung up outside a chemical decontamination room in a biosafety level 4 training facility at U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., March 19, 2020. Andrew Harnik | AP
John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].


mintpressnews--2020-04-23--Podcast: Whitney Webb on the Rise of a Biotech Industrial Complex Under COVID-19

Welcome to MintCast , the official MintPress News podcast hosted by Mnar Muhawesh .
MintCast is an interview podcast featuring dissenting voices , independent researchers and journalists the establishment would rather silence .
In this episode , we are joined by independent journalist Whitney Webb .
Many of our readers and listeners are familiar with Webb from her extraordinary work at MintPress as a staff writer and investigative reporter .
She is now a contributor and is working on her first book about Jeffery Epstein and his ties to the Deep State .
Webb recently published a series of reports @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Engineering Contagion : Amerithrax , Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex.
” In them , she exposes the agendas of the national security state , Silicon Valley tech giants , billionaires , Big Pharma , the U.S. government ’ s years-long preparation for a flu-like pandemic similar to COVID-19 and how they planned to capitalize on that crisis to fulfill a vision worthy of George Orwell ’ s “ 1984.
” While the American public is riddled with panic and fear over the spread of the coronavirus , a mass surveillance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nation after 9/11 is being built under the guise of protecting public health — all with public consent .
The effort to normalize this plan for the greater good will expand a surveillance system that will make authoritarianism the new normal and further reduce American civil liberties .
From Jared Kushner to Bill Gates to the corruption-riddled vaccine companies tied to the opioid epidemic to Silicon Valley tech giants and their role in martial law , rolling back civil liberties and authoritarianism — Whitney Webb unpacks the many conflicts of interests at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to COVID-19 .
She also discusses how the search for a cure ties into a larger agenda to use public fear over the pandemic to build a techno-tyrannical state worthy of George Orwell ’ s “ 1984.
” This program is 100 percent listener supported !
You can join the hundreds of financial sponsors who make this show possible by becoming a member on our Patreon page .
Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes , Spotify and SoundCloud .
Please leave us a review and share this segment .
Mnar Muhawesh is founder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ MintPress News , and is also a regular speaker on responsible journalism , sexism , neoconservativism within the media and journalism start-ups .

Welcome to MintCast, the official MintPress News podcast hosted by Mnar Muhawesh. MintCast is an interview podcast featuring dissenting voices, independent researchers and journalists the establishment would rather silence.
In this episode, we are joined by independent journalist Whitney Webb. Many of our readers and listeners are familiar with Webb from her extraordinary work at MintPress as a staff writer and investigative reporter. She is now a contributor and is working on her first book about Jeffery Epstein and his ties to the Deep State.
Webb recently published a series of reports on the Last American Vagabond entitled “Engineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex.” In them, she exposes the agendas of the national security state, Silicon Valley tech giants, billionaires, Big Pharma, the U.S. government’s years-long preparation for a flu-like pandemic similar to COVID-19 and how they planned to capitalize on that crisis to fulfill a vision worthy of George Orwell’s “1984.”
As Webb explains:
For decades the U.S. ‘biodefense’ programs and pandemic preparedness efforts are now rearing its ugly head as pandemic panic distracts the American and global public from the fundamentally untrustworthy, and frankly dangerous, individuals who are in control of the US government and corporate America’s response.”
While the American public is riddled with panic and fear over the spread of the coronavirus, a mass surveillance system far worse than that introduced to the nation after 9/11 is being built under the guise of protecting public health — all with public consent. The effort to normalize this plan for the greater good will expand a surveillance system that will make authoritarianism the new normal and further reduce American civil liberties.
From Jared Kushner to Bill Gates to the corruption-riddled vaccine companies tied to the opioid epidemic to Silicon Valley tech giants and their role in martial law, rolling back civil liberties and authoritarianism — Whitney Webb unpacks the many conflicts of interests at play in the government and corporate response to COVID-19. She also discusses how the search for a cure ties into a larger agenda to use public fear over the pandemic to build a techno-tyrannical state worthy of George Orwell’s “1984.”
This program is 100 percent listener supported! You can join the hundreds of financial sponsors who make this show possible by becoming a member on our Patreon page.
Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify and SoundCloud. Please leave us a review and share this segment.
Mnar Muhawesh is founder, CEO and editor in chief of MintPress News, and is also a regular speaker on responsible journalism, sexism, neoconservativism within the media and journalism start-ups.


mintpressnews--2020-04-23--A Machiavellian Fiasco: How a So-Called ‘Centrist’ Resurrected Israel’s Far Right

It was intended to be a Machiavellian move , but the decision by Benny Gantz , leader of Israel ’ s Kahol Lavan ( Blue and White ) coalition , to join a Benjamin Netanyahu-led government is likely to destabilize the political fabric of Israeli society for years to come .
In a surprising move , Gantz has entered into precarious political compromises , whereby he would become the Speaker of the Israeli Knesset ( Parliament ) , as a prelude to the formation of a national unity government which will include the ruling Likud party and Blue and White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intentions to join hands with Netanyahu , thus throwing the discredited Prime Minister a lifeline , the Blue and White coalition quickly disintegrated .
Blue and White has stood on shaky ground since its formation to contest the April 2019 general elections .
The leaders of the coalition , Gantz ( Israeli Resilience Party ) , Yair Lapid ( Yesh Atid ) , and Moshe Ya ’ alon ( Telem ) seem largely unified , not by a common ideological foundation , but by their sheer hatred of Netanyahu and burning desire to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s longest-serving Prime Minister , with his terms in office linked to an era of nepotism and corruption .
Over time , Netanyahu has turned whatever semblance of democracy his country enjoyed into a personal and family affair .
In his constant readiness to concede to his extreme right-wing government coalition partners to ensure his own political survival , Netanyahu offered his country little by way of a viable political vision .
For many years , Netanyahu ’ s enemies did little to counterbalance the Prime Minister ’ s excesses .
While Netanyahu @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constituency , Israel ’ s so-called left dwindled to represent , at times , a mere margin of error in Israeli elections and opinion polls .
A telling example is the most recent poll conducted by Israel ’ s Channel 12 earlier this month .
According to the results , if Israelis were to vote in a general election on the day of the polling , the country ’ s historic Labour Party ( which founded Israel in 1948 ) would fail to garner a single seat at the Knesset .
In retrospect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other option but to brand themselves as ‘ centrists ’ .
On forming their coalition a year ago , they aimed to appeal to various groups of disgruntled Israelis : right-wing voters disenchanted with the political deadlock and economic inequality ; leftists , who have lost faith in the traditional left ’ s ability to resurrect itself as a strong oppositional force and the remnants of independent and centrist voters .
Gantz and his allies ’ calculations proved to have merit , as Israeli voters came out on three different elections in less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what once seemed like an impossible mission : ousting Netanyahu .
In the last March elections , Blue and White have won 33 seats in the Knesset , certainly not enough to form a coalition on their own , but enough to build a relatively stable coalition that would seize control of the Knesset and .
ultimately , form a government .
For the first time in years , it seemed that Netanyahu ’ s political career was over and that the Prime Minister , who is facing serious corruption charges , will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not prison .
But Gantz faced a dilemma , which eventually resulted in his seemingly erratic decision to form a national unity government with Netanyahu .
To form a government that excludes the Likud , Blue and White would have been forced to include the third-largest political force in the Knesset , the Arab parties which are united under the umbrella of the Joint List .
Despite the Joint List ’ s willingness to join Gantz ’ s precarious coalition ( which would have included some of the most notorious anti-Arab and racist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Beiteinu , Avigdor Lieberman ) , Gantz did everything in his power to avoid that possibility .
Racism in Israel is at its worst , and any political concessions made to Arab parties would have been considered by many Israelis as a betrayal to the ‘ Jewish identity of the State ’ as enshrined in the chauvinistic ‘ Nation-State Law ’ of July 2018 .
Masquerading his decision as a concession that is compelled by the coronavirus pandemic , Gantz agreed to form an emergency national government with Netanyahu , which excludes the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Gantz nominated himself for the position of the Speaker of the Knesset , replacing the abruptly resigned former Likud Speaker , Yuli Edelstein , setting the stage for negotiations with Netanyahu ’ s Likud regarding the structure of the new government .
Whether Gantz had anticipated the fallout of his decision or not is irrelevant because , consciously , he opted to make a deal with the devil rather than being the Israeli Jewish politician who has paved the road for Israel ’ s Arab community to be part of the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has worked for – three consecutive elections and the desperate attempt at carving up a centrist political narrative in a country inclining more to the right – have all come crashing down .
Yesh Atid and Telem , two of the three main pillars in the Blue and White , officially filed for , and were granted , permission from the Knesset Arrangement Committee to break away from Gantz ’ s faction .
Unsurprisingly , if elections were to be held in Israel now , Gantz ’ s party would win a measly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s growing popularity of 40 seats .
With the balance of power finally shifting in his favor , Netanyahu has toughened his political stance , insisting on playing a role in the appointment of judges ( thus protecting himself from future prosecution ) , and on his right to block any High Court of Justice decision of disqualifying him from serving as a Prime Minister .
After failing to reach an agreement , the task of forming the government has been transferred to the Knesset .
A failure to do so within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a fourth election , one that the Likud and their allies are sure to win , and this time decisively so .
It is ironic that the person who resurrected Israel ’ s political ‘ center ’ is the same one who eventually destroyed it .
By doing so , Gantz has granted Netanyahu a new lease on life and , consequently , strengthened the Israeli right ’ s grip on power for years to come .
Feature photo | A woman walks at the start of a protest against Israeli Prime Minister @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , April 19 , 2020 .
Demonstrators accused Netanyahu of using the coronavirus as cover to undermine the country ’ s democratic institutions .
Oded Balilty | AP Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle .
He is the author of five books .
His latest is “ These Chains Will Be Broken : Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons ” ( Clarity Press , Atlanta ) .
Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ IZU ) .
His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

It was intended to be a Machiavellian move, but the decision by Benny Gantz, leader of Israel’s Kahol Lavan (Blue and White) coalition, to join a Benjamin Netanyahu-led government is likely to destabilize the political fabric of Israeli society for years to come.
In a surprising move, Gantz has entered into precarious political compromises, whereby he would become the Speaker of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), as a prelude to the formation of a national unity government which will include the ruling Likud party and Blue and White.
The move, however, proved disastrous.
As soon as Gantz declared his intentions to join hands with Netanyahu, thus throwing the discredited Prime Minister a lifeline, the Blue and White coalition quickly disintegrated.
Blue and White has stood on shaky ground since its formation to contest the April 2019 general elections. The leaders of the coalition, Gantz (Israeli Resilience Party), Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid), and Moshe Ya’alon (Telem) seem largely unified, not by a common ideological foundation, but by their sheer hatred of Netanyahu and burning desire to oust him.
Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister, with his terms in office linked to an era of nepotism and corruption. Over time, Netanyahu has turned whatever semblance of democracy his country enjoyed into a personal and family affair. In his constant readiness to concede to his extreme right-wing government coalition partners to ensure his own political survival, Netanyahu offered his country little by way of a viable political vision.
For many years, Netanyahu’s enemies did little to counterbalance the Prime Minister’s excesses. While Netanyahu succeeded in wooing Israel’s right-wing constituency, Israel’s so-called left dwindled to represent, at times, a mere margin of error in Israeli elections and opinion polls.
A telling example is the most recent poll conducted by Israel’s Channel 12 earlier this month. According to the results, if Israelis were to vote in a general election on the day of the polling, the country’s historic Labour Party (which founded Israel in 1948) would fail to garner a single seat at the Knesset.
In retrospect, Gantz and his allies had no other option but to brand themselves as ‘centrists’. On forming their coalition a year ago, they aimed to appeal to various groups of disgruntled Israelis: right-wing voters disenchanted with the political deadlock and economic inequality; leftists, who have lost faith in the traditional left’s ability to resurrect itself as a strong oppositional force and the remnants of independent and centrist voters.
Gantz and his allies’ calculations proved to have merit, as Israeli voters came out on three different elections in less than one year to breathe life into what once seemed like an impossible mission: ousting Netanyahu.
In the last March elections, Blue and White have won 33 seats in the Knesset, certainly not enough to form a coalition on their own, but enough to build a relatively stable coalition that would seize control of the Knesset and. ultimately, form a government.
For the first time in years, it seemed that Netanyahu’s political career was over and that the Prime Minister, who is facing serious corruption charges, will see his day in court, if not prison.
But Gantz faced a dilemma, which eventually resulted in his seemingly erratic decision to form a national unity government with Netanyahu.
To form a government that excludes the Likud, Blue and White would have been forced to include the third-largest political force in the Knesset, the Arab parties which are united under the umbrella of the Joint List.
Despite the Joint List’s willingness to join Gantz’s precarious coalition (which would have included some of the most notorious anti-Arab and racist political figures in Israel, like Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman), Gantz did everything in his power to avoid that possibility.
Racism in Israel is at its worst, and any political concessions made to Arab parties would have been considered by many Israelis as a betrayal to the ‘Jewish identity of the State’ as enshrined in the chauvinistic ‘Nation-State Law’ of July 2018.
Masquerading his decision as a concession that is compelled by the coronavirus pandemic, Gantz agreed to form an emergency national government with Netanyahu, which excludes the Arab Joint List.
On March 26, Gantz nominated himself for the position of the Speaker of the Knesset, replacing the abruptly resigned former Likud Speaker, Yuli Edelstein, setting the stage for negotiations with Netanyahu’s Likud regarding the structure of the new government.
Whether Gantz had anticipated the fallout of his decision or not is irrelevant because, consciously, he opted to make a deal with the devil rather than being the Israeli Jewish politician who has paved the road for Israel’s Arab community to be part of the country’s decision-making.
Everything that Gantz has worked for – three consecutive elections and the desperate attempt at carving up a centrist political narrative in a country inclining more to the right – have all come crashing down. Yesh Atid and Telem, two of the three main pillars in the Blue and White, officially filed for, and were granted, permission from the Knesset Arrangement Committee to break away from Gantz’s faction.
Unsurprisingly, if elections were to be held in Israel now, Gantz’s party would win a measly 19 seats – compared with the Likud’s growing popularity of 40 seats.
With the balance of power finally shifting in his favor, Netanyahu has toughened his political stance, insisting on playing a role in the appointment of judges (thus protecting himself from future prosecution), and on his right to block any High Court of Justice decision of disqualifying him from serving as a Prime Minister.
After failing to reach an agreement, the task of forming the government has been transferred to the Knesset. A failure to do so within 21 days would take the country to a fourth election, one that the Likud and their allies are sure to win, and this time decisively so.
It is ironic that the person who resurrected Israel’s political ‘center’ is the same one who eventually destroyed it. By doing so, Gantz has granted Netanyahu a new lease on life and, consequently, strengthened the Israeli right’s grip on power for years to come.
Feature photo | A woman walks at the start of a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 19, 2020. Demonstrators accused Netanyahu of using the coronavirus as cover to undermine the country’s democratic institutions. Oded Balilty | AP
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net


mintpressnews--2020-04-24--As Saudi Forces Flee Northern Yemen, Evidence of an Unholy Alliance with Al-Qaeda is Left Behind

The journey from Sana ’ a to the far northeastern stretches of al-Jawf through the Empty Quarter is an arduous affair .
A veritable no man ’ s land , the region has long-enjoyed the dubious distinction of hosting strongholds of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ( AQAP ) , a group that evolved and blossomed under the sponsorship of nearby Saudi Arabia .
The journey crisscrosses what seems like endless valleys of identical dunes with little more than the blazing sun to provide a semblance of direction .
In perfect weather under the flecks of golden sunshine that mingled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ morning sky , we set off northeast from the capital Sana ’ a , passing through the Nihm district , the gateway to al-Jawf .
After crossing the Fardhah Nihm checkpoint , dozens of burned-out armored vehicles of American and Canadian origin could be seen on both sides of the road .
Life is gradually returning to the area ’ s villages and shops and restaurants have opened their doors again .
In January 2020 , Yemen ’ s Houthi-allied army , supported by local tribes , launched a retaliatory military operation to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nihm lies east of Yemen ’ s capital city of Sana ’ a , one of the most strategically important battlefields in Yemen .
Two thousand Saudi fighters , including members of al-Qaeda , ISIS , and other armed groups under the patronage of the Saudi Monarchy , met their end or were captured in the operation .
By March , the Yemeni army had successfully subdued Nihm and advanced all the way to al-Jawf and Marib .
Now , for the first time in nearly 55 years , al-Jawf and most of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decades of de facto rule by Riyadh through its various Yemeni proxies .
In their haste to escape the coming onslaught , Saudi forces left behind a slew of both medium and heavy weapons as well as the ammunition required to make them come to life .
Whole stores of weapons , unexploded ordnance , and mines were abandoned , often amidst the tattered flags of Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda and in huge tunnels reminiscent of those left behind in the wake of the wars in Syria and Iraq .
It wasn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the scent of corpses still lingers in the region ’ s reefs , valleys and rugged mountains .
The residents of Nihm ’ s sleepy desert towns are beginning to return to their villages .
A wary feeling of safety and relative stability accompanies the slow trickle of life as it returns , interrupted by everpresent reminders that the war is far from over , reminders that come in the form of the wild dogs feeding on abandoned corpses , Saudi warplanes that make the occasional visit , and most acutely , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the remnants of cluster bombs and other munitions still embedded in the ground .
Those , according to Adel , a grocery store owner in the roadside village of Khalgah in Nihm , pose the most immediate danger .
Nihm , like most cities in Yemen , has been hit by a barrage of indiscriminate airstrikes , over 250,000 since 2015 when the war began .
According to the Yemeni Army , 70 percent of those airstrikes have hit civilian targets .
Thousands of tons of weapons , most often supplied by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hospitals , schools , markets , mosques , farms , factories , bridges , and power and water treatment plants and have left unexploded ordnances scattered across densely populated areas .
After a six-hour drive beneath the watchful eye of the Coalition warplanes that seemed to be constantly buzzing overhead , we were met with horrific scenes in al-Hazm .
A simple desert city notorious for its connections to Al-Qaeda , al-Hazm is one of the largest cities in al-Jawf and was home to some of the fiercest fighting in the battle to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of airstrikes in the city appeared everywhere ; digging into the asphalt roads , destroying homes , schools and government complexes .
Smoke was still lingering from an airstrike that hit less than a kilometer away from us as we arrived .
It was in al-Hazm that a broken-hearted mother told us of how she allowed herself a renewed sense of hope that the defeat of the Coalition would lead to information about her loved ones .
“ Two years have passed since they kidnapped my daughter , ” she told MintPress , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tears flowing as she recounted one of the worst crimes carried out by the Saudi coalition in al-Jawf .
In a case that managed to gain local notoriety for its sheer brutality , her daughter , Samirah Hezam Maharesh , a mother of three young girls , was kidnapped from her home in al-Hazam on July 5 , 2018 , by armed militants loyal to Saudi Arabia .
First , Samirah was taken to a secret prison in the provincial capital and then transferred to another prison .
Her whereabouts are still unknown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from unconfirmed local news stories and occasional rumors .
The kidnapping of Samirah crossed a red line in Yemen ’ s conservative society , which is heavily steeped in tribal tradition , and sparked dozens of demonstrations throughout the country ’ s northern provinces .
In addition to other atrocities carried out by AQAP , the kidnapping ultimately helped push local residents to risk it all and join the resistance led by the Houthis against the Saudi Coalition and its militant allies .
Residents told us that Samirah was just one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their homes or cars at checkpoints in al-Jawf and Marib .
During their reign in al-Jawf , Saudi-backed militants , including al-Qaeda , committed horrendous abuses against those it saw as an obstacle to their occupation .
Since 2015 , when Saudi Arabia announced from Washington D.C. that it had launched a military campaign against the poorest country in the Middle East , it has been an open secret that both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had formed an unholy union with al-Qaeda ’ s branch in Saudi Arabia and Yemen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the Arabian Peninsula .
In al-Jawf , the relationship between Saudi Arabia and AQAP was well underway by 2016 when the Kingdom launched a military campaign to take the province .
Saudi and AQAP forces fought side by side , sharing the same weapons , trenches , operations command centers , resting places , and extremist ideals .
The only thing they didn ’ t share was a desire to destroy the United States , a trait exclusive to al-Qaeda according to documents left behind by fallen fighters and the confessions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ al-Jawf .
AQAP has hobbled by in Yemen for years , feeding off the relentless cycle of poverty and hunger and only occasionally emerging from the shadows to claim credit for an attack or seek new recruits .
It was not until 2015 when the group began to receive support from Saudi Arabia that it become brazen enough to emerge from its hiding places into the streets of al-Jawf ’ s towns .
Generous Saudi backing meant that AQAP could boost recruitment , build new training camps and promote the organization ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Saudi state religion of Wahhabism .
By early 2020 , AQAP had a sizable real estate portfolio in al-Jawf and Marib and ran most of the provinces ’ large businesses .
Sprawling villages in al-Jawf , the second largest governorate in Yemen , turned into strongholds of the organization after residents were forced to flee to other areas .
AQAP turned some of the abandoned homes into factories used to manufacture explosive belts , IEDs and car bombs .
Others were used to stock weapons , train fighters and prepare for their “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s of Khazaf and al-Marwan Finally , we reached two of al-Qaeda ’ s main strongholds in the far northeastern Khab and al-Shaf districts , near the edge of the expansive Rub ’ al Khali Desert ( the Empty Quarter ) .
The villages of Khazaf and al-Marwan are little more than dried up oases scattered in the remote desert like the remains of some ancient colony .
It was here that humble houses made from dried mud bricks were turned into factories , secret prisons , and centers for the dissemination of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bottle dungeons dug into the dirt floors of local houses .
Accessible only via small overhead hatches , they were used by militants to keep prisoners , including captured female slaves , as well as dead bodies .
Deep below two houses , we were shown complex tunnels systems ostensibly used to hold and torture prisoners .
The stench of human death lingered in the dark tunnels mingling with the smell of dust and concrete .
The tunnels were also used as corridors to move weapons and supplies from house to house undetected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into a makeshift AQAP prison , we saw four three-square-meter windowless cells with heavy steel doors .
As we made our way from cell to cell , I was struck by the sight of a pile of woman ’ s clothing , a prayer outfit , and a baby ’ s diapers , all piled into a morbid testament of the crimes committed here .
I also found a note , a scrap of paper with the following scribbled onto it : ” I am Um Assamah , Why did you imprison me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is rumored to have been held in these same cells .
Residents who participated in the fight against the Saudi-backed militants told us that the place was a women ’ s prison that “ from outside it looked like simple houses but when we entered , we found cells , tunnels , and implements of torture , ” a 60-year-old man with a white beard recounted , barely holding back his tears and gripping the rifle slung over his shoulder .
In Yemen , a woman ’ s incarceration is considered a great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ used to make booby traps and explosives .
In a small meeting room adorned with AQAP flags , 12 bags of high-explosive TNT lay piled against a wall .
A hundred meters away , another home was turned into a makeshift workshop to produce vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices .
In the yard , a 1984 Toyota Land Cruiser lay abandoned , laden with a barrel of TNT in its last stages of preparation .
The truck was most likely intended to be used against large gatherings according to local resistance fighters .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ occurred in the forgotten desert villages and in a brazen effort to conceal their involvement , Saudi warplanes hit them hard last week .
Khazaf and al-Marwan were pounded by barrages of Coalition airstrikes , it appears , however , that their hail mary may have come too late .
Video filmed by local fighters and shared MintPress as well as with Houthi media document many of the crimes that took place as well as the forces behind them .
Local fighters told us that they weren ’ t even aware of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laboratories and tunnels until after they were exposed beneath the rubble of the Saudi airstrikes which targeted specific homes .
Now , in a last-ditch effort to revive what ’ s left of their AQAP allies in al-Jawf , Saudi Arabia has renewed its battlefield campaign in the province of al-Bayda after over a year of relative quiet there .
Al-Bayda lies close to Marib , where some of the most extremist militants allied with the Coalition reside .
Backed by Saudi warplanes , AQAP carried out two operations in Nate ’ a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 10 hours according to the Yemeni army .
Feature photo | Saudi-allied militants ride on the back of a pick-up truck in an area between Yemen ’ s northern provinces of al-Jawf and Marib , December 5 , 2015 .
Ali Owidha | Reuters Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist .
He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media .

The journey from Sana’a to the far northeastern stretches of al-Jawf through the Empty Quarter is an arduous affair. A veritable no man’s land, the region has long-enjoyed the dubious distinction of hosting strongholds of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a group that evolved and blossomed under the sponsorship of nearby Saudi Arabia. The journey crisscrosses what seems like endless valleys of identical dunes with little more than the blazing sun to provide a semblance of direction.
In perfect weather under the flecks of golden sunshine that mingled with the few clouds in the early morning sky, we set off northeast from the capital Sana’a, passing through the Nihm district, the gateway to al-Jawf. After crossing the Fardhah Nihm checkpoint, dozens of burned-out armored vehicles of American and Canadian origin could be seen on both sides of the road.
Life is gradually returning to the area’s villages and shops and restaurants have opened their doors again.
In January 2020, Yemen’s Houthi-allied army, supported by local tribes, launched a retaliatory military operation to recapture Nihm from Saudi Coalition forces. Nihm lies east of Yemen’s capital city of Sana’a, one of the most strategically important battlefields in Yemen. Two thousand Saudi fighters, including members of al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other armed groups under the patronage of the Saudi Monarchy, met their end or were captured in the operation. By March, the Yemeni army had successfully subdued Nihm and advanced all the way to al-Jawf and Marib. Now, for the first time in nearly 55 years, al-Jawf and most of Marib Province is under Yemeni control following decades of de facto rule by Riyadh through its various Yemeni proxies.
In their haste to escape the coming onslaught, Saudi forces left behind a slew of both medium and heavy weapons as well as the ammunition required to make them come to life. Whole stores of weapons, unexploded ordnance, and mines were abandoned, often amidst the tattered flags of Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda and in huge tunnels reminiscent of those left behind in the wake of the wars in Syria and Iraq. It wasn’t just weapons that were left behind, the scent of corpses still lingers in the region’s reefs, valleys and rugged mountains.
The residents of Nihm’s sleepy desert towns are beginning to return to their villages. A wary feeling of safety and relative stability accompanies the slow trickle of life as it returns, interrupted by everpresent reminders that the war is far from over, reminders that come in the form of the wild dogs feeding on abandoned corpses, Saudi warplanes that make the occasional visit, and most acutely, a significant number of unexploded ordnances, the remnants of cluster bombs and other munitions still embedded in the ground. Those, according to Adel, a grocery store owner in the roadside village of Khalgah in Nihm, pose the most immediate danger.
Nihm, like most cities in Yemen, has been hit by a barrage of indiscriminate airstrikes, over 250,000 since 2015 when the war began. According to the Yemeni Army, 70 percent of those airstrikes have hit civilian targets. Thousands of tons of weapons, most often supplied by the United States, have been dropped on hospitals, schools, markets, mosques, farms, factories, bridges, and power and water treatment plants and have left unexploded ordnances scattered across densely populated areas.
A kidnapping in al-Hazm
After a six-hour drive beneath the watchful eye of the Coalition warplanes that seemed to be constantly buzzing overhead, we were met with horrific scenes in al-Hazm. A simple desert city notorious for its connections to Al-Qaeda, al-Hazm is one of the largest cities in al-Jawf and was home to some of the fiercest fighting in the battle to route Coalition ground fighters. The effects of airstrikes in the city appeared everywhere; digging into the asphalt roads, destroying homes, schools and government complexes. Smoke was still lingering from an airstrike that hit less than a kilometer away from us as we arrived.
It was in al-Hazm that a broken-hearted mother told us of how she allowed herself a renewed sense of hope that the defeat of the Coalition would lead to information about her loved ones. “Two years have passed since they kidnapped my daughter,” she told MintPress, a black niqab covering her face and tears flowing as she recounted one of the worst crimes carried out by the Saudi coalition in al-Jawf. In a case that managed to gain local notoriety for its sheer brutality, her daughter, Samirah Hezam Maharesh, a mother of three young girls, was kidnapped from her home in al-Hazam on July 5, 2018, by armed militants loyal to Saudi Arabia.
First, Samirah was taken to a secret prison in the provincial capital and then transferred to another prison. Her whereabouts are still unknown and the only tidbits of hope come from unconfirmed local news stories and occasional rumors.
The kidnapping of Samirah crossed a red line in Yemen’s conservative society, which is heavily steeped in tribal tradition, and sparked dozens of demonstrations throughout the country’s northern provinces. In addition to other atrocities carried out by AQAP, the kidnapping ultimately helped push local residents to risk it all and join the resistance led by the Houthis against the Saudi Coalition and its militant allies.
Residents told us that Samirah was just one of the hundreds of Yemenis who were snatched from their homes or cars at checkpoints in al-Jawf and Marib. During their reign in al-Jawf, Saudi-backed militants, including al-Qaeda, committed horrendous abuses against those it saw as an obstacle to their occupation.
An unholy union
Since 2015, when Saudi Arabia announced from Washington D.C. that it had launched a military campaign against the poorest country in the Middle East, it has been an open secret that both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had formed an unholy union with al-Qaeda’s branch in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, known colloquially as AQAP, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
In al-Jawf, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and AQAP was well underway by 2016 when the Kingdom launched a military campaign to take the province. Saudi and AQAP forces fought side by side, sharing the same weapons, trenches, operations command centers, resting places, and extremist ideals. The only thing they didn’t share was a desire to destroy the United States, a trait exclusive to al-Qaeda according to documents left behind by fallen fighters and the confessions of Saudi soldiers captured in the battle for al-Jawf.
AQAP has hobbled by in Yemen for years, feeding off the relentless cycle of poverty and hunger and only occasionally emerging from the shadows to claim credit for an attack or seek new recruits. It was not until 2015 when the group began to receive support from Saudi Arabia that it become brazen enough to emerge from its hiding places into the streets of al-Jawf’s towns. Generous Saudi backing meant that AQAP could boost recruitment, build new training camps and promote the organization’s ideology, an offshoot of the official Saudi state religion of Wahhabism. By early 2020, AQAP had a sizable real estate portfolio in al-Jawf and Marib and ran most of the provinces’ large businesses. Sprawling villages in al-Jawf, the second largest governorate in Yemen, turned into strongholds of the organization after residents were forced to flee to other areas. AQAP turned some of the abandoned homes into factories used to manufacture explosive belts, IEDs and car bombs. Others were used to stock weapons, train fighters and prepare for their “global Jihad.”
The secret prison’s of Khazaf and al-Marwan
Finally, we reached two of al-Qaeda’s main strongholds in the far northeastern Khab and al-Shaf districts, near the edge of the expansive Rub’ al Khali Desert (the Empty Quarter). The villages of Khazaf and al-Marwan are little more than dried up oases scattered in the remote desert like the remains of some ancient colony. It was here that humble houses made from dried mud bricks were turned into factories, secret prisons, and centers for the dissemination of extremist Wahhabi propaganda.
Villagers here described bottle dungeons dug into the dirt floors of local houses. Accessible only via small overhead hatches, they were used by militants to keep prisoners, including captured female slaves, as well as dead bodies. Deep below two houses, we were shown complex tunnels systems ostensibly used to hold and torture prisoners. The stench of human death lingered in the dark tunnels mingling with the smell of dust and concrete. The tunnels were also used as corridors to move weapons and supplies from house to house undetected.
Inside one home that turned it into a makeshift AQAP prison, we saw four three-square-meter windowless cells with heavy steel doors. As we made our way from cell to cell, I was struck by the sight of a pile of woman’s clothing, a prayer outfit, and a baby’s diapers, all piled into a morbid testament of the crimes committed here. I also found a note, a scrap of paper with the following scribbled onto it: ” I am Um Assamah, Why did you imprison me and my three daughters?” Samira is rumored to have been held in these same cells.
Residents who participated in the fight against the Saudi-backed militants told us that the place was a women’s prison that “from outside it looked like simple houses but when we entered, we found cells, tunnels, and implements of torture,” a 60-year-old man with a white beard recounted, barely holding back his tears and gripping the rifle slung over his shoulder. In Yemen, a woman’s incarceration is considered a great disgrace.
Other homes in Khazaf were used to make booby traps and explosives. In a small meeting room adorned with AQAP flags, 12 bags of high-explosive TNT lay piled against a wall. A hundred meters away, another home was turned into a makeshift workshop to produce vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. In the yard, a 1984 Toyota Land Cruiser lay abandoned, laden with a barrel of TNT in its last stages of preparation. The truck was most likely intended to be used against large gatherings according to local resistance fighters.
An attempt to coverup war crimes
There is little doubt that untold war crimes occurred in the forgotten desert villages and in a brazen effort to conceal their involvement, Saudi warplanes hit them hard last week. Khazaf and al-Marwan were pounded by barrages of Coalition airstrikes, it appears, however, that their hail mary may have come too late. Video filmed by local fighters and shared MintPress as well as with Houthi media document many of the crimes that took place as well as the forces behind them.
Local fighters told us that they weren’t even aware of the existence of some of the bunkers, laboratories and tunnels until after they were exposed beneath the rubble of the Saudi airstrikes which targeted specific homes.
Now, in a last-ditch effort to revive what’s left of their AQAP allies in al-Jawf, Saudi Arabia has renewed its battlefield campaign in the province of al-Bayda after over a year of relative quiet there. Al-Bayda lies close to Marib, where some of the most extremist militants allied with the Coalition reside. Backed by Saudi warplanes, AQAP carried out two operations in Nate’a and Qaniyah on Wednesday, lasting over 10 hours according to the Yemeni army.
Feature photo | Saudi-allied militants ride on the back of a pick-up truck in an area between Yemen’s northern provinces of al-Jawf and Marib, December 5, 2015. Ali Owidha | Reuters
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.