Category Archives: Germ Warfare

The State Department on Thursday hailed the anniversary of an agreement limiting biological weapons by noting the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

Today we observe the 45th anniversary of the #BiologicalWeaponsConvention and reaffirm the importance of #BWC Parties commitments to preventing biological weapons, the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation stated in a tweet.

The #Covid-19 pandemic highlights the importance of #BWC Parties commitments to reducing all biological risks, the tweet noted.

The coronavirus outbreak has been traced to Wuhan, China, but details about the exact origin have not been determined. Most virology experts believe it was not engineered as a biological weapon.

Experts have voiced differing views on whether new bat-origin virus mutated naturally to humans from a wild animal market in Wuhan, or may have escaped from a research lab studying coronaviruses.

The Biological Weapons Convention first entered into force on March 26, 1975.

The multilateral convention prohibits the 183 states that are signatories from developing, producing or stockpiling biological and toxin weapons.

The Wuhan virus, known officially as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2, first surfaced in Wuhan and has since December spread rapidly throughout the world.

Biological warfare experts say the virus is not an ideal biological weapon because of difficulties of controlling its spread.

The main toxin and biological weapons that are studied by the U.S. military are called the big six by Dr. Mark Kortepeter, a retired Army colonel who is an expert at germ warfare and worked at the Armys Fort Detrick biological warfare defense research lab.

The six are botulism toxin, tularemia, Ebola and other hemorrhagic viruses, plague, smallpox and anthrax.

Each pathogen has unique skills and attack strategies to outmaneuver humans and rain death and destruction on individuals or societies, Dr. Kortepeter wrote in his book Inside the Hot Zone: A Soldier on the Front Lines of Biological Warfare.

The State Department said in its latest annual report on arms control compliance that the United States has compliance concerns with respect to Chinese military medical institutions toxin research and development because of the potential dual-use applications and their potential as a biological threat.

China signed the convention but the report said there is no available information to demonstrate that China took steps to fulfill its treaty obligations to give up its offensive biological weapons program.

The rest is here:

State Department marks bioweapons accord with reference to pandemic - Washington Times

Moscow, March 25: A woman watches a live address to the nation from Russian President Vladimir Putin about the coronavirus pandemic.

KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

Russia and China have launched what experts say are disinformation campaigns against the West, seeking to change the global narrative about where the coronavirus pandemic originated, and which countries are leading the fight against it.

The subplot to the stories Moscow and Beijing are selling is one of Western societies in decline, with authoritarian systems proving themselves superior to democratic ones in managing the crisis.

A report prepared earlier this month for the European Union pointed the finger at both Russia and China for their roles in feeding an infodemic of untrustworthy information about COVID-19.

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State-sponsored disinformation is different from some of the simpler hoaxes being spread online including a lot of bad, or unproven, advice about how to avoid or treat the virus in that it is being spread to advance geopolitical aims.

As of Friday, the European External Action Service, an arm of the EU tasked with combating propaganda, had compiled a list of 162 examples of coronavirus-related disinformation, which it traced to pro-Kremlin media outlets or social-media accounts.

One report on a pro-Kremlin website said those with money had unleashed secret germ warfare on the rest of the world. Another claimed that the pandemic had forced the closing of the metro in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Lviv does not have a metro.

For Russia, the effort to sow chaos is seen as an extension of the hybrid war an undeclared conflict fought in the military, economic and information spheres that it has been waging against the West since 2014, when Moscows annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine made it the target of crippling economic sanctions imposed by Canada, the United States and the European Union. Victory for Moscow means breaking Western solidarity, and bringing the sanctions to an end, while keeping Crimea.

Analysts say Beijings aims are even loftier, with an eye to replacing Washington as the preeminent global power the capital other countries look to for leadership.

Russia would like to see the EU divided, and to pick off some of the countries like Italy, turning them from pro-U.S. to pro-Kremlin, said Agnieszka Legucka, a senior research fellow on Russia at the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

Russia is also transferring Chinese disinformation and propaganda that Western democracies are not able to help and save their people, that only strong countries like Russia and China are able to manage the coronavirus.

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Wuhan, March 10: A screen at a near-empty shopping centre broadcasts Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the epicentre of China's COVID-19 epidemic.

Thomas Peter/Reuters

Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, has amplified conspiracy theories on Twitter that the virus was introduced to Wuhan by the U.S. military.

Twitter

A key piece of disinformation spread by both China and Russia and then repeated by friendly governments such as Irans is a baseless accusation that the coronavirus, which originated in December in a seafood and live animal market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, was instead a U.S. military bioweapon gone awry.

In Chinas favoured telling of that story, COVID-19 was actually brought to Wuhan by infected U.S. military personnel who attended the Military World Games in October. That version was given prominence by Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, who retweeted an article published by a Montreal-based website known for propagating conspiracy theories and pro-Russian disinformation.

It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation! Mr. Zhao wrote in another tweet.

Russian media have pushed out a similar tale with a local twist. REN TV, a channel controlled by Kremlin-friendly businesspeople, carried its own evidence-free report blaming the U.S. government for coronavirus, but switched the point of origin to the U.S.-funded Lugar Research Center in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, a country where Washington and Moscow have spent decades wrestling for influence.

This is propaganda. What can we do? Paata Imnadze, the director of Lugar, told Coda Story, a news website based in the Georgian capital city of Tbilisi. The Lugar lab has actually led the Georgian governments response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called the EU report on Russian-sponsored coronavirus disinformation unfounded allegations which in the current situation are probably the result of an anti-Russian obsession.

Tehran, March 22: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addresses Iranians in a televised speech.

Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP

The unfounded allegations about the U.S. military creating COVID-19 have also been pushed along by Irans Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said it was one of the reasons his country could not accept an American offer of help dealing with the crisis.

Youre accused of having created coronavirus. I dont know how true it is. But when theres such an allegation, can a wise man trust you? read a posting on his English-language Twitter account.

Bill Bishop, an expert on Chinese media, said Beijing was equally keen to muddy the waters about the origins of COVID-19, both for domestic political purposes, and to protect the countrys international reputation.

At home, the Communist Party regime had successfully via social-media networks that are tightly controlled by state censors persuaded many Chinese to blame a foreign enemy for the outbreak, rather than their own government.

The fact that an official foreign ministry spokesman helped spread the same disinformation on Twitter (a platform that is blocked inside China), suggests that the effort to push out an alternative narrative about the origins of COVID-19 was directed from the very top.

Zhao Lijian would not be doing this if he didnt believe that he had approval to do this stuff, said Mr. Bishop, who edits the Sinocism e-newsletter, which is popular with China-focused academics. And if you look at how the system works people who censor all the time are not censoring this.

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U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently called COVID-19 a 'Chinese virus' despite advice that this inflames anti-Asian racism.

Twitter

The Chinese effort to rewrite the viruss origin story were partly defensive. Mr. Zhaos inflammatory tweets came two days after U.S. President Donald Trump first retweeted a post referring to COVID-19 as the China Virus. Mr. Trump has since made a point, on Twitter and during televised news conferences, of referring to the disease as the Chinese virus.

Mr. Trump promised this week to stop using such language after a rise in racist attacks targeting Asian-Americans but he made it clear that he believed he was only fighting his corner in a propaganda war. I dont regret it, but they accused us of having done it through our soldiers, they said our soldiers did it on purpose, what kind of a thing is that? he told Fox News on Tuesday.

But a day after Mr. Trump made his promise to stop using the racially charged term, G-7 foreign ministers were unable to agree on a joint statement on the coronavirus outbreak because of a U.S. insistence on including the term Wuhan virus.

Mr. Trump has himself been accused of spreading unproven and unsafe medical ideas by using his press conferences to talk about potential coronavirus remedies that have not yet been tested. However, experts say that his remarks have generally fallen into the category of bad advice, rather than a state-sponsored propaganda campaign.

Belgrade, March 21: Crew members wave Chinese and Serbian flags after medical experts from China arrived with supplies to help the Balkan nation fight the coronavirus.

Marko Djurica/Reuters

Beyond blurring the origin story, Russian and Chinese outlets as well as social-media accounts that reliably parrot them have also sought to give the impression that Moscow and Beijing are leading the world both in terms of managing the pandemic, and in lending a helping hand to others.

China, the country that was hit first and, initially, hardest, is now keen to show that it has the virus under control, with cities such as Beijing and even Wuhan returning to normal as the rates of deaths and new infections slow.

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The Kremlin, meanwhile, had until this week resisted the lockdown measures adopted by many other countries, pointing to its relatively low infection rate, and the fact that only one death in Russia has been officially attributed to coronavirus. That narrative has changed only in the past few days, as the number of infections has shot up, causing President Vladimir Putin to order a one-week work stoppage next week to contain the spread of the virus.

Mr. Putin also indefinitely postponed an April 22 referendum on constitutional changes, which, if the measures pass, would give him the ability to remain in power until 2036.

Maria Snegovaya, a post-doctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on Russia and Eastern Europe, said the public should be skeptical about both Chinas and Russias versions of the story.

Definitely, we should not trust the data that comes from authoritarian regimes. This is somewhat true about China, and particularly true about Russia, she said, pointing to how the Soviet Union initially denied there had been nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, and how Mr. Putins own government lied for days about the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine in 2001.

Tied into the idea that China and Russia are handling their own coronavirus problems better than the West are their showy donations of medical aid to crisis-stricken Italy and Spain, which have seen the worlds deadliest outbreaks to date.

The way this is portrayed in pro-Russian media is, See, the EU is so weak and the U.S. is unreliable. Only Russia and China are coming to help them, said Ms. Snegovaya. Its a typical [Russian security services] disinformation campaign. Its very convenient that the West is weakened at this moment, so you try to undermine it further.

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But after days of headlines about Russia and China helping where Brussels could not, Italys La Stampa newspaper reported Thursday that 80 per cent of the medical help delivered by Russia, which included disinfection equipment, was useless. Spains Health Ministry, meanwhile, found that test kits donated by China werent sensitive enough to detect most coronavirus cases, and decided to return them.

Sources: GOVERNMENT WEBSITES, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AND JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

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How many coronavirus cases are there in Canada, by province, and worldwide? The latest maps and charts

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For China and Russia, coronavirus hoaxes are another strain of disinformation warfare - The Globe and Mail

By Janice Dunnahoo

Special to the Daily Record

I know by now everyone is getting weary of hearing the word pandemic. It is scary and yes, we are living in a time and place we have never navigated in our lifetimes, but historically, this is not that unusual. I have written about the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic a couple of years ago, but in doing research I found a bit more, which I would like to share here, just to prove that times do change in some ways, but in others they do not.

Lets start with some Roswell Daily Record articles from the year 1918.

The first one is dated October 25, 1918

Notice To The Public

Whereas the present epidemic of Spanish influenza requires rigid regulations to control and abate it.

Therefore, be it resolved by the Board of Health of the City of Roswell.

1. That all places of business in the City of Roswell, except drugstores, hotels and restaurants, and auto filling stations and garages, be closed during all hours of the day except from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, except Saturdays, when they should close at 7:30 PM, and all persons are urged to stay off the streets except when attending to necessary business.

2. Physicians must require patients with colds and running temperature, which in their opinion are incipient influenza cases, to remain at home as long as danger threatens.

3. All persons suffering from this disease are required to remain at home for three days after they cease to run temperature.

4. All physicians are required to report at the home of the City Physician during the morning hours for all additional cases of this disease.

These orders to take effect Monday, October 21, 1918.

Board of Health of the City of Roswell,

By W.C. Buchly, secretary

Another Roswell Daily Record article is dated October 25, 1918.

Warning To The Public

All persons are hereby warned not to congregate upon the streets or in stores or other public places at any time. All people are forbidden to congregate at night upon the streets or in other places after six oclock, and people having business to transact in stores or other places open to the public are hereby requested and directed to go into such places of business, immediately attend to the matter in hand, and at once return to their homes.

By order of the Board of Health of the City of Roswell, this October 12, 1918.

By W.C. Buchly, Secretary

A proclamation was published in the Roswell Daily Record, Oct. 26, 1918 by Governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey, who was the third governor of New Mexico after it became a state in 1912.

A PROCLAMATION

By The Governor Of The State Of New Mexico

Notwithstanding the continued publication of precautionary advices touching the control of the epidemic of Spanish Influenza in the State of New Mexico, it is apparent daily increase, warrants the exercise of utmost diligence on the part of all our people in the observance of rules and regulations promulgated by competent health authorities designed to curb its progress.

In the absence of an organized system for compulsory health conditions reports in the State, reliance as to such conditions must be had upon the news columns of the public press and other less effective media. The volume of information thus accumulated relative to the epidemic intensity, universal spread and high percentage of fatality of this disease should alarm every citizen to combative repressive action.

While several municipalities in the State have published and are enforcing repressive regulations very effectively, not state wide suggestion has yet gone forth.

NOW THEREFORE, I, W.E. LINDSEY, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO, in the interest of the public health welfare and the war work of the people of this state do urgently request the discontinuance of all pending court sessions in the State; the adjournment of the public schools, the isolation or quarantine of all collegiate Institutions; penal and charitable institutions; the discontinuance of all church and other public assembly; the avoidance of unnecessary burial attendance and services; the prevention of the group assemblage of children in homes.

I further urgently request that all the people give strict observance to instructions relative to prevention of infection and the proper care and treatment of those attacked.

I respectfully but urgently call upon on the police authorities of the state to actively aid in the enforcement of all health laws and regulations and to urge the observance of the requests enumerated in this proclamation as well as the observance of all other proper and necessary precautionary and remedial measures.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of New Mexico to be affixed. I one at the City of Santa Fe, this the 17th day of October, 1918 A.D., 1918.

W.E.LINDSEY,

ATTESTED: Antonio Lucero

Following is a segment Dr. Elvis Fleming wrote on the epidemic:

The flu epidemic of 1918-19

The annual flu season always seems to elicit discussions about the worldwide flu epidemic of 1918-19, in which deaths attributed to the disease are estimated at some 20 million.

More than 500,000 Americans died during the epidemic, which is more than the deaths in both world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. The flu was no respecter of people. No matter whatones station in life, place of residence, or any other factor, no one was assured of eluding the dreaded disease.

More than 1,000 New Mexicans perished in the flu epidemic, according to an article in the Valencia County News-Bulletin published on Nov. 25, 1998, by Richard Melzer and Oswald Baca. The writers observed, Much of the epidemic remains a mystery to this very day. Not even its name, The Spanish Flu, is understood because the epidemic did not originate in Spain or any other Spanish community. Evidence points to its origin in March 1918 at an Army camp in Fort Riley, Kansas, from which it spread in two terrible waves around the world.

Some people felt sure the epidemic was caused by germ warfare launched by the Germans during the final stages of World War I, according to Melzer and Baca. The leading evangelist of the times, Billy Sunday, proclaimed that the epidemic was the wrath of God against a sinful generation.

Vital statistics for the city of Roswell show that 92 people died of influenza, influenza pneumonia and pneumonia between Oct. 12, 1918, and March 10, 1919. The deaths were spread out over the six-month period, with 52 coming in October, 15 in November, 16 in December, seven in January and only one each in February and March. These numbers show, as Professor Melzer puts it, that the epidemic hit with incredible force in the last days of the First World War, showing no mercy to a world already ravaged by four years of violence and death.

Most of the Roswell deaths took place at home, but 36 percent of them were at St. Marys Hospital. Eight patients of Dr. C.M. Yater died at his sanitarium at 310 North Richardson Ave. Yaters ad in the city directory stated: Medical and Surgical; special facilities for the care of confinement cases, including a perfectly equipped confinement room. All on the ground floor.

Strangely, the ad also claims, No contagious diseases admitted.

Thirteen other doctors also lost patients, the largest number being the 21 patients of Dr. W.C. Buchley. Dr. J.B. Keister lost 12; Dr. Eugene M. Fisher lost 10; and Dr. W.W. Phillips and Dr. Yater lost eight each. Dr. W.E. Goodsell and Dr. J.E. Crawford each had seven patients deaths; while Dr. David H. Galloway lost six; Dr. C.T. McClane lost four; Dr. W.T. Joyner lost three; and Dr. J.J. Walker lost two. Dr. C.L. Parsons, Dr. Charles F. Beeson and city physician and health officer Dr. R.L. Bradley each lost one patient.

A local doctor who was also mayor of Roswell at the time also succumbed to this flu. A note from his obituary dated October 14, 1918 reads as follows:

Dr. C.F. Montgomery, the mayor of the city and also one of Roswells finest types of manhood passed away today. In his passing the city and the state loses one of its most capable and conscientious workers as well as a perfect gentleman.

The demographics of the victims show that 54 percent were male, two thirds were Anglo and one third were Mexican. No other ethnic groups are listed. None of the victims were more than 70 years old, and only five were between 57 and 70. All the others were under 50. Most of them were in their late 20s and early 30s. The age categories were as follows: 36-50, 11 deaths; 16-25, 17 deaths; 6-15, 10 deaths; 0-6, 11 deaths. Eight of those under six were infants. (Totals do not add up to 92 deaths because some of the information is not available on some of the victims.)

The occupations most frequently listed for the victims were housewife, 10; rancher, five; farmer, two; bookkeeper, two; New Mexico Military Institute cadets, five; and other students, two. Several other occupations were listed once, including a doctor and a teacher.

In an interview in February 1975, Colonel E.L. Lusk, one-time high school principal at New Mexico Military Institute, remembered that the commandant, Captain H.P. Saunders Jr., took it first. Lusk came down with it about three days later and was sick for a week. The hospital was full, so many of the cadets who were ill with the flu could not be admitted.

Some of the faculty took cadets into their homes to nurse them back to health. About the time Lusk got over his affliction, Capt. R.G. Breland, the English instructor, took it. Luskbrought Breland to his house where Mrs. Lusk attended him for about a week. Then Mrs. Lusk took down with it herself.

Thus, World War I ended in Roswell and the United States.

To paraphrase Melzer and Baca: The epidemic took the lives of innocent people who lived thousands of miles from any battlefield of the war, but they had no protection from an enemy so minuscule that they could not see it even with the most powerful microscope of the time.

Following is a remedy of the day, I thought it would be fun to include. Dont try this at home:

Cough medicine

The following is a recipe for cough medicine that will give relief when all others fail; 1/2 pint flax seed, two quarts water, juice of six lemons, one pound honey, 1/2 pound sugar, 1/2 pint good whiskey. Boil the water and the flaxseed together for a few minutes, strain and add lemon juice, honey and sugar. Boil this mixture a few minutes until well mixed. When it is cool add the whiskey, which is to preserve it. Half of this recipe makes two large bottles full.

Janice Dunnahoo is chief archivist at the Historical Society for Southeast New Mexico Archives. She can be reached at 575-622-1176 or at jdunna@hotmail.com.

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Historically Speaking: The flu epidemic we've been here before - Roswell Daily Record

As we sit within the confines of our homes, lockdown is making us yearn for the gift of time travel. What wed give to go back just by a few months before our fears and anxieties regarding coronavirus manifested themselves. Well, the folks of Orania have managed it because theyre living outside of the 21st century.

The whites-only Afrikaner enclave in the Northern Cape acts as its own entity. Turning its back on South Africas democratic project as apartheid came to an end, the clutch of citizens who still live in the town an estimated 2 000 to 3 000 still pay homage to the system that was labelled a crime against humanity.

But where, exactly, do they stand on the current coronavirus crisis? Are they following the rule of the land which engulfs and dwarfs their humble landscape, or do they simply follow their own advice? Well, in contrast to certain other policies in Orania, its not actually that black and white.

We know that they are observing social distancing, and theyve been taking quarantine measures since the middle of March. Local sewing groups have stitched together masks that people are being asked to wear during the coronavirus crisis. They may have self-isolated from South Africa since the early 1990s, but theyre leaving nothing to chance in the face of a global pandemic.

Not many people leave Orania, and even fewer visit. Their base in the Northern Cape is one of the most remote in the land. But, playing it safe is very much the mantra here. They have even manufactured some of their own hand sanitizers, treating the gravity of the situation with the respect it deserves.

They have published their own set of hygiene guidelines, very similar to those issued by the South African government. An emergency command centre made up of the town board provides regular updates on their preparedness to deal with coronavirus, and how the situation outside of their compound is developing. Gawie Snyman, Ronald Bain, Harry Theron and Frans de Klerk are named as the information-givers.

Those who have shut themselves away on ideological grounds, fearing an outside threat, perhaps never thought the biggest battle of their lives would be related to germ warfare. The communities within communities such as elderly care facilities also receive visits from singers and performers to lift their spirits during times of isolation.

Virtual braais and radio-streamed concerts make up for the lack of open-air activities on offer to the inhabitants of Orania. It hasnt been all fun and games, though. The idyllic image this settlement likes to portray against the backdrop of its controversial origins suffered a slight wobble last week.

A statement shared on the towns official Facebook page stated that one resident of Orania was showing symptoms of coronavirus. Its claimed that they were privately tested while receiving medical treatment. The test came back negative. But the fear factor of COVID-19 remains in place.

An image showing a warehouse full of toilet paper unapologetically boasts about having one of South Africas most treasured commodoties by the pallet-full. Indeed, this desperation to prove something to the rest of the country runs deep.

A local community group posted this message on their social media channels over the weekend Kim Jong-Un would be proud of this purposeful propaganda:

The SAPS came to visit in Orania yesterday to check that everything is in order. Thanks to Oranians discipline, they found nothing that upset them. After the visit, Colonel Jooste said: Thank you to the residents of Hopetown and Orania for your obedience. It goes bad in other towns and cities in the country. I love you all and I dont want you to die.

Work continues in the town: Binmen are seen wearing full hazmat suits and masks, whereas families are now learning how to cope with homeschooling. Pieter Krige, a community leader in this enclave, posts a photo of his two children beavering away at their studies.

It still remains anyones guess as to when normal life resumes both within the gates of Orania and beyond despite our tentative end-of-lockdown date of Thursday 16 April.

Social distancing has always been Oranias thing but they are now faced with keeping themselves apart from each other, without having a say in the matter. Its not business as usual here, nor is it anywhere in the world. And thats perhaps a source of great humility for this unique, often-maligned town.

As much as Orania has tried to isolate itself, the world is too big of a place to stay shut-off from. Society isnt exactly something you can opt in or out of. The looming threat of coronavirus casts a shadow over this region, and although it may only strengthen their resolve to hunker down and keep themselves in exile, one fact is inescapable: The enemy is not, and never will be, your fellow South African.

Read this article:

Coronavirus: How Orania has been affected by the disease - The South African

The dying months of 2001 were bad for America and the world. Less than a month after Islamic terrorists crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center, 62-year-old photojournalist Bob Stevens was admitted in a Florida hospital on October 2, 2001. The initial diagnosis was meningitis but it was soon found to be poisoning by anthrax, a weapon of bioterrorism. A few days later, in India, the Postal Department received 17 suspicious letters believed to be infected with anthrax spores. Though many individuals and institutions received the envelopes with white powder, none of them tested positive. It was dismissed as a copycat hoax.

Biological attacks, both state-sponsored and otherwise, are a real threat despite the many treaties prohibiting them. Though the Indian Army is trained to prepare for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks, the programmes are on the back burner due to lack of resources, says Centre for Joint Warfare Studies Director Lieutenant General Vinod Bhatia (retired), who was previously Director General, Military Operations. India, with its vast disorganised population, dismal health facilities and poor connectivity, is sitting on a virus time bomb. Though the fatality, infection and recovery rate of Covid-19, as the novel coronavirus is called, is comparatively low, experts are not sure full data is available.

ANSWERING THE COVID QUESTION

The pandemic has sent countries and economies into a tailspin. As soon as the outbreak began from Wuhan in central China, conspiracy theorists warned that the virus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a military lab in the province which is dedicated to the study of deadly pathogens. According to Dany Shoham, Israeli biological warfare specialist and expert on Chinese biological warfare capabilities, the institute is part of Beijings secret bioweapons programme. In 2019, Canada expelled Chinese researcher Xiangguo Qiu who was working in a government-run lab, which studies numerous infectious diseases, including Ebola, to create vaccines and cures. She had previous experience working in Chinese labs dealing with lethally infectious diseases. China is currently building around five bio-facilities.

Beijing has blamed the US Army for bringing the virus to their country. Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian tweeted on March 12, When did patient zero begin in US? ...It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Tweeting sympathy for China, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested that the #Corona lab-made virus was deliberately created as a biological weapon by Beijings enemies to halt the countrys progress. The US, Europe, Russia and Australia have around 50 functioning or under-construction maximum-security labs, according to news reports. Western intelligence suspects that Iran and North Korea also possess chemical weapon labs. The study of dangerous pathogens such as Ebola or Marburg cannot be conducted without importing the viruses into a country. All nations doing virology research have lab biosafety levels of (BSL-4) with 24/7 security with their own air supply and filters.

But in the face of Covid-19 crisis, US President Donald Trump plunged America into panic by dithering, dismissing the impact with outright falsehoods. Many political leaders are in quarantine indicating that nobody is safe. Whole cities and countries are in lockdown. Says a former Indian Air Force Commander-in-Chief of a key Air Command, The actions and capabilities required to tackle bioterrorism are identical to the ones required to contain coronavirus. Large medical facilities are needed to isolate, treat, and decontaminate patients before discharging them. You need special clothing for personnel operating in contaminated areas, not just masks. Two lethal non-conventional warfare threats haunt global security. Biological weapons manufactured by terrorists. Chemical agents used by totalitarian governments to kill dissidents at home and abroad.

NO PREVENTION FOR LONE WOLF ATTACKS

Currently, Japan is on a war footing to prevent bioterror attacks during the July-August Tokyo Olympics, which is expected to attract 600,000 visitors from abroad. For the first time, it has imported five types of live virusesEbola, Marburg, Lassa, Crimean-Congo and South American virusesto study detection and prevention measures. Bringing pathogens into a country is easy for terrorists, since virus sensors are largely ineffective. It is simple for a terrorist to unleash a contagiongerms can be mixed in powders and aerosol sprays. They can be sent by mail on infected envelopes or notepaper. They can be added to food or a citys water supply. They can be released into the wind from a truck, building, or plane. The modern terrorist is highly motivated and educated, and holds advanced science and IT degrees.

There is nothing toprevent a medical student in a private virology research lab from weaponising a tiny amount of smallpox pathogen from existing stocks. Or he can manufacture synthetic versions. Smallpox is difficult to detect and contain since it is extinct and doctors are unfamiliar with its symptoms, which show only two weeks after incubation. A drug named TPOXX has received FDA approval, but hasnt gone to the manufacturing stage since the disease is classified only a threat. All of us wish we did not live in a world where terrorists and hostile nation states aspire to kill millions with biological organisms. Twenty years ago, we found ourselves woefully unprepared for the 9/11. Three thousand Americans died as a result. Next time it may be a pandemic and entire cities decimated by disease, writes retired undercover CIA officer Charles Sam Faddis, who headed the agencys counterterrorism unit tracking weapons of mass destruction.

An important American counterterrorism official testified before the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has high intentions to procure chemical weapons and biological devices, particularly in Pakistan and Yemen. According to an Indian Army officer monitoring the quarantine at Manesar in Haryana, the facility has treated several hundreds of travellers from abroad and the military is experienced in handling health emergency cases.

However, the officer, who has over 20 years of service, confided that the Army has not procured new equipment in the last two decades to counter nuclear, biological and chemical attacks, except for developing a Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)-manufactured reconnaissance vehicle for NBC countermeasures in 2003. The Indian military currently deploys nuclear, biological and chemical countermeasures that include DRDOs domestically developed quarantine vehicles for battlefield decontamination efforts. It has brought Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology from the US to help troopers wade through contaminated areas safely and conduct decontamination exercises. Security agencies fear Islamic State (IS) operatives or terrorists could detonate a dirty nuke; after the Pulwama strike-back, Pakistan had threatened nuclear retaliation.

DIRTY BOMB IS REAL

In 1995, Chechen militant leader Shamil Basayev buried a dirty bomb in a Moscow park, threatening to turn the city into an eternal desert. Though it turned out to be just a warning, the fear that a small motivated group can make an active dirty bomb became real to world intelligence. A non-nuclear dirty bomb will disperse radioactive materials to contaminate areas and kill thousands. Such explosive devices are easier for a homegrown radical to make in his garage. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), millions of radioactive sources have been distributed worldwide over the past 50 years in myriad commercial, industrial, medical and research sites in over 100 countries. Most of these facilities are poorly guarded, making them vulnerable to theft.

In 1987, two Brazilian men stole a teletherapy unit from an abandoned cancer clinic to sell for scrap. Fascinated by the sci-fi deep blue light pulsing through a small opening, they dissembled it. The glow was caused by caesium gamma radiation beams used in the treatment of malignant tumours. Both thieves were infected and died. They had given pieces of the suit to friends and relatives with fatal consequences. The government spent millions of dollars to decontaminate topsoil where the suit was discarded. Buildings were demolished. Locally produced goods were boycotted and prices dropped by 40 percent. Tourism collapsed. Ironically, the same isotopes, which are used to save lives, make ideal materials to produce a dirty bomb.

A malware attack on a nuclear plant could cause another Chernobyl: India has 22 functioning nuclear reactors in seven nuclear power plants with seven more reactors under construction. The world has 450 nuclear reactors in around 30 countries. According to Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Index, a unique public assessment of the status of nuclear materials security conditions in 176 countries, many developing nations are highly vulnerable to sabotage because of poor protective measures.

Fortunately, the Global Threat Reduction Initiative has secured about 1,700 radiological sites around the world containing enough material to make tens of thousands of large dirty bombs. Counter-terrorism experts believe that US President Donald Trumps peace deal with the Taliban which imposes no restrictions on them could lead to the next 9/11 or worse. The impact of the Covid-19 tsunami will prod a rethink on conventional responses to unconventional weapons. Any anti-India group may be overtly or covertly contemplating a strike. By indoctrination and financial inducement, they could lure scientists and technicians working in biotech and cyber labs, says Major General Nilendra Kumar, who retired as the Judge Advocate General of the Indian Army a decade ago.

GOVERNMENTS AS CRIMINALS

Biological terrorism apart, countries at war have mercilessly unleashed chemical warfare on enemy combatants and their own citizens. The Russians and their Soviet forebears were masters at poisoning dissidents. On March 4, 2018, Russian spies smeared respiratory nerve agent Novichok on the doorknob of double agent Sergei Skripals home, contaminating him and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia. Once he recovered, MI6 paid for plastic surgery to alter his appearance and gave him a new identity. Previously in 2006, the assassination of former KGB and then FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko who defected to the UKby Russians, who covertly put polonium in his food, caused a major diplomatic row between London and Moscow.

In London in 1978, a Bulgarian communist agent using an umbrella gun fired a tiny bullet loaded with deadly ricin into defector Georgi Markovs leg. As is evident in the ongoing strife in Syria, the Assad regime has been using chemical weapons since 2012 on civilians. The devastating sarin gas attack in August 2013 killed over 1,400 non-combatants in Damascus. Ironically Syria is part of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) of 1997, which prohibits chemical weapons development, production and deployment and ordered that existing weapons must be destroyed; Assads violation of the agreement shows the weakness of enforcing policy.

A United Nations-sponsored organisation discovered that the IS used sulfur mustard gas in Syria against civilians for the first time. The Japanese Army killed tens of thousands of Chinese civilians in World War II using poison gas. The occupiers also poisoned over 1,000 water wells to study cholera and typhus outbreaks using villagers as human guinea pigs. The use of chemical agents against the Native American tribes is one of the most shameful incidents in British history: soldiers distributed blankets used by smallpox patients to infect them.

IS INDIA READY FOR GERM WARFARE?

As far back as in December 1998, India began to train its medical personnel to deal with the eventualities of bioterror attacks. Since it had ratified the 1972 United Nations Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, India has not executed a bioweapon programme. However, the Army does maintain defensive biological warfare equipment at protected sites. With extensive help from the advanced dual-use pharmaceutical industry and defence labs, the military is researching ways to counter germ warfare. India has the scientific capability to carry out a bio-offensive in case of a first strike, using delivery systems ranging from crop dusters to ballistic missiles.

India does not hold or believe in nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. However, the National Disaster Management Authority has resources and laboratories to counter bio-aggression by a hostile country. Selective attacks would catch the enemy by surprise, inflict a psychological blow and impose a drain on medical resources necessary to attend the victims, says Major General Kumar. Sources say that India has a sophisticated globally acknowledged biotechnology infrastructure, and sufficient well-trained and knowledgeable scientists, most of who are adequately experienced in handling epidemics. It has numerous pharma production facilities and biocontainment laboratories with Biosafety Levels 3 and 4, according to NTI, a Washington DC-based think-tank.

DRDO is India's biodefence industrys core, whose top laboratory is the Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) located at Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. It is Indias go-to institution for studies in toxicology, biochemical pharmacology and the development of antibodies against bacterial and viral agents. The DRDO works and focuses on countering biothreats such as anthrax, brucellosis, cholera, plague, smallpox, viral hemorrhage fever and botulism. Additionally, the government has established nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) warfare directorates in the armed forces, as well as an inter-services coordination committee to monitor their training and preparation. The military has set up an NBC cell at Army Headquarters as well.

However, DRDOs massive failures of its indigenous weapons programmes do not paint an inspiring picture. Says former Indian Air Force Group Captain Sandeep Mehta, Indias preparedness to tackle a bioterror attack ranges from poor to pathetic, and its capability is limited to helping relief providers who are then expected to deliver. The Biosafety Level 2 laboratory at the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Hyderabad provides guidance in preparing the government for a biological attack. However, Indian Armys Medical Corps specialists have publicly expressed reservations that Indian hospitals are inadequately prepared. CISF has been enabled to deploy specially trained first responders. In January 2003, the government announced changes in Indias nuclear use doctrine, which now retains the option of retaliating with nuclear weapons, after the discovery that al-Qaeda manuals taught the production and use of toxins.

After the December 2002 Parliament attack, an Indian parliamentary committee considered plans to make underground bunkers to protect MPs from nuclear and biological attacks. Then defence minister George Fernandes indicated that the government has initiated necessary steps to ensure protection from a nuclear and bio-attack. In an apparent follow-up in August 2004, the then Home Minister Shivraj Patil indicated that Indian scientists were formulating a response to potential biological, chemical, and other non-conventional forms of terrorism. India has stringent export control regulations outlined in the Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment, and Technologies (SCOMET) guidelines. Its national export product control list, which identifies goods, technologies and services are subject to dual-use licensing requirements.

However in 2003, the US sanctioned two Indian companies charged with violating government regulations by supplying dual-use plant equipment to the Saddam Hussein regime for its chemical and biological weapons programmes, the NTI website says. In June 2015, India and the US signed a 10-year defence framework agreement for cooperation in the development of defence capabilities, including a lightweight protective suit effective in chemical and biological hazard environments. In September last year, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh warned that bioterrorism is among the new threats facing the country and asked the Armed Forces Medical Services to find effective ways to deal with new threats posed by advancing battlefield technologies. Whether Covid-19 is a bioterror weapon which went awry or a virus that got away, the real threat of a humanity ending, manufactured contagion unleashed by hostile countries for world domination haunts governments, military leaders, scientists and security experts worldwide. In spite of sophisticated electronic surveillance, countermeasures, scientific research and human intelligence, the coronavirus proves that the bugs are never too far to arrive at a location near you soon.

Conspiracy theorists have warned that the novel coronavirus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a military lab dedicated to the study of deadly pathogens. According to an Israeli biological warfare specialist, the institute is part of Beijings secret bioweapons programme. China is currently building around five bio-facilities.

The US, Europe, Russia and Australia have around 50 functioning or under-construction maximum-security labs, according to news reports. Western intel suspects that Iran and North Korea also possess chemical weapon labs.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has high intentions to procure chemical weapons and biological devices, particularly in Pakistan and Yemen, states a testimony by a top US counterterrorism official.

Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad has used choking agents, such as chlorine gas and blister agents like sulphur mustard. The 2013 sarin gas attack killed over 1,400 non-combatants in Damascus. Ironically, Syria is part of the prohibitory Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997.

A UN-sponsored organisation has discovered that the IS used sulfur mustard gas in Syria against civiliansthe first time an Islamist group used bioweapons. Security agencies fear rogue IS operatives or terrorists could detonate a nuke.

IAEA says millions of radioactive sources have been distributed worldwide over the past 50 years in several commercial, industrial, medical and research sites in over 100 countries. Most of these are poorly guarded.

ALLEGATIONS DURING THE POST-WORLD WAR II PERIOD

HOW A TERRORIST CAN UNLEASH A CONTAGION

Viruses can be mixed in powdersand aerosol sprays.They can be sent by mail on infected enveloped or notepaper.They can be added to foodor a citys water supply.They can be released into the wind from a truck , building, or plane.A student in a private virology research lab can weaponise a tiny amount of smallpoxpathogen from the stocks.

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The history of germ warfare and how prepared India is - The New Indian Express

Armed Conflicts, Featured, Global, Global Geopolitics, Global Governance, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Peace, TerraViva United Nations

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 20 2020 (IPS) - The devastating spread of the deadly coronavirus across every continent with the exception of Antarctica has triggered a conspiracy theory on social media: what if the virus was really a biological weapon?

And more specifically, was it an experimental weapon that accidentally escaped from a laboratory in China?

Or as others contend, is it a weapon surreptitiously introduced to de-stabilize a country with more than 1.4 billion people and described as the worlds second largest economy, after the United States.

Both narratives are considered false, and probably part of a deliberate disinformation campaign, according to military experts.

Still, in the US, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas has repeated the charge that the virus was a creation of the Chinese military while others source it to North Korea.

And US President Donald Trump has been roundly condemned for a racist remark after describing the deadly disease as a Chinese virus.

But one hard fact remains: the potentially destructive power of biological weapons, which were banned by an international convention, going back to 1975.

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates predicted in a TED talk in 2015: If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it is likely to be a highly infectious virus, rather than a war.

They will not be missiles, he warned, but microbes.

And two years later, according to GeekWire, Gates repeated the same warning at a side event during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos: Its pretty surprising how little preparedness there is for it, Gates was quoted as saying in 2017.

Addressing the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle last month, Gates said the impact of COVID-19 could be very, very dramatic, particularly if it spreads to areas like sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

Meanwhile, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged about $100 million to fight the virus, as part of its broader efforts in global health.

Dr Filippa Lentzos

In theory, she pointed out, any virus could be used as a weapon, but historically some agents have been viewed as more effective than others, e.g. anthrax, brucellosis, Q fever, tularaemia, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, glanders, plague, Marburg virus disease and smallpox.

She pointed out that much will depend on what ends or purpose the weapons are being used for.

In terms of the coronavirus, there would no longer be a surprise factor, and resistance to the virus may in future have been built up, though the jury is still out on that one.

As of March 19, the coronavirus has accounted for over 208,000 positive cases worldwide and over 8,700 deathsand rising.

In the United States, there have been 49 deaths so far, and over 10,000 positive cases of the spreading virus.

The New York Times of March 18 cites a study by Imperial College, London, which estimates the virus can kill over 250,000 in the UK and more than a million in the US - unless officials took action to slow its spread.

Asked if there are any countries identified as still manufacturing or hoarding biological weapons despite their ban, Dr Lentzos said over the past 100 years, about 25 countries are believed to have possessed a biological weapons programme for some period of time.

Most programmes were of a short duration. They were small and developed limited, unsophisticated capabilities.

Credit: United Nations

Only two countries are known to have had sophisticated capabilities that could inflict mass casualties or extensive economic harm: the United States and the Soviet Union (now Russia), said Dr Lentzos, who is also a Senior Research Fellow at Kings College London and a biosecurity columnist at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Today, she said, there is limited public information on possible illicit biological weapons activity. The main concern today is not really that countries have offensive biological warfare programmes, but that they are building dual use capabilities.

DARPA’s Prepare program: Preparing for what?

Asked about the use of biological weapons as part of germ warfare during World War I, she said there was some covert use by Germany during World War I to infect horses with biological agents to block their use by Allied military forces.

In World War II, there were substantial covert attacks on China by Japan, as well as some clandestine use in Europe against Germany. There has been very limited known use since 1945, said Dr Lentzos, who is also an Associate Editor of the journal BioSocieties, and the NGO Coordinator for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

According to the Washington-based Arms Control Association, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) is a legally binding treaty that outlaw biological arms.

Opened for signature on April 10, 1972, the BWC entered into force on March 26, 1975. It currently has 182 states-parties. Ten states have neither signed nor ratified the BWC, including Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Israel, Kiribati, Micronesia, Namibia, South Sudan and Tuvalu.

*Thalif Deen is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; and military editor Middle East/Africa at Janes Information Group.

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Could the Coronavirus Be a Biological Weapon in the Not-Too-Distant Future? - Inter Press Service

Is America about to experience another radical change as in 9-11?

I speak of changes like the chipping away of personal liberties in travel, and the imposition of changes to disrupt the flow of public goods and services, and changes to our liberty habits in shopping, dining out, business practice, social gatherings, entertainment and other liberties we Americans expect.

I remind the Sampson Independent reader that Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea, said in December 2019 that America was going to receive a Christmas present. Sure enough, in January 2020 the COVID-19 virus became known for the first time in America.

We also know this. The current Central Peoples Government of China, a Communistic regime and ultimate power of the state and North Korea are in bed together. They have been bosom partners as far back as the Korean War, 1950-1953. So, is there a correlation in COVID-19 and Americas Christmas present? Is germ warfare being carried out against the United States? You decide.

As a 36-year federal employee with the Department of Defense, and having served an additional 10-year stint for (DoD) as a consultant, I am aware of what germ warfare is.

Now, totality disconnected from the government and not knowing the current protocol for Situation Awareness (SA), Im no longer the expert I once was. (By the way, SA is the conscious perception of environmental events and other strange occurrences respecting time and space. It is used as a tool to serve management in a broad range of decision-making processes, including war.)

But I do know that President Trump was debriefed by then President Obama in November/December 2016 respecting the pressure points and other troublesome hot spots facing America. And I do know the new President was told by Obama that Kim Jong-un was intractable, and that war with him could erupt anytime, without notice.

So, having given my reader the immediate DoD backstory on Red China, and the tactics of North Korea, and the insidious germ called COVID-19; and too, knowing that Iran looks upon America as the devil, and possibly the third player to an axis of evil, what must a reasonable person conclude that these days are but the beginning of sorrows and sufferings?

Im just an ole country boy at heart that quit school in the third grade because I caught-up with my daddy and his class. It embarrassed me to be in the same homeroom with him, so I quit.

But one thing I know: I was born at night, but not last night.

Jack Dawsey can be reached at [emailprotected]

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COVID-19: Germ warfare targeting the US? - Sampson Independent

A reporter wearing a latex glove raises his hand to ask President Trump a question during a coronavirus briefing at the White House on March 16. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide caption

A reporter wearing a latex glove raises his hand to ask President Trump a question during a coronavirus briefing at the White House on March 16.

Apocalyptic novelist Max Brooks is something of an expert on planning for pandemics and other disasters. The author, whose books include World War Z, Germ Warfare and the forthcoming Devolution, has toured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has reviewed government response plans related to various emergency situations all in the course of research.

"We have a network in place that we as taxpayers have been funding to get us ready for something just like this," Brooks says of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But, he adds, "we have been disastrously slow and disorganized from Day 1."

Brooks says the notion that the U.S. government was blindsided by the pandemic is "an onion of layered lies."

"What could have happened when this virus exploded even when Wuhan was locked down is we could have put the word out," he says. "The government could have put the word out to ramp up emergency supplies to get them ready and then have an information strategy in place."

Instead, Brooks says, President Trump was slow to acknowledge the virus as a real threat. And thus far, the president has resisted using the Defense Production Act to force private companies to manufacture masks, gloves and other essential supplies in the fight against the coronavirus. Many government task forces that plan for disasters have yet to be activated in this crisis.

"One of the biggest problems we're facing now is panic. You see it in the stock market. You see it in panic buying," he says. "All of this panic could have been prevented. ... If the president had been working since January to get the organs of government ready for this, we as citizens could have been calmed down knowing that the people that we trust to protect us are doing that."

On the task forces that plan for situations like this

Max Brooks has researched disaster preparedness for his novels and has lectured on the subject at the U.S. Naval War College. He has also been a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His new book, Devolution, will be published May 2020. Michelle Kholos/Penguin Random House hide caption

Max Brooks has researched disaster preparedness for his novels and has lectured on the subject at the U.S. Naval War College. He has also been a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His new book, Devolution, will be published May 2020.

I can tell you that the federal government has multiple layers of disaster preparedness who are always training, always planning, always preparing, regardless of how much their budget gets cut. I have toured the CDC, and I've seen all their plans. I have witnessed what was called a "vibrant response." This is the homeland nuclear attack scenario, which was a coordination of FEMA, the Army, the National Guard, state and local officials, all working together in a massive war game to prepare us for a nuke. I have also witnessed what was called a "hurricane rehearsal of concept drill," where not only did the same players come in, but also bringing in our allies from Canada and Mexico. So I have seen that we have countless dedicated professionals who think about this constantly and they're ready to go. And they have not been activated.

On why these task forces haven't been activated yet

There is no excuse not to mobilize the full forces of the federal government right now and to centralize the response.

Max Brooks

This all has to come from the federal government. This is why we have big government. Politically, you can argue about the role of big government in everyday society, but this is not every day. This is an emergency. The entire reason that we have these networks is when the bells start ringing and they have not been activated. I don't know. I'm not sitting in the White House. I don't know whether the president is being lied to, whether he is holding onto a political ideology. I honestly don't know. But there is no excuse not to mobilize the full forces of the federal government right now and to centralize the response.

On how the Defense Production Act works when mobilized properly

What is supposed to happen is the federal government has to activate the Defense Production Act immediately. Now, what Defense Production Act does is it allows the federal government to step in and aggressively force the private sector to produce what we need. And what is so critical in this is timing. Because you can't simply build factories from scratch; what you can do is identify a supply chain in order to make it work.

For example, if New York needs rubber gloves, New York cannot simply build rubber glove factories overnight. However, there might be a rubber glove factory in Ohio that could produce it, but they might not have the latex. So therefore, the Defense Production Act allows the federal government to go to the condom factory in Missouri and say, "Listen, you have barrels of latex we need. We are requisitioning those. We are giving them to the rubber glove factory in Ohio. And then we are transporting the finished rubber gloves to New York." That's how it is supposed to work.

On how Trump warns about nationalizing private industry but that's not how it works

President Trump is spinning some sort of tale about, I don't know, the federal government black helicopters coming in and taking over factories. That's not how it works at all. What happens is the federal government has the network to identify where the production chain is and how to help the private sector work through this, because the private sector doesn't know.

And as an example, I have a World War II rifle made by the Smith Corona typewriter company. Smith Corona worked with the federal government to then partner up with the Winchester company, to then share resources and to share tools and talent to then produce the rifles that we needed. That's how it works. It's not some sort of KGB coming in and taking over everything. It is guidance and streamlining. And only the federal government has the experience to know how to do that.

On what the U.S. military would do in a pandemic

I can tell you that the military has a vast transportation network here in the United States that is ready to go. We don't have to put truck drivers or private individuals at risk, because the military is already trained to do this. And I've watched them do this. The military spent years working out the legal framework of how to transport goods from one place to another around this country, because it's not like Afghanistan, where the army builds a road and then they own the road. The army has had to go through a tremendous amount of training and adaptation to work within state and local governments to make sure everything is done legally and safe without infringing on our rights. And they have done this. The Army's logistics corps can deliver anything that we need anywhere in this country within a matter of hours or days.

When it comes to sheer massive might, getting stuff done, getting stuff produced and getting stuff moved from Point A to Point B, there is no greater organ in the world than the United States military. We did it in World War II. We've done it all over the world. We can do this now. This is the thing the military is good at, and we need to let them do that.

On how the pandemic is revealing flaws in our social structure

I think there are massive gaps in our systems that are being exposed right now, which, by the way, this is not news to the experts. Anybody who works in these fields could have told you years ago that we were vulnerable to this. It's going to rip through our prisons. It's going to rip through our homeless population. God willing, it doesn't rip through our nursing homes. But what no one is talking about, what terrifies me, what keeps me up at night are the secondary casualties that will occur because of hospital overflow. What I mean is we're only talking about now how many people are going to die if the coronavirus really rips through our country. What is not being talked about enough or what needs to be talked about are the people who are still going to die of cancer, of accidents, of other diseases, because they simply can't get into the hospitals because the hospitals are choked with coronavirus patients.

On how we share some of the blame for this mismanagement as voters in a democracy

In China, every single death will be laid directly at the feet of the Chinese Communist Party. They have all the power; therefore, they take all the responsibility. When we look back at this, we all of us individual citizens are going to have to take a measure of personal responsibility, because we are the government. If we don't like our leaders, we shouldn't have put them there. And as much as we would love to blame this historically incompetent captain of our ship of state, we have allowed the ship to rust underneath us. It's not just President Trump's fault that institutions like the CDC have been defunded for years. It's not just President Trump's fault that we have allowed anti-vaxxers to spread misinformation throughout this country. It's not just President Trump's fault that we are continuing to build a society in support of a tech world that is based on comfort and not on resilience. We as voters and we as taxpayers must accept our share of the blame.

When this is all over, when the dead are buried and the sick are healed, there will be a reckoning.

Max Brooks

There is a massive amount of blame that will be laid at the feet of Donald Trump and his enablers. And when this is all over, when the dead are buried and the sick are healed, there will be a reckoning. But there were systemic issues way before Donald Trump. When Donald Trump was a carnival barker on a reality show, we as a people, as a nation, were dismantling the systems that were put in place to keep us safe. And we need to look at that damage, because the one thing we don't want to do is assume that when Donald Trump goes away, that the problems will go with him.

On the difference between panic and preparation

Panic never helps. Panic implies that you lose your mind, and that in a war even a war against a microscopic enemy gives aid and comfort to the enemy. When you panic, you don't think rationally, and in times of crisis, rational thought is the greatest weapon you could possibly have. So preparing, No. 1, means clearing your mind and thinking about what you have to do. It means making a list of what you need to buy, prioritizing what needs to come first, thinking about how you're going to take care of the people around you. That is preparing. Panicking is freaking out and getting in a fistfight in the grocery store over bottled water when you don't even need the water, when the tap is already running. That's panic.

Right now we have to be so careful about who we listen to, because panic can spread much faster than a virus.

Max Brooks

I think right now we have to be so careful about who we listen to, because panic can spread much faster than a virus. And I think in addition to social distancing, we have to practice good fact hygiene. What I mean is we have to be careful what we listen to, what we take in just as if it were a virus. And we have to be careful also what we put back out, as if we were spreading the virus. So we cannot pass along rumors. We cannot pass along misinformation. We must be critically careful not to scare people into doing irrational and dangerous things. So we need to listen to experts, the CDC, Dr. Fauci [director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases], the World Health Organization, our local public health officials. These are the front-line soldiers that are doing everything to keep us safe and are literally putting their lives on the line. These are the people we need to listen to. What we cannot listen to is random facts on the Internet supposedly, things that people are passing along to us, conspiracy theories. And I'm very sorry to say this, but I think that everything our president says at this point must be fact-checked.

Lauren Krenzel and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.

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'All Of This Panic Could Have Been Prevented': Author Max Brooks On COVID-19 - NPR

Neither were the physicians at first of any service, ignorant as they were of the proper way to treat it, but they died themselves the most thickly, as they visited the sick most often; nor did any human art succeed any better. Supplications in the temples, divinations, and so forth were found equally futile, till the overwhelming nature of the disaster at last put a stop to them altogether.

Such concludes the introduction to the Plague of Athens from Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War. The historian, an Athenian general who lived through the events he described, captures the horror of life in an epidemic, and in isolation. The plague arrived with the Spartan invasion, but it mostly hit the civilian populations of the area in and around Athens, and so the plague brought by invaders became an unintentional ally in the fight. Estimates of deaths from the five-year period that the disease ravaged Athens sit between 75,000 to 100,000, or nearly a quarter of the city-states population at the time.

The specific disease that hit Athens during the siege remains a subject of medical debate. What is known is that the disease originated in Ethiopia, and then it spread through the Mediterranean. Its persistence and lethality are unusual features, even among the ancient world, with candidates including both the plague and smallpox.

For an epidemic to become an epidemic it has to remain deadly while traveling with humans, rather than just killing them outright. It takes a particular kind of connected world, and a particular kind of violence in that connection, to make such a disease stick around and fester, a wound in the body politic.

History is rich with the plagues that followed war. The movement of people and armies and the whole long trail of food and supplies that entails can serve as a vector for diseases that, left to their own locality and without interconnection, might simply have become a local tragedy. Disease spreads through the people doing the fighting, and it spreads among the civilians displaced.

It takes a particular kind of connected world, and a particular kind of violence in that connection, to make such a disease stick around and fester, a wound in the body politic.

When in Revelations John describes the biblical apocalypse as preceded by war, famine, pestilence, and death, he is merely casting the realities of armed conflict into, well, biblical proportions.

Germ theory is too modern a phenomenon to have been reliably incorporated into the strategies of ancient besieging forces, but disease has long been an incidental weapon of war. The most historically famous example is the Mongolian siege of the Genoese-settled city of Caffa on the Black Sea.

As the Mongols retreated in the face of an assault by a relieving force, a contemporary account recorded that the Mongols used their siege weapons to hurl diseased corpses over the city walls, spreading black death.

What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea, wrote the Italian notary Gabriele de Mussi, likely based on eyewitness accounts. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the [Mongolian] army.

Mussis account of the end of the Siege of Caffa has long been cited as both an early incidence of deliberate biological warfare and a clue as to the route through which the black death made it to Europe, though both claims are contested. Regardless, the nature of a siege is to combine deprivation with density, and for the besiegers to trust that, on a long enough timeline, the people trapped inside, even if supplied by the sea, will succumb to the pressure.

Sieges, with defenders surrounded by hostile armed forces intending to wait them out, still happen in the modern world, much as they seem a fixture of a past era. These sieges, like those in antiquity, come with the diseases of deprivation, and the diseases that pass through populations thrown into violent conflict.

What is structurally different about sieges in modernity is that humans now have a scientific understanding of disease itself, and at least according to the conventions and treaties signed by nations, a humanitarian obligation to treat it. It was easy to see, in 2017 and 2018, an international condemnation of the siege tactics used by Bashar al Assad in Syria, tactics that brought deliberate suffering on civilian populations as a means of consolidating military rule.

It is somewhat harder, in the face of the international COVID-19 pandemic, to see where siege conditions are enforced to siege-like ends by means other than bullets and bombs.

International sanctions regimes, designed to allow primarily the United States to withhold access to the dollar as an international reserve currency from nations it views as acting against American interests, enable a sort of invisible siege. Enforcing second-order sanctions, whereby companies risk losing access to the US dollar if they also engage in business with the targeted country, serves as a way to effectively sever the targeted country from the vast majority of the international market.

By design, these sanctions inflict suffering primarily on civilians within the targeted country. As a coercive tool, the logic is that deliberately depriving the people in a country will make those same deprived people pressure their leaders. The ultimate end state is that, either from pressure below or to relieve suffering, the leaders of a sanctioned state change behavior more in line with US interest.

In a pandemic, these sanctions exacerbate deprivation into full-on crisis. While humanitarian goods nominally are allowed through sanctions, many banks refuse to process those transactions, afraid that doing so would expose them to penalties under second-order sanctions. The Geneva Conventions explicitly permit safe passage for food and medical supplies to physically besieged populations, but those rules do not apply to economic sanctions. While not formally cut off from aid, a global refusal to sell medical supplies under penalty of second-order sanctions can cause deprivation, much the same as an army camped outside the gates did in antiquity.

As reported by the New York Times on March 21st, Secretary of State Pompeo and Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell have made the case for exactly this ancient military application of disease and siege to the President.

Irans leaders have been harder hit by the coronavirus than almost any other country, and they have been hiding their infection from colleagues, according to intelligence reports heightening distrust and divisions in the government, reports the Times. Trump administration officials who advocate aggressive action have used those reports to press the case for escalating American military action against Iran.

What is happening in Iran is just one example of a multitude of economic sieges across the globe, maintained in the face of a truly international pandemic. To treat this crisis as wholly a public health event without acknowledging the context in which it takes place is to ignore the interrelated histories of war and disease. It is to treat the afflictions, as the ancient Athenians did, as a supernatural occurrence beyond anyones control.

To keep the siege in place is to look at the way it ravages thousands across the globe, and to turn away. It is a cold declaration on the side of cruelty. It is to say, simply, that epidemics are war by other means.

Kelsey D. Atherton is a defense technology journalist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His reporting has appeared in Popular Science, C4ISRNET, and The New York Times.

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The Plague and the Long War - Inkstick

MILLIONS were unwitting Guinea Pigs in biological weapon trials between 1940 and 1979 in which germs were released into the air, according to bombshell reports.

In 2002, amid the SARS outbreak, top-secret documents released revealed that the Ministry of Defence turned large parts of Britain in laboratories during WW2 up to 1979.

The government report revealed for the first time that the British Government conducted trials on its own people releasing toxic chemicals and micro-organisms into the air.

The Guardain reported: Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told.

While details of some secret trials have emerged in recent years, the 60-page report reveals new information about more than 100 covert experiments.

The report reveals that military personnel were briefed to tell any inquisitive inquirer the trials were part of research projects into weather and air pollution.

The tests, carried out by government scientists at Porton Down, were designed to help the MoD assess Britains vulnerability if the Russians were to have released clouds of deadly germs over the country.

In most cases, the trials did not use biological weapons but alternatives which scientists believed would mimic germ warfare and which the MoD claimed were harmless.

But families in certain areas of the country who have children with birth defects are demanding a public inquiry.

One chapter of the report, The Fluorescent Particle Trials, reveals how between 1955 and 1963 planes flew from north-east England to the tip of Cornwall along the south and west coasts, dropping huge amounts of zinc cadmium sulphide on the population.

The chemical drifted miles inland, its fluorescence allowing the spread to be monitored. In another trial using zinc cadmium sulphide, a generator was towed along a road near Frome in Somerset where it spewed the chemical for an hour.

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REVEALED: Millions of Brits were in SECRET germ war tests between 1940 and 1979 - Politicalite