The Win Without War coalition tweeted out some stats from an article published recently in the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire:

Also from the article:

Lawmakers have defended massive expenditure on nuclear weapons for decades, touting the safety and security they are supposed to bring to the American people. But in the midst of a global pandemic it becomes painfully clear how hollow are promises of security based on threats to use weapons of mass destruction. A virus doesn’t care how many nuclear weapons your country has. Every dime wasted on nuclear weapons could be better spent giving the American people a fighting chance against COVID-19.

This is not just a rhetorical argument. We did the math. Diverting U.S. spending on nuclear weapons for only one year would meet reported gaps in health care supplies and save lives…

…Doctors around the world see no place for nuclear weapons in this world – neither do most countries. In 2017, 122 countries adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which bans the use, production and possession of nuclear weapons. The treaty will officially take effect once an additional 14 countries ratify it. 

Well, color me shocked but the military-industrial complex is pushing a narrative that the way to address the pandemic is more arms sales. It seems ridiculous – I mean, are you going to drop a bomb on the virus? Maybe aim a rocket launcher at it? It may sound like something out of Cracked Magazine but we all know that the MIC lobbyists are all missing the shame gene as they got weapons manufacturers deemed essential businesses. From an article co-written by long-time expert on the MIC, William Hartung, at The Nation:

On one side, there’s a growing bipartisan consensus that the coronavirus has fundamentally changed the way we should think about national security. Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House, recently argued in The Atlantic that we have to rethink the orientation and priorities of our government, and “it makes no sense that the Pentagon budget is 13 times larger than the entire international-affairs budget, which funds the State Department, USAID, and global programs at other agencies.”

Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the bottom line is that “we’re going to see enormous downward pressure on defense spending because of other urgent American national needs like health care.”

…If history is any indication, the military-industrial complex isn’t going down without a fight, nor is the Pentagon budget. Through their droves of lobbyists, the revolving door between the Pentagon, contractors, and Congress, and the promise of providing jobs to every Congressional district, Pentagon contractors have kept the defense budget artificially inflated for years at the expense of funding for things like the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies that can help fight disease outbreaks. And, in this new coronavirus era, they’re using the same playbook once again….

….The arms lobby is well-positioned to exert influence over Pentagon spending going forward. Hundreds of former senior government officials—645 in 2018 alone, according to the Project on Government Oversight—have gone through the “revolving door’ to work for the defense industry as lobbyists, executives, consultants, or board members. This gives them an inside track on debates over budget priorities. And, the revolving door swings both ways. The last three secretaries of defense have been a former board member of General Dynamics, a former Boeing executive, and the former chief lobbyist for Raytheon, respectively. Most importantly of all, President Trump has been the greatest champion of the arms industry, touting (and exaggerating) the number of jobs created by arms sales to countries like Saudi Arabia.

Read the full article here.

Those of you who read my last book may recall coverage of a Cold War era group called The Committee on the Present Danger. It was a lobbying group started by a gaggle of neoconservatives during the Ford administration with the goal of spreading falsehoods about the Soviet Union involving violations of nuclear treaties that had been negotiated by the Nixon administration, led by Henry Kissinger. The neocons used defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to convince president Ford to take these baseless accusations seriously for a time.

Fast forward to 2019 and The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) gets revived like Night of the Living Dead. Long-time neocon, PNAC veteran and all-around peddler of nonsense Frank Gaffney set up shop last year with Sinophobe Steve Bannon. According to an article by Dave DeCamp at Antiwar.com:

Members of the CPD refer to China as the greatest “existential threat” to the US. “The United States is likely to face in the foreseeable future a determined and aggressive superpower adversary, prepared and willing to use force, as well as nonmilitary forms of warfare, to defeat this country decisively,” reads one of the CPD’s “guiding principles.” Another principle says, “There is no hope of coexistence with China as long as the Communist Party governs the country.” The Covid-19 pandemic is the perfect opportunity for this group to exploit the fears of Americans and push for a more hawkish policy towards China.

Steve Bannon played an influential role in President Trump’s campaign and the early days of the administration and pushed hard for tariffs on Chinese goods during his short-lived role as chief strategist. Bannon’s China ambitions do not stop with the trade war. “I think ultimate success is regime change [in China], and I realize in that regard I’m considered a radical,” Bannon told NPR in May 2019.

Bannon has a podcast titled “Bannon’s War Room.” Back in January, in the early days of the outbreak, Bannon changed the title to “War Room: Pandemic.” In the show, Bannon rails against China’s response to the virus. Bannon frequently refers to the pandemic as a “Biological Chernobyl” and has said there will be a “Nuremberg-type trial” in Wuhan. Last week, Bannon appeared on Fox Business News and said, “Blood is on the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”

As I explained in a recent post, there is nothing constructive to be gained from this kind of vilifying rhetoric which has historically set the stage for escalation and even war. After all, in order to destroy someone you first must demonize and dehumanize them and those doing the demonizing usually play fast and loose with the facts while exploiting genuine concerns.

The “casus belli” if you will this time is China intentionally being deceptive about the coronavirus. In recent weeks, the usual politicians who can be counted on to beat the war drums every time have been out in full force about the dastardly China and its alleged partner in crime the WHO, exaggerating China’s initial mistakes to excuse our own government’s foot-dragging and lack of preparedness.

It has just come out via an article in the Times of Israel that American intelligence had discovered – through monitoring of internal Chinese communications – that a pandemic threat was possible and had passed this information onto the IDF, NATO, and the White House back in NOVEMBER.

US intelligence agencies alerted Israel to the coronavirus outbreak in China already in November, Israeli television reported Thursday.

According to Channel 12 news, the US intelligence community became aware of the emerging disease in Wuhan in the second week of that month and drew up a classified document.

…US intelligence informed the Trump administration, “which did not deem it of interest,” but the report said the Americans also decided to update two allies with the classified document: NATO and Israel, specifically the IDF.

…Last week, ABC News reported that US intelligence officials were warning about the coronavirus in a report prepared in November by the American military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence.

It was unclear if that was the same report that was said to have been shared with Israel.

The ABC report was denied by the NCMI.

It does appear that China dropped the ball in the early days of the outbreak in that country, but the fact of the matter is that our executive branch of government did not take the potential of a pandemic – something other agencies had discussed and tried to better prepare for – seriously. Trying to point the finger solely at China for our shortcomings is not much better than the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party cooking up Russiagate to cover and distract for its own failures. And it’s about as reckless.

Furthermore, there is an active propaganda campaign at work in the State Department as publicly admitted by Daniel Blumenthal during recent testimony to Congress. Blumenthal co-wrote the propaganda blueprint with Nicholas Eberstadt. Both work at the neoconservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. Blumenthal was in charge of the Pentagon’s China operations during the Bush II administration. During his testimony Blumenthal stated his desire to go back to a Cold War style propaganda offensive, citing the NGO’s and media outlets that the national security state has at its disposal to manipulate the narrative. See video below.

Trump’s regime-change-the-WHO strategy follows a blueprint laid out by former Bush administration official @DAlexBlumenthal, who is calling for “political warfare” against China and deployment of State Department “information warriors”. Watch my latest: pic.twitter.com/wSF6U01zuZ

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) April 14, 2020

I’m not so naive as to believe that the Chinese government is filled with angels. I’m not against an intellectually honest critique of what China may have done wrong so the world can learn from it for the future. However, it’s hard to undertake such a critique when so many who are given a platform by our corporate media to discuss China are linked to the national security state or are dangerous ideologues like the neocons. Moreover, there’s an old saying about criticizing the splinter in your neighbor’s eye while ignoring the log in your own. Did the Chinese government force Trump to not take the crisis seriously once the information was finally out in January?

Remember, neocons are not your friends and just because they are not as visible as they were during the Bush II administration does not mean they have gone away. Neocons are always warmongers and anything coming from them must be viewed with suspicion. Their very ideology necessitates the U.S. having to have an enemy in order to have a pure and meaningful identity since they believe there must always be a battle between good and evil. They must have a bogeyman for Americans to fear so they can maintain power. The bogeyman may be Russia, terrorism, or China. Neocons are imperialists who believe that the United States must have “full spectrum dominance” over the world – because they inherently represent good. For a refresher on who the neocons are, what they think, and the roots of their warped philosophy, watch the 2004 BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear.

Russia’s COVID-19 cases continue to climb as there are now reported cases in all 85 regions of the country. There were just under 28,000 cases with 232 deaths as of yesterday. Here are some thoughts on how the virus is affecting Russia by Canadian Russia expert Patrick Armstrong:

This raises the question of why the death rate in Russia appears to be lower. One theory is that the widespread Soviet-era tuberculosis vaccinations (BCG vaccine) may have had an effect – just how or why is unclear, but there seems to be a statistical relationship. A test of its effectiveness is beginning in Australia. Over half the cases are in Moscow but every region except one reports cases [the last holdout of Altai reported its first case yesterday – NB]: most of Sunday’s infections in Shanghai came from a flight from Russia the day before. A pass system was introduced in Moscow yesterday but not very successfully (and many standing in line waiting to be checked). The new hospital in Moscow Region is up and running. A vaccine prototype is undergoing human testing (including by the developer). The Victory Parade is postponed. Meanwhile Russian military specialists are working away in Italy. (This, by the way, is why NBCW units were sent – not to spy, or for “gaining access to Italy’s health and military system, which is part of a larger NATO structure“, or to create “A hybrid lie. Or a hybrid truth” or be useless or whatever else NATO flacks imagine).

St. Petersburg is among the top three regions affected and is expecting a significant increase in cases in the coming week, according to the head of the official task force in the area who predicted a possible scenario of 6,000 severe cases. But he said the area’s medical facilities will be ready for it.

Meanwhile, another small exchange of prisoners took place yesterday between the Kiev government and the Donbas rebels in Ukraine. The OSCE reported the following:

TIRANA / VIENNA, 16 April 2020 – The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Prime Minister and Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of Albania, Edi Rama, and OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger welcomed today’s mutual release and exchange of detainees in eastern Ukraine.

“Today’s mutual release and exchange of detainees is an important step taken before the Orthodox Easter. The sides demonstrated political will and humanitarian action. This day has been long awaited by both the detainees and their relatives and friends,” Rama said.

Below is a link to Part 5 of the TASS news agency’s interview with Vladimir Putin on 20 topics. Unfortunately, I’m unable to embed the videos.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62867

By William Arkin, Newsweek, April 16, 2020

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser yesterday ordered a one-month extension of the state of emergency, as cases in the region grow at a rapid pace. Federal officials in the nation’s capital expect a New York-like epidemic in the District, Maryland and Virginia, one that could potentially cripple the government.

“No one wants to talk evacuation, especially when there’s nowhere to go,” says a senior military officer working on continuity of government planning; he requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on the record.

But a little-known military task force charged with evacuating Washington has already been activated, a task force charged with the most sensitive government mission of “securing” Washington in the face of attackers, foreign and domestic—and if necessary, moving White House and other key government offices to alternate locations.

Activated on March 16, Joint Task Force National Capital Region (JTF-NCR) is chartered to “defend” Washington on land, in the air, and even on its waterfronts. The special task force, the only one of its kind in the country, demonstrates how there are two sides of government preparedness. The public face, and even the day-to-day work of most men and women assigned to JTF-NCR, is the same as it is everywhere else in the country—medical support, delivering supplies, manning health-check stations.

But behind the scenes, JTF-NCR is responsible for what the military calls “homeland defense”: what to do in the face of an armed attack on the United States, everything from guarding Washington’s skies to preparing for the civil unrest that could occur if a nuclear weapon were detonated in the capital. But most immediate, JTF-NCR is charged with facilitating continuity of government, particularly moving civil and military leaders to secret locations were the order given to evacuate the city.

Ever since National Guards started to activate countrywide, Pentagon officials have insisted that men and women in uniform are not conducting secret missions and that they will not administer or enforce “stay at home” quarantines. The Pentagon has also rejected reports, including articles in Newsweek, about martial law or other extreme contingency plans, arguing that the Guard remains under strict control of state governors, while federal troops support civil agencies like FEMA.

And yet the activation of Joint Task Force National Capital Region, including almost 10,000 uniformed personnel to carry out its special orders, contradicts those assurances. JTF-NCR is not only real and operating, reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense for some of its mission, but some of its units are already on 24/7 alert, specially sequestered on military bases and kept out of coronavirus support duties to ensure their readiness.

Continue reading here.