[Захумље]

http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/2460

Citing security threat, Obama expands U.S. role fighting Ebola
BY JEFF MASON AND JAMES HARDING GIAHYUE
ATLANTA/MONROVIA Tue Sep 16, 2014 7:28pm EDT
70 COMMENTS
inShare
42
Share this

Email
Print

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, September 16, 2014. REUTERS-Larry Downing
1 OF 4. U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, September 16, 2014.
CREDIT: REUTERS/LARRY DOWNING
RELATED NEWS
Ebola vaccine trial finds 'no red flags': U.S. Senate testimony
ANALYSIS & OPINION
Russians love their children, too – but that alone won’t stop a war
How NATO could defend against a Russian invasion
RELATED TOPICS
World »
Health »
United Nations »
Photo
Ebola epidemic

Quarantines and isolation units imposed to stop the spread of the worst Ebola outbreak in history. Slideshow

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday called West Africa's deadly Ebola outbreak a looming threat to global security and announced a major expansion of the U.S. role in trying to halt its spread, including deployment of 3,000 troops to the region.

"The reality is that this epidemic is going to get worse before it gets better," Obama said at the Atlanta headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"But, right now, the world still has an opportunity to save countless lives. Right now, the world has the responsibility to act, to step up and to do more. The United States of America intends to do more," he added.

The U.S. plan, a dramatic expansion of Washington's initial response last week, won praise from the U.N. World Health Organization, aid workers and officials in West Africa. Experts said it was still not enough to contain the epidemic, which is rapidly spreading and has caused already-weak local public health systems to buckle under the strain of fighting it.

U.S. officials said the focus of the military deployment would be Liberia, a nation founded by freed American slaves that is the hardest hit of the countries affected by the crisis.

Obama's plan calls for sending 3,000 troops, including engineers and medical personnel; establishing a regional command and control center in Liberia's capital, Monrovia, commanded by Major General Darryl Williams, who arrived there on Tuesday; and forming a staging area in Senegal to help distribute personnel and aid on the ground.

It also calls for building 17 treatment centers with 100 beds each; placing U.S. Public Health Service personnel in new field hospitals in Liberia; training thousands of healthcare workers for six months or longer; and creating an "air bridge" to get health workers and medical supplies into West Africa more quickly.

The worst Ebola outbreak since the disease was identified in 1976 has already killed nearly 2,500 people and is threatening to spread elsewhere in Africa.

Obama said "the world is looking to us" to take the lead against Ebola, but urged other nations also to take action because the epidemic is "spiraling out of control" and "people are literally dying in the streets."

The White House said the troops will not be responsible for direct patient care. Amid concern about infections, Obama said the "safety of our personnel will remain a top priority." He also said the "chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low."

GLOBAL SECURITY

Obama said that if the outbreak is not stopped now, hundreds of thousands of people may become infected, "with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us."

"This is an epidemic that is not just a threat to regional security. It’s a potential threat to global security, if these countries break down, if their economies break down, if people panic. That has profound effects on all of us, even if we are not directly contracting the disease," Obama added.

The WHO praised the U.S. plan for providing support to the United Nations and other international partners to help authorities in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal contain the outbreak.

"This massive ramp-up of support from the United States is precisely the kind of transformational change we need to get a grip on the outbreak and begin to turn it around," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, said in a statement.

Earlier, a senior WHO official said the Ebola outbreak requires a much faster response to limit its spread to tens of thousands of cases.

"We don't know where the numbers are going on this," WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward told a news conference in Geneva, calling the crisis "unparalleled in modern times."

The initial U.S. response last week had focused on providing funding and supplies, drawing criticism from aid workers for not deploying manpower as in other disasters like earthquakes.

Obama's announcement marks his second within a week of a new mission for the U.S. military, following last week's speech outlining a broad escalation of the campaign against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria.

During a congressional hearing in Washington, CDC official Beth Bell said the "window of opportunity" to control Ebola's spread is closing, while both Democratic and Republican lawmakers voiced support for funding the fight against the virus.

"We need to declare a war on Ebola," Republican Senator Jerry Moran said.

'WELCOME NEWS'

Liberians hailed the word that U.S. troops were coming, recalling a military operation in 2003 that helped stabilize the country during a civil war.

"This is welcome news. This is what we expected from the U.S. a long time ago," Anthony Mulbah, a student at the University of Monrovia, said in the dilapidated oceanfront capital. "The U.S. remains a strong partner to Liberia."

In Liberia, a shortage of space in clinics for isolating victims means patients are being turned away, then infecting others.

Ebola spreads rapidly, causes fever and uncontrolled bleeding.

The virus has so far killed 2,461 people, half of the 4,985 people infected, and the death toll has doubled in the past month, WHO's Aylward said.

The outbreak was first confirmed in the remote forests of southeastern Guinea in March, then spread across Sierra Leone and Liberia. A handful of Ebola deaths have been recorded in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.

The disease has crippled weak health systems, infecting hundreds of local staff in a region chronically short of doctors. The WHO has said that 500 to 600 more foreign experts and at least 10,000 more local health workers are needed.

"It is not enough to provide protective clothing when you don't have the people who will wear them," Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama said during a visit to Sierra Leone.

The U.S. intervention comes as the pace of cash and emergency supplies dispatched to the region accelerates.

Before Tuesday, Washington had sent about 100 health officials and committed some $175 million in aid. Other nations, including Cuba, China, France and Britain; have pledged medical workers, health centers and other forms of support.

Critics, including regional leaders, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Peter Piot, one of the scientists who discovered Ebola in 1976; have said international efforts so far have fallen woefully short.

"It is now up to other governments to equally scale up their support in Sierra Leone and Guinea," Piot, now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told Reuters.

Many neighboring African countries have closed their borders and canceled flights to affected countries, making the humanitarian response more difficult.

A draft U.N. Security Council resolution on Ebola, obtained by Reuters, calls on U.N. member states, particularly in the region, to lift general travel and border restrictions. The resolution could win approval later this week.

Cuba to send doctors to Ebola areas
By Smitha Mundasad
Health reporter, BBC News
Baby tested for Ebola
In some affected countries there are very few doctors available to tackle the disease
Continue reading the main story
Ebola outbreak

'Biological warfare'
How bad can Ebola get?
How to avoid Ebola
What is Ebola? Watch
Cuba is sending 165 health workers to help tackle the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, officials say.

Doctors, nurses and infection control specialists will travel to Sierra Leone in October and stay for six months.

The announcement comes as the World Health Organization says new cases in West Africa are increasing faster than the capacity to manage them.

More than 2,400 people have died from the virus in recent months and some 4,700 people have been infected.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

I am extremely grateful for the generosity of the Cuban government and these health professionals”

Dr Margaret Chan
WHO
The death toll remains highest in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

World Health Organization (WHO) officials say the number of people affected is likely to be much greater than current estimates suggest.

In Liberia WHO experts say there is not a single bed left to treat patients with Ebola.

But the world football association, Fifa, says it is joining forces with the United Nations to turn the country's national stadium into a large-scale Ebola treatment unit.

Dr Margaret Chan, director of the WHO, said: "If we are going to go to war with Ebola we need the resources to fight.

"I am extremely grateful for the generosity of the Cuban government and these health professionals for doing their part to help us contain the worst Ebola outbreak ever known."

'Health diplomacy'
She added: "Cuba is world-famous for its ability to train outstanding doctors and nurses and for its generosity in helping fellow countries on the route to progress."

Through a global medical programme, doctors have been deployed to a range of countries, from Algeria to South Africa.

And many consider this medical help to be a central part of Cuba's international relations.

One of Cuba's most extensive efforts is an eye surgery programme in Venezuela where thousands of cataract operations have been performed.

Hundreds of Cuban medical workers were sent to Haiti during the earthquake in 2010.

The country also trains thousands of overseas medical students, many of whom return to their home nations to work.

Ebola virus disease (EVD)
Coloured transmission electron micro graph of a single Ebola virus, the cause of Ebola fever
Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and severe headaches
Fatality rate can reach 90%
Incubation period is two to 21 days
There is no vaccine or cure
Supportive care such as rehydrating patients who have diarrhoea and vomiting can help recovery
Fruit bats are considered to be virus' natural host

3,000 troops...v Russian/Cuban Doctors.....are we missing something here?
Resources, general colonial theft?

[Захумље]

Obama’s “War on Ebola” or War for Oil? Sending 3000 Troops to African “Ebola” Areas that Happen to Export Oil to China

By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, October 03, 2014
New Eastern Outlook 2 October 2014
Region: sub-Saharan Africa
Theme: Oil and Energy, Science and Medicine
974 170 34 2070


Obamaebola-300x154
For a Nobel Peace Prize President, Barack Obama seems destined to go down in history books as the President who presided over one of the most aggressive series of wars ever waged by a bellicose Washington Administration. Not even George Bush and Dick Cheney came close.

First, before the ink was even dry on his Nobel Prize certificate, Obama announced the Afghanistan “surge”, pouring another 30,000 US military into that destroyed part of the world. Then came Obama’s war against Libya’s Qaddafi, followed rapidly by his war to try to topple Syria’s Bashar al Assad. Soon after came Obama’s “war for democracy in Ukraine,” otherwise better called Obama’s attempt to provoke Russia into a new war confrontation with NATO by backing a gaggle of Ukrainian oligarchs, criminals and outright neo-nazis in Kiev. In July of this year, Obama’s Administration was pushing the President to launch a second try at bombing Syria back to the Stone Age, allegedly to destroy ISIS, a looney Jihadist Sunni sect that was said to be a joint venture of the CIA and Israeli intelligence.

Now Obama’s advisers, no doubt led by the blood-thirsty National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, have come up with a new war. This is the War Against Ebola. On September 16, President Obama solemnly declared the war. He announced, to the surprise of most sane citizens, that he had ordered 3,000 American troops, the so-called “boots on the ground” that the Pentagon refuses to agree to in Syria, to wage a war against….a virus?

In a carefully stage-managed appearance at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Obama read a bone-chilling speech. He called the alleged Ebola outbreaks in west Africa, “a global threat, and it demands a truly global response. This is an epidemic that is not just a threat to regional security. It’s a potential threat to global security, if these countries break down, if their economies break down, if people panic,” Obama continued, conjuring images that would have made Andromeda Strain novelist Michael Chrichton drool with envy. Obama added, “That has profound effects on all of us, even if we are not directly contracting the disease. This outbreak is already spiraling out of control.”

With that hair-raising introduction, the President of the world’s greatest Superpower announced his response. In his role as Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America announced he has ordered 3,000 US troops to west Africa in what he called, “the largest international response in the history of the CDC.” He didn’t make clear if their job would be to shoot the virus wherever it reared its ugly head, or to shoot any poor hapless African suspected of having Ebola. Little does it matter that the US military doesn’t have anywhere near 3,000 troops with the slightest training in public health.

Before we all panic and line up to receive the millions of doses of untested and reportedly highly dangerous “Ebola vaccines” the major drug-makers are preparing to dump on the market, some peculiarities of this Ebola outbreak in Africa are worth noting.

Certified Ebola Deaths?

The World Health Organization, under the Director, Dr Margaret Chan, in a press conference on September 13, sounded the alarm, warning that Ebola in west Africa was surging out of control. “In the three hardest hit countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the number of new patients is moving far faster than the capacity to manage them,” Chan claimed. WHO claims that almost half of 301 health-care workers dealing with alleged Ebola patients have themselves died, and that 2,400 people out of 4,784 cases in Africa have died of Ebola. On August 8, Chan declared the African Ebola situation a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” whatever that is supposed to mean.

A major problem for Chan and her backers, however, is that her Ebola statistics are very, very dubious. For those whose memory is short, this is the same Dr Margaret Chan at WHO in Geneva who was guilty in 2009 of trying to panic the world into taking unproven vaccines for “Swine Flu” influenza, by declaring a Global Pandemic with statistics calling every case of symptoms that of the common cold to be “Swine Flu,” whether it was runny nose, coughing, sneezing, sore throat. That changed WHO definition of Swine Flu allowed the statistics of the disease to be declared Pandemic. It was an utter fraud, a criminal fraud Chan carried out, wittingly or unwittingly (she could be simply stupid but evidence suggests otherwise), on behalf of the major US and EU pharmaceutical cartel.

In a recent Washington Post article it was admitted that sixty-nine percent of all the Ebola cases in Liberia registered by WHO have not been laboratory confirmed through blood tests. Liberia is the epicenter of the Ebola alarm in west Africa. More than half of the alleged Ebola deaths, 1,224, and nearly half of all cases, 2,046, have been in Liberia says WHO. And the US FDA diagnostic test used for the lab confirmation of Ebola is so flawed that the FDA has prohibited anyone from claiming they are safe or effective. That means, a significant proportion of the remaining 31 % of the Ebola cases lab confirmed through blood tests could be false cases.

In short, no one knows what 1,224 Liberians in recent weeks have died from. But WHO claims it to be Ebola. Note that the countries affected by the Ebola alarm are among the poorest and most war-torn regions in the world. Wars over blood diamonds and colonial genocidal tribal wars have left a devastated, mal-nourished population in its wake.

WHO’s official fact sheet on Ebola, which now they renamed EVD for Ebola Virus Disease, claims, “The first EVD outbreaks occurred in remote villages in Central Africa, near tropical rainforests, but the most recent outbreak in west Africa has involved major urban as well as rural areas…” WHO further notes that, “It is thought that fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are natural Ebola virus hosts. Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest.”

Then the official WHO Ebola Fact Sheet dated September, 2014, states, “It can be difficult to distinguish EVD from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever and meningitis.”

Excuse me, Dr Margaret Chan, can you say that slowly? It can be difficult to distinguish EVD from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever and meningitis? And you admit that 69% of the declared cases have never been adequately tested? And you state that the Ebola symptoms include “sudden onset of fever fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhea, rash, symptoms of impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding”?

In short it is all the most vague and unsubstantiated basis that lies behind President Obama’s new War on Ebola.

War on Ebola or War for Oil?

One striking aspect of this new concern of the US President for the situation in Liberia and other west African states where alleged surges of Ebola are being claimed is the presence of oil, huge volumes of untapped oil.

The offshore coast of Liberia and east African ‘Ebola zones’ conveniently map with the presence of vast untapped oil and gas resources shown here

The issue of oil in west Africa, notably in the waters of the Gulf of Guinea have become increasingly strategic both to China who is roaming the world in search of future secure oil import sources, and the United States, whose oil geo-politics was summed up in a quip by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970’s: ‘If you control the oil, you control entire nations.’

The Obama Administration and Pentagon policy has continued that of George W. Bush who in 2008 created the US military Africa Command or AFRICOM, to battle the rapidly-growing Chinese economic presence in Africa’s potential oil-rich countries. West Africa is a rapidly-emerging oil treasure, barely tapped to date. A US Department of Energy study projected that African oil production would rise 91 percent between 2002 and 2025, much from the region of the present Ebola alarm.

Chinese oil companies are all over Africa and increasingly active in west Africa, especially Angola, Sudan and Guinea, the later in the epicenter of Obama’s new War on Ebola troop deployment.

If the US President were genuine about his concern to contain a public health emergency, he could look at the example of that US-declared pariah Caribbean nation, Cuba. Reuters reports that the Cuban government, a small financially distressed, economically sanctioned island nation of 11 million people, with a national budget of $50 billion, Gross Domestic Product of 121 billion and per capita GDP of just over $10,000, is dispatching 165 medical personnel to Africa to regions where there are Ebola outbreaks. Washington sends 3,000 combat troops. Something smells very rotten around the entire Ebola scare.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

[Захумље]

Obama Threatens More Sanctions Against Zimbabwe Over Russian-Platinum Deal
October 6th, 2014Goto commentsLeave a comment



0
share0
platinum11Tyler Durden: As Martin Armstrong exclaims, Obama is out of control. According to NewZimbabwe.com, Washington has said it will accelerate sanctions imposed against Harare in 2003, due to the Robert Mugabe-led government’s closer ties with Russia over the US$3 billion Darwendale platinum project. Herald columnist Nathaniel Manheru (who is thought to be Mugabe’s spokesman), reported, Washington explained its expectations on Zimbabwe, namely that Zimbabwe was expected (read required) to support those sanctions by avoiding any association with companies sanctioned by the Americans and their Western allies, or their subsidiaries or affiliates. Manheru said “it was ridiculous for the US to refuse to lift sanctions against Harare and then demand support for its measures against Moscow… This is where I am tempted to tell the American government to go and hang, hang on a banana tree, bums up.”

Via AllAfrica.com,

The United States has reportedly warned Zimbabwe about its growing economic dealings with Russia after Harare recently sealed an agreement with Moscow for a US $3 billion platinum mine.

Have you ever wondered how billionaires continue to get RICHER, while the rest of the world is struggling?

"I study billionaires for a living. To be more specific, I study how these investors generate such huge and consistent profits in the stock markets -- year-in and year-out."

CLICK HERE to get your Free E-Book, “The Little Black Book Of Billionaires Secrets”

According to Herald columnist Nathaniel Manheru, who is thought to be President Robert Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba, the Obama administration threatened further sanctions against Zimbabwe over its ties with Russia.

…

Zimbabwe’s Pen East Investments has teamed up with Afronet, a consortium of three Russian partners, to form Great Dyke Investments, which is developing the US$3 billion Darwendale platinum project.

At full development in 2024, the mine will produce 800,000 platinum ounces, pushing Zimbabwe’s output over one million ounces, and create 8,000 jobs.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov visited Zimbabwe last month to conclude the deal with President Robert Mugabe.

However, according to Manheru, the deal could see Washington hit Harare with further sanctions.

Wrote Manheru in the Saturday Herald:

“A week or two ago, the US government, through its local embassy, sent an official communication to the Zimbabwean Government, listing the full measure of sanctions the West, led by America, have slapped on Russia.

“The communication went further.

“It spelt out American expectations on Zimbabwe, namely that Zimbabwe was expected (read required) to support those sanctions by avoiding any association with companies sanctioned by the Americans and their Western allies.

“Or their subsidiaries or affiliates.

“And . . . yes you guess right, that targets the new US$3bn-plus platinum investment by the Russians at Darwendale! It (Zimbabwe) should not proceed or else we are under sanctions.”

The US imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2003, accusing Mugabe of human rights abuses and electoral fraud.

Harare denies the allegations, insisting the sanctions were meant to punish the country’s land reforms.

Obama’s administration has ignored calls by Mugabe to remove the sanctions which the veteran leader blames for bringing Zimbabwe’s economy to its knees.

Manheru said it was ridiculous for the US to refuse to lift sanctions against Harare and then demand support for its measures against Moscow.

Have you ever wondered how billionaires continue to get RICHER, while the rest of the world is struggling?

"I study billionaires for a living. To be more specific, I study how these investors generate such huge and consistent profits in the stock markets -- year-in and year-out."

CLICK HERE to get your Free E-Book, “The Little Black Book Of Billionaires Secrets”

He wrote:

“America then invites sanctioned Zimbabwe to support sanctions against Russia, itself a bird of the same feather!

“Oh America!

“This is where I am tempted to tell the American government to go and hang, hang on a banana tree, bums up.”

As Martin Armstrong concludes,

Obama is Out of Control

Obama is attempting to impose his own rule of law over the entire world – my way or highway. He has no such constitutional authority and this guy who misses most of his daily briefings as Fox News reported, and countless others.

I am not kidding. This is precisely how Athens fell. It dictated to all its allies and one by one they turned against Athens and joined Sparta. Sparta was a virtual communist state and Athens was a state in a battle swinging back and forth between oligarchs and democracy.