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Reprinted from caitlinjohnstone.com by Unknown
"As billions hunker down to halt the spread of the virus, President Donald Trump has only ramped up sanctions and other pressure against frequent targets such as Iran and Venezuela," reads a new article by AFP.
"Iranians say humanitarian imports have effectively been blocked as few foreign banks are willing to deal with Iran due to US sanctions, leading to shortages of vital supplies such as masks," AFP adds. "Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group, which studies peaceful solutions to global problems, said the Trump administration likely believes that any aid would only throw a lifeline to a regime it sees on the brink of falling."
"It's almost like a bad joke. What's worse than a pandemic appearing in a country where there is no government? That is really the last thing that you want," the Quincy Institute's Max Abrahms told AFP. "We need to rethink our understanding of US national security. It seems particularly absurd for the United States to invest so heavily in remaking foreign countries at a time when our own nurses in New York City are literally wearing trash bags."
Me: "We need to rethink our understanding of US national security. It seems particularly absurd for the United States to invest so heavily in remaking foreign countries at a time when our own nurses in New York City are literally wearing trash bags." https://t.co/fOtxsMuY9M
- Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) March 27, 2020
Indeed, in some very important ways the US government has clearly seen the coronavirus outbreak not as a dangerous humanitarian crisis, but as a strategic advantage to be weaponized against governments which refuse to bow to its empire-building agendas.
Weaponizing a virus is the thing that biological warfare is. The US government might not have deliberately released the virus (also not a settled question), but they are using the virus as a weapon aimed at toppling vulnerable targeted governments.
The use of biological warfare, or germ warfare, is prohibited by international law, though in typical fashion the US is skirting the parameters of those laws in this case by weaponizing a virus that was already spreading. Which is not to say that the US is above deliberately infecting a population using biological weaponry as well; they used them extensively during the Korean War.
Thousands of Iranians have already died of this virus due to the difficulties US sanctions create in obtaining medicine, equipment and resources, and it's possible that orders of magnitude more dead may follow. This is not accidental, this is deliberate. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has gone on record to say that the objective is to make Iranian civilians so miserable and desperate that they overthrow their own government, and it is clear that this virus is being employed toward this purpose.
This same imperial war machine is actively attempting to inflict this same fate upon Venezuela, where tens of thousands have already died of malnutrition and inability to access medicine because of the Trump administration's brutal economic warfare. The DC-based International Monetary Fund has denied Venezuela a loan it says it needs to fight the pandemic citing dispute over the legitimacy of the Maduro government, a dispute the US itself created out of thin air and narrative spin. On top of all this the Trump administration is now offering a $15 million bribe to anyone who will help them arrest Maduro on ridiculous drug trafficking and terrorism charges.
Who would benefit from a disease-ravaged nation not having a government? Certainly not the Venezuelan people.
Assange denied bail in UK amid pandemic https://t.co/IrmmzU8IFU
- WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 25, 2020
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