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The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-65
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
- August 12 – 'Western' Media Falsely Claim That Russia's Covid-19 Vaccine Is Ready To Go
Related:
The international part of the phase 3 trial of the Russian vaccine had already been announced. Now there is more on the Russian side of the phase 3 trial (machine translation):
Post-registration studies of the Russian vaccine against the new type of coronavirus can begin in 7-10 days, reports TASS with reference to the director of the National Research Center (SIC) of Epidemiology and Microbiology named after N.F. Gamaleya of the Ministry of Health Alexander Gintsburg.
Several tens of thousands of people will take part in the post-registration studies, Gunzburg noted. He added that research will be carried out on the territory of the Moscow region.
—
Other issues:
Covid-19:
On July 13 we wrote:
Covid-19 – New Quick Tests Are Coming
> These kind of tests are comparable to quick pregnancy test. They are for use at home or at points of care for quick screening. The usual turn around time for such tests is some 15 minutes and they do not require special equipment.
…
[T]he advantage of the antigen tests is their simplicity, speed and the mass production costs of about one dollar. They can be integrated into normal life processes like international travel without causing long delays. That the tests have some false negatives does not matter much. Epidemiological modeling shows that when often used these are superior to other methods of epidemic surveillance. <
Now these tests are finally there:
FDA clears saliva test for Covid-19, opening door to wider testing – STAT
Quick and affordable saliva-based COVID-19 test developed by Yale scientists receives FDA Emergency Use Authorization – Yale News
Cheap, frequent COVID tests could be ‘akin to vaccine,’ professor says – Harvard Gazette
Faltering empire:
Once upon a time people from outside the U.S. were very eager to get H-1B visas which allow one to work in the U.S. and to maybe become a citizen. There were even profitable scam sites which promised their customers that they could get preferential access to such visas. Those times are gone:
Shocking no one, not enough foreigners applied for H-1B visas this year so US govt ran a second lottery – The Register
Watching mushroom clouds from the beach in LA. Apocalypse…maybe not now, but soon! – Yasha Levine
> We’re living on the edge of a slow-moving apocalypse — surrounded by pristine beaches, multi-million dollar homes, homeless encampments, and a slow-burning pandemic. But that’s the Los Angeles way. Just pretend the world beyond your lawn doesn’t really exist — or, if does exist, it’s all the fault of some malicious foreign power.
I’m sure buying that extra Tesla will get us out of this. That, and using unredeemable prison labor to fight fires. And of course bringing democracy to Belarus… <
Turkey in trouble:
Congress has secretly blocked US arms sales to Turkey for nearly two years – Defense News
Turkey slams Biden's past call for U.S. to back Erdogan opponents – Reuters
Foreigners Flee Turkish Stocks at Fastest Pace Since March 2019 – Bloomberg
Money for Nothing: currency crisis in Turkey – Yetkin Report
> Based on the numbers as of the end of July, the CBRT’s gross reserves were 90 billion USD. After we account for liabilities, net reserves decline to 26 billion USD. As we adjust for swaps, net reserves decline to -33 billion USD. <
Piracy:
Officials: US seizes Iranian gas heading for Venezuela – Al Jazeerah
> US officials tell AP Trump administration seized cargo of four tankers transporting Iranian fuel to Venezuela.
…
Iran's ambassador to Venezuela, Hojad Soltani, pushed back on what would appear a victory for the US sanctions campaign, saying on Thursday on Twitter that neither the ships nor their owners were Iranian. <
Tankers de-flagged for using Iranian sanctions-busting tactic – Lloyd's list
Four tankers among 16 discovered manipulating AIS to show a vessel is in one place while it is actually at another loading Iranian crude
Javad Zarif @JZarif – 14:02 UTC · Aug 15, 2020
"Pirates of the Caribbean" have their own judges and courts now.
Sadly for them, stolen booty wasn't Iran's. Fuel was sold F.O.B. Persian Gulf. Ship and flag weren't ours either.
Hollow, cheap propaganda doesn’t deflect from miserable failure of US diplomatic malpractice at UN.
Use as open thread …
ADKC @Aug16 23:37 #70
predates the Syrian War.
Planning for the Syrian War began well before 2011, as described in March 2006 by Seymour Hersh in “The Redirection”:
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
. . .
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
. . .
Nasr went on, “The Saudis have considerable financial means, and have deep relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis”—Sunni extremists who view Shiites as apostates. “The last time Iran was a threat, the Saudis were able to mobilize the worst kinds of Islamic radicals. Once you get them out of the box, you can’t put them back.”
The Saudi royal family has been, by turns, both a sponsor and a target of Sunni extremists, who object to the corruption and decadence among the family’s myriad princes. The princes are gambling that they will not be overthrown as long as they continue to support religious schools and charities linked to the extremists. The Administration’s new strategy is heavily dependent on this bargain.
Nasr compared the current situation to the period in which Al Qaeda first emerged. In the nineteen-eighties and the early nineties, the Saudi government offered to subsidize the covert American C.I.A. proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Hundreds of young Saudis were sent into the border areas of Pakistan, where they set up religious schools, training bases, and recruiting facilities. Then, as now, many of the operatives who were paid with Saudi money were Salafis. Among them, of course, were Osama bin Laden and his associates, who founded Al Qaeda, in 1988.
This time, the U.S. government consultant told me, Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”
. . .
In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic direction. At least four main elements were involved, the U.S. government consultant told me. First, Israel would be assured that its security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran…
Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. Syria is a major conduit of arms to Hezbollah. The Saudi government is also at odds with the Syrians over the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, in Beirut in 2005, for which it believes the Assad government was responsible. Hariri, a billionaire Sunni, was closely associated with the Saudi regime and with Prince Bandar.
. . .
Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said.
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir’s father. In 1982, the Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people. Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel. Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, “We told Cheney that the basic link between Iran and Lebanon is Syria—and to weaken Iran you need to open the door to effective Syrian opposition.”
There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.
As we now know, in 2011 this planning came to fruition via the so-called “Syrian uprising”, a misnomer for a Syrian Muslim Brotherhood operation sponsored by Saudis and supported by USA. al Queda soon joined the fray, and later ISIS would too. Just as planned.
Seymour Hersh’s detailed reporting makes no mention of Assad’s Four-Seas and BRI. The US-Saudi-Israeli concern was focused on Iran and on Syria as an ally of Iran.
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FYI
Here’s a part of “The Redirection” that is relevant to Lebanon today:
Leslie H. Gelb, a past president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the Administration’s policy was less pro democracy than “pro American national security. The fact is that it would be terribly dangerous if Hezbollah ran Lebanon.” The fall of the Siniora government would be seen, Gelb said, “as a signal in the Middle East of the decline of the United States and the ascendancy of the terrorism threat. And so any change in the distribution of political power in Lebanon has to be opposed by the United States—and we’re justified in helping any non-Shiite parties resist that change. We should say this publicly, instead of talking about democracy.”
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Aug 17 2020 1:17 utc | 85
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