By Ulson Gunnar

Several developments this week mark an increase of activity from Syria’s allies, Russia, Iran and now China.

These include a Russian-Iranian agreement to use Iranian territory to position Russian Tupolev Tu-22M strategic bombers as well as Iranian and Iraqi airspace for both the bombers and Russian cruise missiles to pass through on their way to militant targets in Syria.

It also includes China’s recent pledge to provide humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people as well as military support for Syrian government troops in their fight to restore order nationwide.

The Details

The BBC would report in its article, “Syrian conflict: Russian bombers use Iran base for air strikes,” that:

Russia’s defence ministry says it has used a base in western Iran to carry out air strikes in Syria.

Tupolev-22M3 long-range bombers and Sukhoi-34 strike fighters took off from Hamedan on Tuesday, a statement said.

Targets were hit in Aleppo, Idlib and Deir al-Zour provinces, it added.

The BBC would also report:

Last week, Russia asked Iran and Iraq to allow Russian cruise missiles to fly through their airspace for attacks on terrorist targets in Syria.

It should be noted that Russian Tu-22Ms have already been used during Russia’s operations in Syria, however they have been based in southern Russia. Moving them forward west of Tehran, allows for shorter and more frequent missions, saving fuel and time. This further strengthening of Russian-Iranian ties come amid the delivery of Russian S-300 anti-air defense systems to Iran as part of an $800 million contract signed in 2007.

In addition to this, Reuters would report in its article,“China says seeks closer military ties with Syria,”that:

“China and Syria’s militaries have a traditionally friendly relationship, and China’s military is willing to keep strengthening exchanges and cooperation with Syria’s military,” the news agency paraphrased Guan [Guan Youfei, director of the Office for International Military Cooperation of China’s Central Military Commission] as saying.

Both also talked about personnel training and “reached a consensus” on the Chinese military providing humanitarian aid, Xinhua added, without elaborating.

Reuters would also make mention of Uyghur militants operating in Syria alongside other Western-backed militant groups, suggesting this as a possible motive for China’s interest in the conflict.

The Implications

The presence of Uyghur militants operating in Syria helps illustrate the wider implications of the Syrian conflict. While characterised as a “civil war” by the Western media, it is in fact a proxy war waged against Syria and its allies by a US-led multinational coalition.

Should this coalition succeed in replicating the scenario that unfolded in Libya in 2011, Western-backed militants would have a staging ground significantly closer to Iran, southern Russia and western China. The presence of large, well-funded and armed militant groups in Syria has already helped bolster peripheral networks in North Africa and Central Asia.

Should this coalition fail in the face of joint Syrian-Russian-Iranian-Chinese efforts, these militant groups can be exposed and liquidated and joint efforts in turn shifted to eliminate peripheral networks beyond Syria’s battlefields.

China and Iran’s increased involvement in the Syrian conflict raise pressure on the US-led coalition and its ongoing proxy war, making it increasingly unlikely that Western ambitions will be realized. The growing concentration of forces in and around Syria may eventually pose a danger to many of the coalition members working with the US in the region.

With Russian forces staged in Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states are now at a greater disadvantage vis-a-vis Tehran. Should China be forced deeper into the conflict, this may compound the already tenuous position of US allies in the region even further.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

By Derrick Broze

The United Nations has admitted responsibility for the 2010 cholera epidemic in Haiti which killed more than ten thousand people.

Nearly six years after a cholera epidemic killed thousands of Haitians, the United Nations secretary general has confessed that U.N. peacekeepers likely caused the illness to spread. The admission of guilt comes after a report prepared by Philip Alston, a human rights lawyer and U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, was leaked to the NY Times.

In a confidential report to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Alston states that the epidemic “would not have broken out but for the actions of the United Nations.” Ban Ki-moon released a statement confirming that the United Nations played a role in the epidemic, but did not explicitly acknowledge the organization’s role in creating the crisis.

The New York Times reports:

For the first time since a cholera epidemic believed to be imported by United Nation peacekeepers began killing thousands of Haitians nearly six years ago, the office of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has acknowledged that the United Nations played a role in the initial outbreak and that a “significant new set of U.N. actions” will be needed to respond to the crisis.

The deputy spokesman for the secretary general, Farhan Haq, said in an email this week that “over the past year, the U.N. has become convinced that it needs to do much more regarding its own involvement in the initial outbreak and the suffering of those affected by cholera.” He added that a “new response will be presented publicly within the next two months, once it has been fully elaborated, agreed with the Haitian authorities and discussed with member states.

The 19-page report from Alston describes the failures of the U.N.’s handling of the outbreak. The U.N. initially sent rescue workers into Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. By mid-October 2010, people along the Meille River began dying from cholera. Victims of cholera typically die from dehydration caused by diarrhea and vomiting. A group of rescue workers have long been suspected of contributing to the outbreak which lead to the deaths of at least 10,000 people. According to The Times, “the first victims lived near a base housing 454 United Nations peacekeepers freshly arrived from Nepal, where a cholera outbreak was underway, and waste from the base often leaked into the river.”

Beatrice Lindstrom, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), called the U.N.’s admission “a groundbreaking first step towards justice.” Following the cholera outbreak, the IJDH filed a lawsuit against the United Nations on behalf of the cholera victims. “Up until now, the U.N. had refused to engage in any kind of conversation about their role in the cholera outbreak. It is still, though, far from being a formal apology,” told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Ban Ki-moon’s Deputy spokesman Haq told the Washington Post Alston’s report would likely be published in late September and presented by Ban at the U.N. General Assembly in October. Haq insisted that the U.N. welcomed the “vital report,” calling it a “valuable contribution to the U.N. as we work toward a significantly new set of U.N. actions.”

The United Nations has thus far not mentioned firing any officials or restructuring their leadership in response to the failures in Haiti. The controversy over the handling of Haiti and the spread of cholera is only one of many criticisms lodged at the U.N. As The Washington Post notes:

It follows accusations this year that U.N. peacekeepers have committed rape and murder in the Central African Republic, and more recently that they failed to defend aid workers against brutal attacks in South Sudan.

Critics say these scandals have laid bare the United Nations’ struggles to police its forces and investigate claims of wrongdoing and abuse, whether in cases of negligence — such as Haiti — or the allegations of more serious crimes in Africa.

To the conspiratorial-minded readers the U.N. confession may be a part of something more nefarious. It is well documented that the U.N. has an interest in tracking population growth and promoting methods of population control. In fact, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is on record stating that “we should make every effort” to reduce the world’s population. There is also the issue ofNational Security Memorandum 200, which was completed with the help of Henry Kissinger. The memo describes steps the United States should take to promote population control methods, including using organizations such as the U.N. to promote the agenda.

Image Credit

Derrick Broze is an investigative journalist and liberty activist. He is the Lead Investigative Reporter for ActivistPost.com and the founder of the TheConsciousResistance.com. Follow him onTwitter. Derrick is the author of two books: The Conscious Resistance: Reflections on Anarchy and Spirituality and Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion.

Derrick is available for interviews. Please contact Derrick@activistpost.com

This article may be freely reposted in part or in full with author attribution and source link.

Warning, this story contains graphic images depicting violence and death. Viewer discretion is advised. The corpse of a suspected drug pusher and victim of a vigilante-style execution with his hands tied and head wrapped with tape lies under a bridge in Manila on July 31. At least 700 people suspected to have been involved with drugs have been killed by police or vigilantes in the Philippines since President Rodrigo Duterte came into power more than a month ago. Duterte pledged to kill thousands in an all-out war against drugs, the only real plank in an election platform that won him the presidency by a massive margin in a country where drugs and crime are deeply rooted.
EZRA ACAYAN

This story contains graphic images depicting violence and death. Viewer discretion is advised.

It was a warm summer evening on July 18 when Ezra Acayan, a freelance photographer, saw his first shooting victim. The dead body was lying in a fetal position alongside railway tracks in the Philippine capital of Manila. The police officers responsible for it were standing nearby, behind yellow tape. Farther back, a crowd of residents had gathered, many on their way home from work.

In the man's hand was a gun, and next to him were packets of shabu, Filipino slang for methamphetamine.Acayan couldn’t see the corpse very well, so he asked the police to shine their flashlights on it as he snapped away. They told him that the man—Acayan never learned his name—was a suspected drug pusher. An undercover cop had bought drugs from him earlier that evening, paying in marked bank notes, they said. When police arrived to make the arrest, the suspect had fought back—so they shot him.

Acayan does not know if the police planted the drugs and the gun, but in the following weeks, he saw the same scene over and over again. (The photos that he took, of the dead men and their grieving families, make up the accompanying slideshow.)

The killings of suspected drug pushers began just before the inauguration of the country’s new President Rodrigo Duterte on June 30. He was elected in May promising to end the country’s drug epidemic, and he had a novel solution for how to do so—shoot the dealers.

After the election, Duterte vowed to kill 100,000 criminals during his first six months in office. Their bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay, he said, for the fish to grow fat on.

The Philippine police force took his promise seriously. Since Duterte entered office six weeks ago, police have killed at least 700 suspected drug pushers in various operations. Acayan says he now photographs dead bodies every night.

When evening comes, he waits with the local press by the main police station in Manila. A call will come in, from a police officer or a citizen, alerting the reporters to another body. Some nights, Acayan will see multiple corpses.

“I feel afraid because anyone can just kill anyone and say they were a drug pusher,” Acayan says. (Rights groups say vigilantes have been responsible for several more of the killings.) “I could have an enemy who wants to have me killed, and he could.”

The photographer says the streets are quieter as a result of the deaths—young men in particular don’t want to walk around at night, lest they be mistaken for drug dealers. But people’s fear is not a sign of disapproval. Duterte commands a 91 percent trust rating among Filipinos, many of whom want an end to the country’s drug problem, no matter the cost.

The president, too, shows no sign of changing his strategy. On Wednesday, Duterte gave a speech at the national police office in Manila. “We are willing to submit ourselves for an investigation before anybody," he said. “But…the fight against drugs will continue unrelenting until we have destroyed the apparatus operating in the entire country.”

The message of his speech was clear. The deaths will continue, and so will Acayan’s sleepless nights.

(Newsweek)

Florida Gov. Rick Scott confirmed Friday that the Zika virus is being spread locally by mosquitoes in Miami Beach, a development that marks an expansion of the outbreak in South Florida and immediately prompted a new travel advisory by federal officials.

"We believe we have a new area where local transmissions are occurring in Miami Beach,” Scott said at a noon press conference.

This area covers about 1.5 square miles between 8th and 28th streets and between the beach and Intracoastal Waterway -- a stretch that encompasses the vibrant, densely packed South Beach tourist district. It also encompasses the Miami Beach Convention Center, which is set to host the Asia America Trade Show for vendors around the world starting Sunday.

Health officials said at least five people have been infected with Zika in this area, including two who live in Miami Beach. One person from Texas, one from New York and another from Taiwan have returned home after being infected while in Miami Beach.

“This situation is very unfortunate. It’s not something we’d wish upon any community,” Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine said.

[Zika can infect adult brain cells, not just fetal cells, study suggests]

The news marks a second front in Miami's fight against local transmission of the virus. Previously, officials had pinpointed local infections in a one-square-mile area north of downtown Miami known as Wynwood. That prompted federal health authorities to urge pregnant women not to visit the area, the first time they ever had warned against travel to a part of the continental United States because of the outbreak of an infectious disease.

Source: Florida Gov. Rick Scott. THE WASHINGTON POST

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quickly issued a second travel advisory Friday afternoon, saying pregnant women should also avoid the designated area of Miami Beach. The agency said that pregnant women who live in the area or have to travel there should take extra precautions to guard against mosquito bites, including wearing repellent. It gave the same direction for these women's sexual partners.

In a call with reporters Friday, CDC director Tom Frieden said Miami Beach presents a difficult situation for health officials trying to halt the Zika outbreak. The area has a constant stream of visitors, many of them international, who could carry the virus elsewhere should they get infected.

In addition, the low-flying planes that have been spraying specialized insecticide over Wynwood cannot do so over Miami Beach because of the high-rise buildings that front the Atlantic Ocean and often windy conditions. And the city's South Beach is a beach, after all, notorious for skimpy bikinis and a general lack of clothing at all hours.

"The amount of exposed skin also makes it harder to prevent infections there," Frieden said. "We think this will be a challenging area."

Scott said Miami-Dade County already had begun an intensified mosquito control campaign in Miami Beach. He sought to reassure state residents -- and especially the tourism industry -- that his administration was doing everything possible to combat more spread of the virus. He said the state would be requesting more resources from the CDC, including additional Zika testing kits.

"Tourism is a driving force of our economy, and this industry has the full support of our state in the fight against the Zika virus," Scott said. "We want to do all we can to ensure Florida remains safe for businesses and our families."

The mayor reiterated similar points late in the afternoon, stressing local officials’ stepped-up mosquito control efforts. “The last thing I’d want to be in Miami Beach right now is a mosquito,” Levine said.

And William Talbert III, president of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, voiced confidence that officials would be able to control the outbreak, that tourists would continue to come given the relatively modest risks to everyone but pregnant women and that the area’s economy would not suffer a serious blow.

The tourism industry employs more people than any other locally. "We've had a record summer," Talbert said.

But while Frieden praised the work of Florida officials and said intense spraying and other efforts had killed many mosquitoes in the Wynwood neighborhood, he noted that the Aedes aegyptimosquito primarily responsible for spreading Zika is resilient.

"It's a tough mosquito to kill," he said. "This is truly the cockroach of mosquitoes."

On Thursday, Scott's office adamantly disputed reports that mosquitoes were transmitting Zika in Miami Beach, despite multiple health officials telling reporters that indeed was the case. In his press conference Friday, the governor faced questions about whether he had tried to obscure evidence of an expanding outbreak, in part to protect the state's massive tourism industry.

He said that state health investigators had only finished their inquiry into the new cases Friday morning and that he had rushed to Miami to deliver the news and meet with local leaders.

"We’re going to provide timely accurate information for public health," Scott said. "I want everybody in this state to stay safe. I want our visitors to stay safe."

The virus, which has now spread to 70 countries, has been linked to a rare and severe birth defect known as microcephaly, which in newborns is characterized by an abnormally small head and often underdeveloped brain, as well as an array of other fetal abnormalities. In rare cases, Zika also has been linked in adults to Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that can cause paralysis and even death.

Nationally, there are more than 2,200 confirmed Zika cases in the states and more than 8,000 in U.S. territories, the vast majority of those in Puerto Rico. The CDC is tracking 529 pregnant women with the virus nationwide and nearly 700 in those territories.

The Obama administration has sought nearly $2 billion in emergency appropriations to help fight the spread of Zika, but Congress has been deadlocked for months and left for its summer recess without approving any funding. The administration recently announced plans to reallocate $81 million from other programs at the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere. Still, officials said, the money being used to combat Zika "will be virtually exhausted by the end of the fiscal year” on Sept. 30.

Friday afternoon, the Florida Department of Health reported a total 488 travel-related cases of Zika and 36 locally acquired cases. Sixty-eight cases involve pregnant women. In Miami-Dade, the agency has identified at least four cases of apparently mosquito-borne Zika that occurred outside of the two areas identified for active transmissions.

Celeste Philip, Florida's surgeon general, said Friday that officials have not yet determined where those isolated cases contracted Zika.

"It’s like solving a mystery, it takes time for us to look at all that information and makes connections," Philip said. She added, "I want to assure everyone that if we identify local areas of transmission, we will alert the public and the media immediately."

The clusters of outbreaks around Miami are not a surprise to many health experts, who anticipated that the Zika virus would be tricky to contain after it began spreading locally in the United States. While the Aedes aegypti travels no more than about 500 feet in its lifettime, people have the capacity to quickly carry the virus to the far ends of the globe.

"There are undoubtedly more infections that we are not aware of right now," Frieden said, noting that roughly 80 percent of people infected by Zika never experience symptoms such as fever, rash or joint pain. "We can't predict how long this will continue, but we do know that it will be difficult to control."