Centers for Disease Control warns about threat posed by new, unknown virus

By JULIE STEENHUYSEN | REUTERS | MARCH 8, 2013

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday warned state and local health officials about potential infections from a deadly virus previously unseen in humans that has now sickened 14 people and killed 8.

Most of the infections have occurred in the Middle East, but a new analysis of three confirmed infections in Britain suggests the virus can pass from person to person rather than from animal to humans, the CDC said in its Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report on Thursday.

The virus is a coronavirus, part of the same family of viruses as the common cold and the deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that first emerged in Asia in 2003. The new virus is not the same as SARS, but like the SARS virus, it is similar to those found in bats.

So far, no cases have been reported in the United States.

According to the CDC’s analysis, the infections in Britain started with a 60-year-old man who had recently traveled to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and developed a respiratory illness on January 24, 2013. Samples from the man showed he was infected with both the new virus and with H1N1, or swine flu.

This man subsequently passed the infection to two members of his household: a male with an underlying illness who became ill on February 6 and subsequently died; and a healthy adult female in his household who developed a respiratory illness on February 5, but who did not need to be hospitalized and has recovered.

The CDC said people who develop a severe acute lower respiratory illness within 10 days of returning from the Arabian Peninsula or neighboring countries should continue to be evaluated according to current guidelines.

The health agency said doctors should be watchful of patients who develop an unexplained respiratory infection within 10 days of traveling from the Arabian Peninsula or neighboring countries. The CDC has set up a special website with updates on the infections at http://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/ncv/ .

Symptoms of infection with this new virus include severe acute respiratory illness with fever, cough and shortness of breath. Neither the CDC nor the World Health Organization has issued travel restrictions related to the virus.

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SARS-like virus kills British Patient

AP |  FEBRUARY 19, 2013

A patient being treated for a mysterious SARS-like virus has died, a British hospital said Tuesday.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, said the coronavirus victim was also being treated for “a long-term, complex unrelated health problem” and already had a compromised immune system.

A total of 12 people worldwide have been diagnosed with the disease, six of whom have died.

The virus was first identified last year in the Middle East. Most of those infected had traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan, but the person who just died is believed to have caught it from a relative in Britain, where there have been four confirmed cases.

The new coronavirus is part of a family of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS. In 2003, a global outbreak of SARS killed about 800 people worldwide.

Health experts still aren’t sure exactly how humans are being infected. The new coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus and scientists are considering whether bats or other animals like goats or camels are a possible source of infection.

Britain’s Health Protection Agency has said while it appears the virus can spread from person to person, “the risk of infection in contacts in most circumstances is still considered to be low.”

Officials at the World Health Organization said the new virus has probably already spread between humans in some instances. In Saudi Arabia last year, four members of the same family fell ill and two died. And in a cluster of about a dozen people in Jordan, the virus may have spread at a hospital’s intensive care unit.

 

United States, Arab League Bless new Syrian Opposition

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | NOVEMBER 13, 2012

The U.S. government expressed support on Monday for the new Syrian opposition alliance, dominated by the Syrian National Council (CNS) and in which there are several important groups, and said it will work with them to continue providing humanitarian aid to the population. The U.S. itself had intervened days ago to question the leadership of the CNS, and called for more Syrian groups to get involved in what seems to be the transition government that will take power after Bashar al-Assad is removed from power.

The deputy spokesman of the State Department, Mark Toner, provided a statement in which he praised the Syrian people for the formation of the so-called National Coalition for the Forces of the Revolution and the Syrian opposition (CNFROS), agreed during a summit held in Doha (Qatar). Besides including representatives from the CNS, this new group also opened its doors to radical Islamist members of organizations linked to American made al-Qaeda.

The statement gives U.S. support for the new coalition to “trace a path to end the bloody government of Assad and the beginning of the future peaceful, democratic and fair to all the people of Syria deserve.” “We will work with the National Coalition to ensure that our non-lethal humanitarian aid and assistance serves the needs of the Syrian people,” Toner said. The spokesperson also said that the U.S. congratulated the Government of Qatar for his “strong leadership” and support of the Doha summit from which the new opposition alliance emerged over the last few days. This new coalition will remain dominated by the CNS but will have as one its main aims to end the division among opposition groups.

One of the key groups that did not even participate in the Doha talks is the National Coordination Council (NCC), which has a strong presence in the Syrian territory and are more likely to negotiate with the regime. According to the draft of the final agreement, the CNFROS will under no circumstance negotiate or talk with the regime led by Assad. It also provides for the formation of a transitional government after it gets international recognition.

More blessings from the Middle East

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was the first group of countries to recognize the new Syrian opposition coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people. This is the typical modus operandi used by opposition groups who gain the support from western aggressors to disavow democratically elected governments. Hours later, the Arab League, which suspended Syria’s membership for months, also decided to hold a meeting to recognize the newly created alliance.

Arab foreign ministers called on the rest of the current opposition to join the newly formed National Coalition formed by the forces of revolution and the Syrian opposition, and urged them to work to solve all the needs of the Syrian society “without exception or discrimination. ” Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, among others, confirmed their support for the move to change leadership in Damascus.

“The GCC Member States declare their recognition of the National Coalition of Syrian opposition forces and the revolution (…) as the legitimate representative of the Syrian brotherly people,” said a statement released by the GCC Secretary General, to Abdellatif Zayani.

The text explains that the Arab League will aid the opposition and its western supporters by providing all necessary so the alliance carries out the aspirations of the Syrian people, with the hope that [the group] is a step towards a speedy transfer of power”. The complete support given to the Syrian opposition means that the combination of terrorist groups already operating on Syrian territory will now have economic and military aid from Syrian neighbors such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Both countries had already recognized the rebels and expressed their desire to have the international community recognize the coalition.

The speed with which the GCC has responded to the formation of the opposition coalition, just a day before in Doha meeting is no surprise. Since the beginning of the western orchestrated Syrian revolt back in March 2011, this group has been very critical of the regime of Bashar al-Assad and has not hidden its preference to have him ousted. The nation of Qatar even offered to give Assad political asylum should he want to simply flee the country. Assad was very clear that as a Syrian man, he would live and die in his country.

Most Middle Eastern regimes, democratically elected or not prefer a weakened Syria because of Assad’s alliance with Iran. The move to supposedly help Assad flee the country are far from being good will gestures. Since Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father was the Syrian leader the rest of the Arab Peninsula have seen Syria as a potential powder keg but it wasn’t until now, after the West decided that it was time to take another country over, that the rest of the Arab nations threw their full support behind the opposition. Both the Arab countries and their western allies are looking forward to weakening Syrian and destroying the Assad regime to that it can be taken over by Islamic radicals. Once Syria falls, if it does, the West and the rest of the Arab countries will then focus their attention of the last bastion of opposition: Iran.

What the Arab League members do not seem to envision, is that provided that both Syria and Iran fall, they might just be the next ones in line.

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Israel Preparing Diplomatic Suicide for the U.S. Before Iran War

by Wayne Madsen
Strategic Culture Foundation
November 11, 2011

Israel’s all-powerful lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an organization composed of Israeli collaborators, infiltrators, and outright traitors to the United States, is steamrolling through the House of Representatives H.R. 1905, which would prohibit the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, members of the U.S. Foreign Service, or any special envoy from engaging in any sort of diplomatic contact, official or unofficial, with any member or agent of the government of Iran. Only when the President informs the requisite committees may he proceed with engaging on diplomatic contact with Iran. Israel has de facto control over the foreign affairs committees of Congress, so any White House notification of the need to contact Iranian officials would be instantly transmitted to Binyamin Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem and Israel would then circumvent any U.S.-Iranian contact. AIPAC, with its resolution, is further making the United States a vassal of the Jewish state.

Israel’s strategy is to make certain that its plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and, perhaps other targets, meet no opposition from diplomatic circles in the United States… Israel has placed its own interests well beyond and in contravention of those of the United States.

Faced with the prospect of an Israeli attack on Iran, backed by Saudi Arabia – Israel’s secret ally in the region – has had ripple effects across the Middle East and Asia.

Countries in Asia are scrambling to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as full members. Confronted by a belligerent United States, NATO, and Israel intent on toppling the governments of Syria and Iran, the economic, cultural, and de facto collective security pact that comprises Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan announced after its prime ministers’ summit in St. Petersburg that SCO would soon be opening its doors for full membership for Pakistan, Iran, and India. The Asian nations want to freeze the United States out of interference in Asia.

Ahead of the St. Petersburg summit, Russia and China strongly warned the West against any military attack on Iran. The words being used in international diplomacy are reminiscent of the Cold War era, however, it is the West that is playing to role of the aggressor, albeit an aggressor led around by Israel and its intelligence spies and assets embedded in the upper echelons of governments in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and within the United Nations hierarchy.

Even America’s vassal state of Afghanistan, eager to break free of the bonds of NATO and Washington, has attained observer status in SCO. Recent comments by the deputy commander of NATO training in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Major General Peter Fuller, that the Afghan government leadership is erratic, ungrateful, and isolated from reality because President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in an American war on Pakistan, resulted in Fuller’s firing. Fuller’s comments also resulted in Karzai asking for observer status in SCO as American aggression against the Muslim world and opposition to sovereignty for Palestine has seen Washington’s standing around the world plummet.

Another nation where the CIA, Pentagon, has their agents creeping and crawling, Mongolia, is also a SCO observer. There are also SCO “partners in dialogue” — nations that could attain SCO observer or membership status in the future. Partners in dialogue nations include Belarus, Sri Lanka, and one that should worry Tel Aviv and Washington, Turkey, a NATO member. Moscow and Ankara agree that Turkey should eventually become a full SCO member. Turkey has close historical and cultural links with the Turkic nations of central Asia and with many of the autonomous Turkic republics of Russia, including Tuva, Bashkortostan, and Adygeya.

Netanyahu booed and heckled by pro-Palestine activists at AIPAC convention.

Turkey has grown tired of Israeli interference in its internal and external affairs, as witnessed by the vicious and bloody Israeli attack on the Turkish Gaza aid vessel, the Mavi Marmara; Mossad support for Kurdish PKK terrorist attacks in Turkey; and covert Israeli entanglement in the Ergenekon “deep state” network in Turkey.

Iran has now seen Israel’s most-open secret ally, Saudi Arabia, appoint the former Egyptian intelligence chief and close Netanyahu friend, Omar Suleiman, as an adviser to Saudi heir apparent, Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, who is also the Interior Minister. The Jerusalem-Riyadh axis is being further cemented as the Obama administration is shifting 4,000 troops from Iraq to Kuwait and beefing up other U.S. military assets in Bahrain — home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet – and Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Oman. The CIA and Pentagon have set up Predator drone bases in Djibouti, Seychelles, Ethiopia, and, reportedly, Saudi Arabia.

The president-elect of Kyrgyzstan, Prime Minister Almazbek Atambaev, has announced he wants the U.S. and NATO to leave the Manas Transit Center airbase in his country after the current lease expires in 2014. Already, Soros-funded non-governmental organization (NGO) agents in Kyrgyzstan are attempting to suggest that under the new Kyrgyz constitution, Atambaev does not have the authority to close the base. It is this type of U.S. interference in the affairs of the nations of Asia that has SCO readying an expansion of its membership to include two nations that have received direct U.S. military threats: Iran and Pakistan. Suspicion of U.S. intentions and military plans has also made Washington’s request to enter SCO as a partner in dialogue a dead issue. Washington’s interest in attending SCO summits as a “partner” says more about the CIA’s inability to crack into the inner workings of SCO, even through erstwhile “allies” like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Mongolia, than in having any great desire to “dialogue” with SCO members and observers. After all, AIPAC and its minions have managed to jam through the U.S. House a law that prohibits any U.S. diplomatic contact with Tehran’s officials.

President Obama is under tremendous pressure from the Israel Lobby during an election year to support an Israeli military strike on Iran, action that will inevitably lead the United States military in the Gulf region into war against Iran on behalf of the Tel Aviv/west Jerusalem regime. At the G-20 summit in Cannes, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was overheard telling Obama, “I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar.” To which Obama replied, “you’re fed up, but I have to deal with him every day.”

The Sarkozy-Obama interchange is instructive. Obama did not disagree that Netanyahu is a patent liar who will do anything or say anything to advance Israeli and global Zionist interests over all else, even to the point of lying about a bogus Iranian nuclear weapons threat to promote a military attack on Iran.

Israel, using its agents of influence in the UN delegations of the United States, Britain, Germany, Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands, has ensured that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano has tainted his agency’s report on Iranian nuclear developments in a manner that would have never been tolerated by his predecessor, Mohammed ElBaradei. Amano certainly took no interest in the fact that his own nation, Japan, was secretly producing nuclear weapons at the Fukushima nuclear complex in contravention of IAEA rules. The aftermath of the destructive earthquake in Japan laid open the secret work going on at Fukushima. Amano is perfectly willing to act as a cipher for Israel and the Israel Lobby in “discovering” IAEA violations by Iran.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientist’s “Doomsday Clock,” a measure of how close the world is to nuclear war, now stands at six minutes until midnight. With the machinations of Israel toward Iran, the internal meltdown of Obama’s White House staff with the demotion of chief of staff Bill Daley, and the invitation by SCO to Iran to come under the protective security umbrella of Russia and China, the clock has just jumped ahead several minutes.

What’s happening in the Middle East?

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
February 24, 2011

If the crisis in the Middle East and North Africa blocks oil production in Libya and Algeria, oil prices could explode and reach $ 220 per barrel. According to a new report from Nomura-Tokyo, the simultaneous interruption will reduce the capacity of OPEC to produce 2.1 million barrels a day. During the Gulf War in 1990-1991, oil prices jumped 70% in seven months, when the capacity was reduced to only 1.8 million barrels a day.

Former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

Porter Stansberry, founder of Stansberry & Associates Investment Research, reached the same conclusion. The agreement is the fact that by the end of 2012, the price of oil, which will cross the $ 200 a barrel, will make the dollar collapse as a reserve currency. In addition, there will be no supply of oil from the Middle East. What this means is that everything valued in dollars will be profoundly affected, including personal, business and government debt. Analysts conclude that even Saudi Arabia, which aims to supply the market with more oil, cannot calm the crisis caused by the globalists who control the Middle East, Europe, Asia and America.

Several media reports indicate that Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s current dictator, intends to sabotage its oil production, which would accelerate the crisis. According to Lindsey Williams, a confidant of two oil producing company directors like Ken Fromm of Atlantic Richfield, the globalists who control the oil supply will violate an agreement made with OPEC in 1977, signed by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, where the U.S. and other Western nations pledged not to use its vast reserves and instead buy oil produced in the Arab world. In return, the Arabs would use some of the money received to buy debt issued by the United States. This money has been used to finance the debt-based economic system that America has used for decades. In late 2012, “the agreement will be broken by the globalists,” which will end OPEC’s supply to the Western world. This will force companies to exploit massive reserves in the United States.

Williams provided a detailed account four months ago, that the Middle East would explode in chaos, which is true today in Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Pakistan, and others. The success of his comments are a result of information from first-hand sources, with whom he shared time for many years and who gave him the information. It is precisely these sources who also planned the execution of many of the marches and protests in the Middle East to destabilize the Arab world and unleash their plan that includes the violation of the agreement signed in the seventies. Once the globalists violate the agreement made with the Arabs, they will not have the dollars to purchase U.S. debt, which will further weaken the current reserve currency. Furthermore, any debt bought by Arabs and others like China, will be devalued and lost.

In 1971, Ken Fromm told Lindsey Williams that the producers would not open American reserves until the price of oil reached $ 200 per barrel. This price will be achieved according to various sources in 2012. The lack of oil will bring serious consequences, for the U.S. and the entire planet. Meanwhile, Russia, the largest oil producer of oil today, and China, have signed a deal to give the chinese all the oil and natural gas to develop its economy and become the world’s number one, above the United States.

According to Williams, the globalists will begin exploiting the huge reserves in U.S. territory, which have remained closed as a condition of the agreement signed between Kissinger and OPEC in 1977. Currently, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says, there is a massive oil well right below the states of North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, with oil reserves of about 503 billion barrels. This oil well runs through the northern border to Canada. The existence of this and other oil wells with oil of the “light sweet” type, has been there forever and the globalists have known it for decades. What is relevant about this detail is that “light sweet” oil requires little or no industrial processing, which means that would be available for use almost immediately.

This oil could be produced at a cost of just $ 16 dollars per barrel, a price that certainly the globalists will not offer to distribution centers. Instead, they will keep the price at $ 200 or more, so that consumers have to pay 7 or 8 dollars at their favorite gas stations. According to Williams, there is enough oil in this well to meet U.S. demand until 2041. To that we must add the other oil reserves in North America hidden beneath the Rocky Mountains, which is considered the largest of all wells available in the world that has not been exploited. According to studies, the available reserves in the Rocky Mountains reach 2 trillion barrels. James Bartis, one of the researchers who participated in the study, said the United States has more oil than any other country in the world, even more than several producers put together. Another massive well is found in Gull Island Alaska.

What will be the results of this massive shift in oil supply? For one, none, because the globalists that cause economic crises, wars and social unrest would still be in power and perhaps more powerful than ever. Analysts believe that a new world will emerge from the disaster that the globalists are causing in the East. In fact, one of the biggest changes will be the imposition of a new reserve currency, given the fact the dollar will not occupy that position anymore. Lindsey Williams says that the people responsible for the actual destruction of America and Western Europe will eventually rebuild these two regions of the planet, but will also have even more power over them.

Intelligence analyst Wayne Madsen, who worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) and is now an investigative reporter in Washington, DC, also agrees with Williams and Tarpley. According to Madsen, the same globalists who caused the conflict in North Africa are also responsible for the protests in Bahrain, Greece, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. He also agrees with the fact that all these presidents and dictators have been carefully selected and placed around the world to carry out the plans of the globalists, who as payment, now get themselves overthrown. Madsen believes that Mummar Qaddafi will probably end up running out of Libya to any of the dictatorships that he has protected in the region in a matter of days, such as Zimbabwe, Gambia, or even South Africa. In Yemen, Madsen said, the independent movements will regain power from the dictators who have oppressed them for so long.

Historians such as G. Webster Tarpley has agreed with this description in several media appearances in the U.S. and Europe. Tarpley exemplifies actions such as Barack Obama’s speech Wednesday night where he said that his national security team was in the process of negotiating with allies in the world plans to intervene in Libya with the intention to appease any actions considered extreme by the U.S. and its allies. In his speech Obama used demagogic comments to support his points, saying the United States supported the people in the Middle East who are being abused by dictators. Obama however, does not do what he preaches in his own backyard. “The rights to free speech and assembly are inviolable,” said Obama, who allows oppression of American citizens when they express their discontent with the economy or the way Obama himself directs the destiny of the country.

While Obama clearly understands that the conflict in the Middle East is a direct consequence of the actions of his country and the Anglo-Saxon Empire that controls it, he has spared no effort to insist that no Western power was responsible for that conflict. He takes advantage of the fact that many people do not understand the context, history or source of the misery for thousands of Arabs who have been oppressed for many years. What the vast majority of these people do not realize is that they are being subject of a new deception, because those who claim to be helping them, are really giving them more of the same. It remains to be seen if the people allow this to happen or take onto the streets to demand accountability, but for real, without being duped, once again, by those who have kept them inside the current neo-feudal system for decades.