Category: World

Governments and corporations threat to internet

The British inventor of the World Wide Web warned on Saturday that the freedom of the internet is under threat by governments and corporations interested in controlling the web.

Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist who invented the web 25 years ago, called for a bill of rights that would guarantee the independence of the internet and ensure users’ privacy.

“If a company can control your access to the internet, if they can control which websites they go to, then they have tremendous control over your life,” Berners-Lee said at the London “Web We Want” festival on the future of the internet.

“If a Government can block you going to, for example, the opposition’s political pages, then they can give you a blinkered view of reality to keep themselves in power.”

“Suddenly the power to abuse the open internet has become so tempting both for government and big companies.”

Berners-Lee, 59, is director of the World Wide Web Consortium, a body which develops guidelines for the development of the internet.

He called for an internet version of the “Magna Carta”, the 13th century English charter credited with guaranteeing basic rights and freedoms.

Concerns over privacy and freedom on the internet have increased in the wake of the revelation of mass government monitoring of online activity following leaks by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

A ruling by the European Union to allow individuals to ask search engines such as Google to remove links to information about them, called the “right to be forgotten”, has also raised concerns over the potential for censorship.

“There have been lots of times that it has been abused, so now the Magna Carta is about saying…I want a web where I’m not spied on, where there’s no censorship,” Berners-Lee said.

The scientist added that in order to be a “neutral medium”, the internet had to reflect all of humanity, including “some ghastly stuff”.

“Now some things are of course just illegal, child pornography, fraud, telling someone how to rob a bank, that’s illegal before the web and it’s illegal after the web,” Berners-Lee added.

Source: Yahoo

Largest Liberian newspaper accuses US of creating ebola

The Liberian Daily Observer, which is the largest newspaper in Liberia, just published an article on their front page with the headline, “Ebola, AIDS Manufactured By Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD?” The article accuses the US of manufacturing the Ebola outbreak in a scheme to use Africa as a testing ground for bioweapons.

SITES AROUND AFRICA, AND IN WEST AFRICA, HAVE OVER THE YEARS BEEN SET UP FOR TESTING EMERGING DISEASES, ESPECIALLY EBOLA

The World Health Organization (WHO) and several other UN Agencies have been implicated in selecting and enticing African countries to participate in the testing events, promoting vaccinations, but pursuing various testing regiments. The August 2, 2014 article, West Africa: What are US Biological Warfare Researchers Doing in the Ebola Zone? by Jon Rappoport of Global Research pinpoints the problem that is facing African governments.

Obvious in this and other reports are, among others:

(a) The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), a well-known centre for bio-war research, located at Fort Detrick, Maryland;

(b) Tulane University, in New Orleans, USA, winner of research grants, including a grant of more than $7 million the National Institute of Health (NIH) to fund research with the Lassa viral hemorrhagic fever;

(c) the US Center for Disease Control (CDC);

(d) Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French name, Medicins Sans Frontiers);

(e) Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company;

(f) The UK’s GlaxoSmithKline; and

(g) the Kenema Government Hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone.

Reports narrate stories of the US Department of Defense (DoD) funding Ebola trials on humans, trials which started just weeks before the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The reports continue and state that the DoD gave a contract worth $140 million dollars to Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, to conduct Ebola research. This research work involved injecting and infusing healthy humans with the deadly Ebola virus. Hence, the DoD is listed as a collaborator in a “First in Human” Ebola clinical trial (NCT02041715, which started in January 2014 shortly before an Ebola epidemic was declared in West Africa in March. Disturbingly, many reports also conclude that the US government has a viral fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Kenema, a town at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The only relevant positive and ethical olive-branch seen in all of my reading is that Theguardian.com reported, “The US government funding of Ebola trials on healthy humans comes amid warnings by top scientists in Harvard and Yale that such virus experiments risk triggering a worldwide pandemic.” That threat still persists.

Enter the super-evil Khorasans

Obama is now – after the fact – scrambling to justify bombing the sovereign nation of Syria without the permission of either the Syrian government or even the United States Congress by saying that he was going after the super-evil Khorasans, who were about to attack.

The Khorasans sound like a cross between Genghis Khan, Klingons and the Kardashians, and according to the US they’re even more dangerous than the Islamic State.

Agence France-Presse reports that the US has hit a little-known group called “Khorasan” in Syria, but experts and activists argue it actually struck Al-Qaeda’s affiliate Al-Nusra Front, which fights alongside Syrian rebels.

These rebels were called “moderates” by the US earlier.

In announcing its raids in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday, Washington described the group it targeted as Khorasan, a cell of Al-Qaeda veterans planning attacks against the West.

But experts and activists cast doubt on the distinction between Khorasan and Al-Nusra Front, which is Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch.

“In Syria, no one had ever heard talk of Khorasan until the US media brought it up,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Rebels, activists and the whole world knows that these positions (hit Tuesday) were Al-Nusra positions, and the fighters killed were Al-Nusra fighters,” added Abdel Rahman, who has tracked the Syrian conflict since it erupted in 2011.

Experts were similarly dubious about the distinction.

“The name refers to Al-Qaeda fighters previously based in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran who have travelled to Syria to fight with… Al-Nusra,” said Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre.

“They… should not be considered a new or distinct group as such.”

This cell linked to Al-Nusra emerged just over a week ago, which is an interesting coincidence. When Washington added Al-Nusra to its list of “terrorist” organisations, even the internationally-backed Syrian opposition National Coalition criticised the decision.

Bloomberg reports that the U.S. dropped almost as many bombs and missiles on Islamic State positions in Syria in its first night of airstrikes there as it did in the first month of attacks on the extremist group in Iraq.

It appears American foreign policy comes down to this, “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” as the offensive unleashed 200 precision-guided munitions including 47 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and also got to play with its new F-22 toy in its first combat mission.

The first night of airstrikes was “only the beginning,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon’s spokesman, told reporters.

US targets Syrian oil field in anti-ISIS air strike

The United States and its partners launched a new round of strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria on Wednesday.

According to Agency France-Presse, strikes involved targeting an oil field in Syria near the towns of Al-Omar and Deir ez-Zor, journalist Zaid Benjamin reported.

“I can confirm that US military and Arab partner forces are undertaking additional strikes today against ISIL terrorists in Syria,” Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said on Wednesday, using the Obama-administration’s preferred language for the group formerly known as ISIS that today identifies as the Islamic State. “These operations are ongoing, so we will not provide additional details at this time. We will do so later as operationally appropriate.”

Later, the Pentagon confirmed that less than a dozen aircraft are involved in the latest attack. US Central Command (CENTCOM), meanwhile, confirmed that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also participated.

The latest round of strikes was acknowledged on Wednesday just shy of 12 a.m. local time in Syria and marks at least the third consecutive wave of attacks launched by the US and allied partners since Monday. Prior to then, the US had only attacked Islamic State militants in neighboring Iraq.

Obama lapses into Orwellian speech

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the US president’s speech at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday lapsed into an Orwellian fiction.

Lavrov reminded the US that terrorists can hardly be good and bad at the same time. America has insisted that Isil terrorists in Libya and Syria are “moderates” while arming them.

The foreign minister said president Barack Obama failed to deliver a peacemaking speech at the current session of the UN General Assembly.

Lavrov said he found Obama’s statements “bizarre”. Obama insisted several times the the world had become freer and safer despite the fact that the US has now bombed 7 countries in 6 years, thus advancing the scourge of terrorism.

“I didn’t understand whether he was serious or not and whether there was an Orwellian element in it. Because George Orwell invented the Ministry of Truth and it looks like this philosophy is still present.

“The U.S. President presented a US worldview as he stressed many a time the exceptionality of himself and of his country,” Lavrov said.

“That’s the worldview of a country that has spelt out its right to use force arbitrarily regardless of the UN Security Council’s resolutions or other international legal acts in its national defence doctrine.”

“As for the US President’s speech, we earned the second place among the threats to international peace and stability,” Lavrov said. “Number one is the Ebola virus, number two is the so-called Russian aggression in Europe and Isil and other terrorists who are now taking hold of the Middle East and primarily of the countries, which have evidenced US interventions, are ranked as number three.

“That’s why the speech of a peacemaker – the way it was conceived – failed to deliver if one compares it to real facts,” he said.

The events in Iraq are a result of the actions carried out by the US and the UK, and the situation has spiraled out of control.

“We’ve known that our English colleagues have a unique ability to twist everything. But I didn’t expect such cynicism, because the events that are taking place in Iraq are an illustration of a complete failure of the venture started by the US and the UK that allowed it to spiral out of control completely,” Lavrov said.

“We’re interested in settling conflicts in the world not by making unilateral accusations or shifting the blame, but through a fair, equal and respectful dialogue,” Lavrov said.

Regarding the sanctions, Lavrov lashed out that it was only the problem of the US which imposed them. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian conflict is a domestic problem that should be solved without US interference, he added.

“Ukrainians met in Minsk several times and signed two documents there. OSCE and Russian officials helped to foster this dialogue. It’s all written in the protocol and the memorandum and they must be implemented,” he said. “This is what the Ukrainians themselves have agreed to, and it would be incorrect to dictate any of the implementation parameters to them.”

He said he would meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry today to tell him that.

India, China ignore climate bait

Five years after over 150 heads of state cobbled up a rickety climate deal that fell through, the one-day UN Climate Summit is another attempt of rich nations to push India and China – responsible for one-third of total carbon emissions in 2013 – to accept some strong measures to check global warming.

But the two Asian giants are not willing to take the bait unless the developed world anchored by the United States and the European Union offers substantial incentives to developing nations for adopting a cleaner growth trajectory, cutting down on emissions.

The rich nations’ commitment to provide US $30 billion between 2010 and 2012 for climate mitigation and adaptation is yet to fructify, resulting in the Green Climate Fund remaining a defunct body.

Officially, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese premier Xi Jinping are not attending the summit called by UN chief Ban Ki-moon because of conflicting schedules.

But it is, in fact, a snub to the developed nations for pushing climate talks outside the United Nations framework. “It creates confusion and we don’t agree,” environment minister Prakash Javadekar, who will represent the country at the summit, said without mentioning to the event.

China has opted for a relatively senior functionary, vice-premier Zhang Gaoli, for the talks. While some island nations threatened by rising sea levels because of climate change expressed shock and disappointment, this will achieve little as India and China do not expect Obama to deliver generous green currency that would motivate emerging economies to revise their country-centric stands.

Neither the American president, nor the European leaders have the mandate to offer money at the summit like in Copenhagen, 2009.

New data shows carbon emissions in the atmosphere closing in on the threshold level to limit temperature rise by two degree Celsius, and India and China being the fastest-growing emitters, would put the two emerging economies under some pressure.

Source: Hindustan Times

India’s low-cost space mission reaches Mars orbit

India has become the first nation to reach Mars on its maiden attempt after its Mars Orbiter Mission completed its 10-month journey and successfully entered the Red Planet’s orbit.

The Indian Space Research Organization’s unmanned drone, also called Mangalyaan, was programmed by Indian engineers to fire its main engine and eight smaller thrusters for 24 minutes, starting at 0147 GMT in order to make the spacecraft’s final maneuvers into Mars’ orbit.

The spacecraft has executed the arrival sequence autonomously with engineers receiving the telemetry with 12-and-a-half minute delay at ISRO’s control center in Bangalore due to the 139 million miles separating Earth and Mars.

“History has been created today,” said Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. “We have dared to reach out into the unknown and have achieved the near-impossible. I congratulate all ISRO scientists as well as all my fellow Indians on this historic occasion.”

On the orbit, the unnamed probe is set to study Mars’ surface and scan its atmosphere for evidence of some sort of life. The probe is expected to circle Mars for six months, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) from its surface. Its five scientific instruments will collect data and send it back to Earth.

The Mangalyaan is equipped with a color imaging camera, a thermal infrared spectrometer to measure the chemical composition of the surface, and instruments to assess the Mars atmosphere, including a methane detector

The Mars Orbiter Mission, a low-cost $74 million project, blasted off from Earth on November 5, 2013, aboard an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. At its initial stage, the rocket booster placed the probe into Earth’s orbit before the craft fired the engines to break free of Earth’s gravity en route to Mars.

This is India’s first mission into such deep space to search for evidence of life on the Red Planet. But the mission’s primary objective is technological – if successful, the country will be joining an elite club of nations: the United States, Russia and Europe.

Source: RT

Israel downs Syrian warplane

Israel shot down a Syrian warplane on Tuesday.

The incident coincided with air strikes the United States and client states have mounted on ISIS strongholds in Syria. It has been three decades since Israel downed a Syrian fighter plane.

The aggression, incidentally, was not against ISIS, but Assad’s regime itself, which seems to be what Obama’s latest operation is all about: Regime change in Syria, using ISIS as a pretext.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence in the civil war, said the warplane had been bombing areas outside Quneitra, a Syrian town near the Israeli-held side of the frontier, at the time it was shot down. It said the pilot had bailed out. Syria described the downing of the aircraft as an act of aggression.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, commenting on the incident, said Israel “will not allow any element – neither a state nor a terrorist group – to threaten our security and violate our sovereignty”.

Israeli military sources said the plane apparently crossed by accident into Israeli-controlled airspace.

In his statement, Yaalon also seemed to raise that possibility, saying Israel would respond strongly to perceived threats “whether they stemmed from a mistake or were deliberate”.

The incident seemed to be aimed at escalating the conflict.

Chad outlaws homosexuality

Chad looks set to become the 37th country in Africa to outlaw homosexuality after government ministers voted to make same-sex relations a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

The decision, yet to be ratified by the country’s president, was condemned by human rights groups as another setback in the struggle for gay rights on the continent. Chad’s penal code is more than half a century old and does not explicitly mention homosexuality.

But section 361 of a draft new code states the punishment for anyone who has sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex is 15 to 20 years in jail and a fine of 50,000-500,000 Central African francs (£60-£600), according to a document seen by Agence France-Presse.

The cabinet claims that the measure is intended to “protect the family and to comply with Chadian society”. It will go before MPs and President Idriss Déby to be rubber-stamped.

The new penal code also abolishes the death penalty, more than a decade after the last execution of prisoners, a move welcomed by activists.

The reform of the penal code had been in preparation for 10 years but the question of homosexuality, while considered immoral, had never been a public issue in Chad.

The development is a reaction against colonial mores in Africa. Some observers believe it has been a response to the increased visibility and assertiveness of gay lifestyles and politics in Africa.

Although US evangelical Christians have been blamed for instigating anti-gay legislation in Uganda, same-sex relations are illegal in 36 of the continent’s 54 countries, according to Amnesty International, and punishable by death in many.

Last month the Gambia passed a bill imposing life imprisonment for “aggravated homosexuality” relating to repeat offenders and people living with HIV/Aids. The Gambia’s president, Yahya Jammeh, has previously told gay men and lesbians to leave the country or risk beheading.

Uganda recently imposed penalties for the “promotion of homosexuality”, including life sentences for various same sex acts. The law was struck down by judges on a technicality but is expected to be reintroduced by MPs.

In January, the Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, signed into law a bill criminalising same-sex “amorous relationships” and membership of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights groups.

Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, regularly attacks gay people in speeches and recently said he resented western aid because it depended on conditions such as accepting homosexuality.

Canada approves asylum bid after ‘Shoot the Boer’

President Jacob Zuma’s singing of the refrain ”shoot the Boer” at an ANC event was among the reasons for the Canadian Federal Court ruling that a white South African couple could continue with their bid for asylum.

Though Charl and Naira Nel have not directly been victims of crime in this country, they say they fear genocide and rape here.

Aggravating their anxiety was Zuma’s performance of a struggle song two years ago and Julius Malema’s rendition of Dubul’Ibhunu (Shoot the Boer). The song Malema sang was declared hate speech by the Equality Court in 2011. Malema was president of the ANC Youth League at the time.

The Zuma song, at the ANC centenary celebrations in 2012, was Dubula ngembayimbayi(Shoot with a machine gun). The president sang the refrain ”shoot the Boer” several times during his rendition.

The Nels left South Africa in 2010 and applied for refugee status in Canada. They sought the assistance of Russell Kaplan, a South African expatriate lawyer who had helped white Capetonian Brandon Huntley in his fight for asylum.

In June, the federal court upheld the board’s decision to deny Huntley refugee status. He had sought asylum in 2008, claiming that he had been assaulted by black South Africans.

The board granted him refugee status in 2009 but the decision was found to be “unreasonable” on judicial review.

In their application, the Nels said ”crimes against white people frequently involved mutilation and brutality, even when nothing was stolen; they observed that political leaders had sung songs about killing white people even after a South African court had declared the song racist. They submitted expert evidence by a reporter, Adriana Stuijt, and the president of Genocide Watch, Dr Gregory Stanton, indicating these crimes were racially motivated.”

But the board refused the couple’s application, saying that although they expressed fear of persecution because they were white, it found “nothing had happened to them personally” and they were not in need of protection.

The Nels then approached the federal court.

On September 4, Judge John O’Keefe set aside the board’s decision and referred their case to another panel for reconsideration.

It is not known when this will be done.

Judge O’Keefe said: “… the board’s assessment of [ Nel’s] updated narrative is puzzling. In it, [he] said that he had become fearful of returning to South Africa because [Malema] had since sung an anti-apartheid song called Kill the Farmer, Shoot the Boer .

”Even after a South African court ruled that the song was hate speech, Malema continued to sing it and Zuma also sang it at the 100th anniversary of the ANC.

“Genocide Watch also updated the situation to stage six of the eight stages of genocide because of political shifts and warned white Afrikaners to leave South Africa,” the judge said.

”The board dismissed the updated narrative on the basis that these were not significant changes and concluded that it was only done with the intent of amplifying a situation of fear.

“However, it never explained why it felt the singing of this song by political leaders or the Genocide Watch opinion could not have legitimately inspired a further subjective fear of political persecution in the applicants.”

Kaplan told the Canadian Post: ”This is the first time the Federal Court of Canada has awarded a white South African with a favourable decision – a big step.”

From 2006 to June 2014, 151 South Africans applied for asylum. Only 23 applications were accepted.

Source: Timeslive

UN Security Council declares ebola security threat

The UN Security Council has declared the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa a “threat to international peace and security”.

The council unanimously adopted a resolution calling on states to provide more resources to combat the outbreak.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned an emergency meeting of the council that the number of Ebola infections was doubling every three weeks.

More than 2,600 people have now died in the worst Ebola outbreak on record.

Cases doubling
Mr Ban said the “gravity and scale of the situation now require a level of international action unprecedented for a health emergency”.

He announced the establishment of an “emergency UN mission” working with the World Health Organization (WHO) to combat the crisis, saying he would convene a “high-level meeting” next week.

The council heard that the international response had to be three times bigger than it was now to contain the crisis – the number of cases is doubling every two weeks in west Africa.

The resolution attracted 130 co-sponsors – a UN record – and calls on countries to provide urgent aid, such as medical staff and field hospitals.

The resolution also calls for travel bans imposed by some states to be lifted, saying the countries need to have access to aid instead of being isolated.

Council members heard that the international response would need to be 20 times greater than it was now, if the outbreak were to be controlled.

The Security Council has never previously met to confront a public health crisis, reports the BBC’s Nick Bryant from New York.

It is only the second time that a public health issue has been addressed at the council, the first instance being HIV/Aids, our correspondent adds.

A doctor appearing via video link from Liberia warned that if the international community did not step up its response, “we would be wiped out”.

Officials in Guinea searching for a team of health workers and journalists who went missing while trying to raise awareness of Ebola have found several bodies.

A spokesman for Guinea’s government said the bodies included those of three journalists in the team.

They went missing after being attacked on Tuesday in a village near the southern city of Nzerekore.

Meanwhile Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma said the disease would be soon be a thing of the past within the next couple of weeks.

Smiling broadly, the president said the international community “are not only in the fight but also involved in the preparation work”.

He said Britain was establishing an Ebola treatment centre at Kerry Town on the Freetown peninsula, the Chinese were setting up one at Jui just outside Freetown and the Americans had “increased their presence” through the Centres for Disease Control.

“I will say that their presence has improved” he said, and the collaboration would continue to “ensure that [by] the next couple of weeks we will be able to contain Ebola”.

“I am sure that we will get Ebola behind us very soon” he said, assuring the country would get back to “normalcy in December”.

By normalcy, he explained, Ebola would be contained and his government would return to implementing those “development programmes we were carrying out before the May outbreak” .

He said Ebola would be a thing of the past earlier than the six-month timeframe given by the French charity MSF and other agencies.

Iran’s leader suddenly takes ill

Though Iran has been broadcasting pictures and videos of top state officials and noted foreign dignitaries visiting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the hospital, the health of the man who has held the most powerful post in the Islamic Republic remains unclear.

The unusual public relations management of what has been described as a prostate surgery suggests Tehran may be preparing the nation and the world for a transition to a third supreme leader. Iranian efforts to project an atmosphere of normalcy conceal concerns among players in the Iranian political system that a power vacuum will emerge just as the Islamic republic has reached a geopolitical crossroads.

Any transition comes at the most crucial time in the 35-year history of the Islamic Republic due to unprecedented domestic political shifts underway and, more importantly, due to international events.

Pragmatic conservative President Hassan Rouhani’s election in June 2013 elections led to a social, political and economic reform program facing considerable resistance from within the hard-right factions within the clerical and security establishments. The biggest issue between the presidential camp and its opponents is the ongoing process of negotiations with the United States over the Iranian nuclear program.

Source: Stratfor

Lavrov: Syria and Iran are natural allies in fight against ISIS

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Iraq and Syria are natural allies in the fight against ISIS.

Lavrov spoke at the International Conference on Peace and Security in Iraq, in Paris on 15 September 2014.

The foreign minister warned that “aggressive actions by the terrorist organization” threaten the future of Iraq as well as neighboring Syria.

“The achievements of the “Islamic State” and many other terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere would have been impossible without financial and material support from outside, including supply of weapons and purchase of oil from fields controlled by terrorists. Shutting down all the channels of such support must become a matter of priority.”

Earlier, President Obama declared that he would bomb the forces of ISIS in Syria without Syrian participation, but Vladimir Putin has warned that any such unilateral action in Syria would be clearly seen as “an act of aggression”.

Meanwhile Syria has asked Washington to engage in military and intelligence collaboration to defeat their mutual enemy, inviting US congressmen and senators to visit Damascus to discuss joint action against the jihadis.

Lavrov urged countries in the counterterrorist coalition to “demonstrate genuine unity, not allowing disputes between them on other issues to hamper the efficiency of joint counter-terrorist efforts”.

“The extremists will try to make use of any differences in our positions to undermine the united front against them. A truly collective approach should be developed through putting our minds and potentials together. No one can pretend that he knows better than others what kind of strategy we’ll need to help the region. And of course, we must build our common action on a solid foundation of United Nations Charter and UN counter-terrorist instruments and mechanisms. We face the same enemies in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, and there is no room for double standards,” Lavrov told the conference.

He said it made no sense to try and distinguish between “bad” and “good” terrorists and that such reckless policies had lead to terrible consequences in Libya and Mali.

World War E

As the unprecedented Ebola outbreak in West Africa, dubbed “World War E,” rages out of control, the United Nations is admitting the approximately 6,000 peacekeepers still in Liberia are not trained in health-care operations.

The acknowledgement comes after a top German virologist told reporters Friday he does not expect the Ebola virus to burn out in Liberia or Sierra Leone until it infects half the population of the two countries and kills 5 million people.

Confirmed cases of Ebola have increased 57 percent in the past three weeks, with the death toll currently at 1,296 and no end in sight, according to updated World Health Organization statistics.

Jones Schmidt-Chanasit, the director of viral diagnostics at the Bernhard Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, told the international press Friday he and his colleagues have lost all hope of halting the spread of the virus in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

“We lost the possibility of controlling this Ebola outbreak in those two countries back in May or June,” Schmidt-Chanasit said.

The Ebola outbreak in Liberia has not been slowed by the more than 8,000 U.N. personnel currently in Libya, including 6,000 uniformed peacekeepers. According to U.N. records, there are 4,460 troops, 126 military observers and 1,434 police forces, with an approved budget from July 2014 through June 2015 of $427.3 million.

Last week, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Hervé Ladsous addressed media in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, vowing the U.N. will continue to stand by Liberia as it battles an “unprecedented” Ebola outbreak. He said the peacekeepers will be “standing by Liberia through good and bad times.”

Some 95 percent of the expatriate doctors left when the Ebola outbreak began in March, leaving 50 physicians to treat the country’s 4.3 million population.

Ladsous, according to the U.N. News Center, emphasized that a peacekeeping mission is not a public health mission, stressing that handling the Ebola outbreak is “not something we are trained for.”

“It is true that we, the international community, have invested a lot over the years to bring back peace and security to Liberia, and, more generally, to West Africa. And it is even more true that we do not want to jeopardize that patient work,” stated Ladsous.

He added that while the UNMIL, the United Nations Mission in Liberia, is not a public health operator, the mission and the wider U.N. system would be on hand to ensure Liberia overcome the crisis.

“You have seen the very public and proactive position taken by the secretary-general … who has given orders to the entire U.N. system to mobilize in comprehensive, strategic [and] concrete ways to support efforts to stem the epidemic,” he said.

The civil war that raged from 1989 to 2003 left Liberia with 250,000 dead, the country in economic ruin and overrun with weapons, the capital city without electricity or running water, and the presence of some 15,000 United Nations peacekeepers, one of the most expensive peacekeeping efforts in U.N. history.

The fourth poorest nation in the world, Liberia suffers unemployment estimated to be as high as 85 percent, with 90 percent of the population earning less than $410 a year.

The population of Monrovia doubled to an estimated 1.5 million as a result of the civil war, with most of the residents crowded into shantytown slums lacking sanitation, such as West Point, Buzzi Quarter, Clara Town and Sawmill. About two-thirds of the population lacks access to clean toilets, with cholera rampant and the two leading child killers listed as malaria and diarrhea.

Source: WND