#but then like we within a few years invaded the middle east and like ill be honest i dont even remember a time where the usa wasnt involved

[beepbeepkazoo]

honestly the saddest part about like americans with how we are so desensitized to violence is that everyone like 30 years old or younger didnt even get a choice really in the matter

[96thdayofrage]

America’s defeat in Afghanistan is one in a string of catastrophic military blunders that herald the death of the American empire. With the exception of the first Gulf War, fought largely by mechanized units in the open desert that did not – wisely – attempt to occupy Iraq, the United States political and military leadership has stumbled from one military debacle to another. Korea. Vietnam. Lebanon. Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria. Libya. The trajectory of military fiascos mirrors the sad finales of the Chinese, Ottoman, Hapsburg, Russian, French, British, Dutch, Portuguese and Soviet empires. While each of these empires decayed with their own peculiarities, they all exhibited patterns of dissolution that characterize the American experiment.

Imperial ineptitude is matched by domestic ineptitude. The collapse of good government at home, with legislative, executive and judicial systems all seized by corporate power, ensures that the incompetent and the corrupt, those dedicated not to the national interest but to swelling the profits of the oligarchic elite, lead the country into a cul-de-sac. Rulers and military leaders, driven by venal self-interest, are often buffoonish characters in a grand comic operetta. How else to think of Allen Dulles, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Donald Trump or the hapless Joe Biden? While their intellectual and moral vacuity is often darkly amusing, it is murderous and savage when directed towards their victims.

There is not a single case since 1941 when the coups, political assassinations, election fraud, black propaganda, blackmail, kidnapping, brutal counter-insurgency campaigns, U.S. sanctioned massacres, torture in global black sites, proxy wars or military interventions carried out by the United States resulted in the establishment of a democratic government. The two-decade-long wars in the Middle East, the greatest strategic blunder in American history, have only left in their wake one failed state after another. Yet, no one in the ruling class is held accountable.

War, when it is waged to serve utopian absurdities, such as implanting a client government in Baghdad that will flip the region, including Iran, into U.S. protectorates, or when, as in Afghanistan, there is no vision at all, descends into a quagmire. The massive allocation of money and resources to the U.S. military, which includes Biden’s request for $715 billion for the Defense Department in fiscal year 2022, a $11.3 billion, or 1.6 percent increase, over 2021, is not in the end about national defense. The bloated military budget is designed, as Seymour Melman explained in his book, “The Permanent War Economy,” primarily to keep the American economy from collapsing. All we really make anymore are weapons. Once this is understood, perpetual war makes sense, at least for those who profit from it.

The idea that America is a defender of democracy, liberty and human rights would come as a huge surprise to those who saw their democratically elected governments subverted and overthrown by the United States in Panama (1941), Syria (1949), Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), Chile (1973), Honduras (2009) and Egypt (2013). And this list does not include a host of other governments that, however despotic, as was the case in South Vietnam, Indonesia or Iraq, were viewed as inimical to American interests and destroyed, in each case making life for the inhabitants of these countries even more miserable.

I spent two decades on the outer reaches of empire as a foreign correspondent. The flowery rhetoric used to justify the subjugation of other nations so corporations can plunder natural resources and exploit cheap labor is solely for domestic consumption. The generals, intelligence operatives, diplomats, bankers and corporate executives that manage empire find this idealistic talk risible. They despise, with good reason, naïve liberals who call for “humanitarian intervention” and believe the ideals used to justify empire are real, that empire can be a force for good. These liberal interventionists, the useful idiots of imperialism, attempt to civilize a process that was created and designed to repress, intimidate, plunder and dominate.

The liberal interventionists, because they wrap themselves in high ideals, are responsible for numerous military and foreign policy debacles. The call by liberal interventionists such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Susan Rice and Samantha Power to fund jihadists in Syria and depose Muammar Gaddafi in Libya rent these countries — as in Afghanistan and Iraq — into warring fiefdoms. The liberal interventionists are also the tip of the spear in the campaign to rachet up tensions with China and Russia.

Russia is blamed for interfering in the last two presidential elections on behalf of Donald Trump. Russia, whose economy is roughly the size of Italy’s, is also attacked for destabilizing the Ukraine, supporting Bashar al-Assad in Syria, funding France’s National Front party and hacking into German computers. Biden has imposed sanctions on Russia – including limits on buying newly issued sovereign debt – in response to allegations that Moscow was behind a hack on SolarWinds Corp. and worked to thwart his candidacy.

At the same time, the liberal interventionists are orchestrating a new cold war with China, justifying this cold war because the Chinese government is carrying out genocide against its Uyghur minority, repressing the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and stealing U.S. patents. As with Russia, sanctions have been imposed targeting the country’s ruling elite. The U.S. is also carrying out provocative military maneuvers along the Russian border and in the South China Sea.

The core belief of imperialists, whether they come in the form of a Barack Obama or a George W. Bush, is racism and ethnic chauvinism, the notion that Americans are permitted, because of superior attributes, to impose their “values” on lesser races and peoples by force. This racism, carried out in the name of Western civilization and its corollary white supremacy, unites the rabid imperialists and liberal interventionists in the Republican and Democratic parties. It is the fatal disease of empire, captured in Graham Greene’s novel “The Quiet American” and Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient.”

The crimes of empire always spawn counter-violence that is then used to justify harsher forms of imperial repression. For example, the United States routinely kidnapped Islamic jihadists fighting in the Balkans between 1995 and 1998. They were sent to Egypt — many were Egyptian — where they were savagely tortured and usually executed. In 1998, the International Islamic Front for Jihad said it would carry out a strike against the United States after jihadists were kidnapped and transferred to black sites from Albania. They made good on their threat igniting massive truck bombs at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left 224 dead. Of course, the “extraordinary renditions” by the CIA did not end and neither did the attacks by jihadists.

Our decades-long military fiascos, a feature of all late empires, are called “micro-militarism.” The Athenians engaged in micro-militarism during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) when they invaded Sicily, suffering the loss of 200 ships and thousands of soldiers. The defeat triggered successful revolts throughout the Athenian empire. The Roman empire, which at its height lasted for two centuries, created a military machine that, like the Pentagon, was a state within a state. Rome’s military rulers, led by Augustus, snuffed out the remnants of Rome’s anemic democracy and ushered in a period of despotism that saw the empire disintegrate under the weight of extravagant military expenditures and corruption. The British empire, after the suicidal military folly of World War I, was terminated in 1956 when it attacked Egypt in a dispute over the nationalization of the Suez Canal. Britain was forced to withdraw in humiliation, empowering Arab nationalist leaders such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and dooming British rule over its few remaining colonies. None of these empires recovered.

“While rising empires are often judicious, even rational in their application of armed force for conquest and control of overseas dominions, fading empires are inclined to ill-considered displays of power, dreaming of bold military masterstrokes that would somehow recoup lost prestige and power,” the historian Alfred W. McCoy writes in his book “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power”: “Often irrational even from an imperial point of view, these micromilitary operations can yield hemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the process already under way.”

The worse it gets at home the more the empire needs to fabricate enemies within and without. This is the real reason for the increase in tensions with Russia and China. The poverty of half the nation and concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny oligarchic cabal, the wanton murder of unarmed civilians by militarized police, the rage at the ruling elites, expressed with nearly half the electorate voting for a con artist and demagogue and a mob of his supporters storming the capital, are the internal signs of disintegration. The inability of the for-profit national health services to cope with the pandemic, the passage of a Covid relief bill and the proposal of an infrastructure bill that would hand the bulk of some $5 trillion dollars to corporations while tossing crumbs — one-time checks of $1,400 to a citizenry in deep financial distress — will only fuel the decline.

Because of the loss of unionized jobs, the real decline of wages, de-industrialization, chronic underemployment and unemployment, and punishing austerity programs, the country is plagued by a plethora of diseases of despair including opioid addictions, alcoholism, suicides, gambling, depression, morbid obesity and mass shootings — since March 16 the United States has had at least 45 mass shootings, including eight people killed in an Indiana FedEx facility on Friday, three dead and three injured in a shooting in Wisconsin on Sunday, and another three dead in a shooting in Austin on Sunday. These are the consequences of a deeply troubled society.

The façade of empire is able to mask the rot within its foundations, often for decades, until, as we saw with the Soviet Union, the empire appears to suddenly disintegrate. The loss of the dollar as the global reserve currency will probably mark the final chapter of the American empire. In 2015, the dollar accounted for 90 percent of bilateral transactions between China and Russia, a percentage that has since fallen to about 50 percent. The use of sanctions as a weapon against China and Russia pushes these countries to replace the dollar with their own national currencies. Russia, as part of this move away from the dollar, has begun accumulating yuan reserves.

The loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency will instantly raise the cost of imports. It will result in unemployment of Depression-era levels. It will force the empire to dramatically contract. It will, as the economy worsens, fuel a hyper-nationalism that will most likely be expressed through a Christianized fascism. The mechanisms, already in place, for total social control, militarized police, a suspension of civil liberties, wholesale government surveillance, enhanced “terrorism” laws that railroad people into the world’s largest prison system and censorship overseen by the digital media monopolies will seamlessly cement into place a police state. Nations that descend into crises these severe seek to deflect the rage of a betrayed population on foreign scapegoats. China and Russia will be used to fill these roles.

The defeat in Afghanistan is a familiar and sad story, one all those blinded by imperial hubris endure. The tragedy, however, is not the collapse of the American empire, but that, lacking the ability to engage in self-critique and self-correction, as it dies it will lash out in a blind, inchoate fury at innocents at home and abroad.

[vertanimeni]

the ice will start to break, the day will fade away (12/18)

Summary:

“Have you heard? The Elephant of Caocin has committed high treason!”

From Trikru’s most reputable war hero to Trikru’s most wanted traitor, Kova found themselves stripped of their titles and trapped between a clan that wants them dead and a camp of invaders - the same ones who kidnapped and tortured their brother.

But Kova was willing to do anything to stay alive and keep their family together.

Pairing: Bellamy Blake/Grounder OC

Word Count: 5,450

TW: Virus/Illness, vomiting, blood, explosives

A/N: I’m... actually being decent w the schedule for once... LOL wow~ If you’re reading through my blog, the read more does not show up due to Tumblr’s new formatting, so please click on the post itself. As of right now, I will be updating every Friday at 4pm EST.

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xii. implosion.

The group entered the dropship. Finn, with Clarke in his arms, made a beeline straight for Wells, who prepped a bed for her.

"What do I have to do to stop you from coming in here?" Her question was but a murmur.

"Get better."

"If he's not sick by now then he's probably immune, like me." Octavia assured her leader. "The virus doesn't last long, either." She added casually and let Murphy and Wells dominate the conversation while she dragged Kova into a private corner. None of the others noticed — too preoccupied with Clarke and the new information.

"Did you know?" She asked when the two were finally alone.

"Know what?" They sat crisscrossed on an empty crate.

"Where do I begin?" With every point, she ticked off a finger. "The virus; Lincoln leaving to 'east of the sea and across it,' or whatever; the—" She cut herself off, lowered her voice, and leaned in close, "—the upcoming attack?"

Needless to say, she had connected a few dots on her way back to camp after her conversation with Lincoln. If she recalled correctly, Kova had returned in the dead of night, and woke up late the next morning. But didn't they have enough time to at least warn somebody? Even herself?

"Lincoln and I talked a lot that night, and when I returned, I was already tired. The next morning Bellamy woke me up to find you and I ended up having to take care of the sick here. It just slipped my mind." Kova leaned in. "Besides, if I did say anything, he and Clarke would know I sneaked out. I can't risk that, either." 'Well, now Bellamy and Miller know, but still.' Pausing, they leaned back and eyed the young woman for a second, a hint of hope in their eyes. "Are you leaving with us?"

"Leaving?"

"East of the sea and across. Floukru. Will you come?"

"…Lincoln wants me to."

"That didn't answer my question."

"You're going?"

"…If Clan Leader Luna gives me permission, then yes." It took only a brief moment of doubt where they had considered their words carefully. They weren't sure to what extent Octavia knew about their relationship with Trikru. But then Octavia's eyes glinted with curiosity—

"Kova," Finn interrupted suddenly, completely unaware of the tension between the two, "how much time do you think we have until the virus passes?"

While they were just as taken aback as Octavia was, Kova couldn't help but think, 'Ah, Finn, perfect timing. I'll have to burn some bud for him in thanks.' "It's a light strain, so a day or two more, maybe? Three at most." They replied.

“They need to stay hydrated.” Clarke’s voice rasped out from afar, catching Finn's attention.

"You need to stay hydrated." Rolling his eyes, Finn almost rushed back to her side, but Wells signaled that he had it covered. He turned back to the two and said, "If we had more time to recover from the virus, then we could fight back. We just need to slow them down. Come with me, let's go talk to Raven.” He left no room for argument and rushed past the curtains.

The two stared at empty air for a moment until Kova broke the silence. "Let's talk about this later."

Octavia pursed her lips but conceded, and the two followed Finn to a tent on the other side of the camp. Just as he pulled back flap of the door, the three heard Raven’s voice in the middle of her sentence. “—need as many rounds done by dawn as we can.”

“It won’t matter if there’s no one left who can shoot.” Finn cut in just as the three entered.

Inside, Raven stood behind a desk scattered with empty bullet shells and powder. She refused to even look at Finn, but welcomed Octavia and Kova; Bellamy and Monty leaned over a corner of the desk with a map; and to Kova's surprise, Jasper and Harper stood off to the side, shifting uncomfortably when the two noticed their presence.

Finn continued, "What do we need to build a bomb?”

Pop! went the joints in Kova's neck as they whirled on Finn, a disgusted and betrayed look on their face. They stepped back, almost tripping over the wiring of the tent. 'Finn, what the actual fuck?' They thought, and because they were never one to hold back, they said, "Finn, what the fuck?"

"Wait. Hear me out." Finn held up his hands in a placating manner. "Murphy said he crossed a bridge on his way back from the grounders’ camp. Sounds familiar?”

Their eyes softened from the sharp glare they held. While they understood what he meant, they really wish he had given them a heads up beforehand.

“Is that the only bridge around here?” Bellamy switched his gaze from the hastily made map to Kova.

“It is.” They confirmed. “Ankon bridge is the only one that connects TonDC to the rest of Trikru territory the fastest, since the forest and the river get in the way. There's another bridge far down the river, but if the warriors are planning to come though Ankon, it'll be a major setback to change their plans to the other bridge."

“The virus is fast. Murphy is already getting better and Kova thinks it’ll pass within a few days. Blowing up the bridge won’t stop the attack, but the longer we delay it, the more of us will be able to fight.”

Kova couldn't hide the flinch at the mere thought of blowing up the bridge. Not only will it be a major setback, but the residents of TonDC, Fort Nauk, and other surrounding villages will end up suffering for it. Especially the merchants.

"Even if Murphy is telling the truth — and that’s a big if — that bridge has survived a nuclear war and 97 years of weather. What do you think, Raven?”

Everyone turned to the mechanic. She paused for a moment, considering the many different ways to build a bomb before it hit her — the fuel from the Exodus ship. Her eyes sparked with sturdy confidence. “It won’t survive me. Everyone, out while I think. Get ready to head down to the Exodus site.”

Jasper and Harper were the first to leave, the former refusing to look anywhere near Kova's direction and the latter sending them a sharp glare. For the first time, Kova internally thanked Bell when he pulled Octavia out of the tent for a quick talk.

The grounder turned to the remaining two boys. "You finished with the fish?"

"Yup," Monty popped the p.

"Zoe and Drew were almost done when we left. I'm not sure who's cooking tonight, though." Finn spoke. Kova noted the subtle flinch of Raven's back turned towards the three.

"Got it. Nice work. I'll see you guys later, then."

Monty quickly said, "Sorry about Jasper, he's being a bit of a dumbass right now. Just give him time." Then, he and Finn left the tent.

The sound of metal clinking gently made Kova turn back to Raven and lean against one of the side tables in silence, mindlessly toying with one of the bullet shells, while Raven moved to work on the second desk with another map. Familiar, higher quality, with rough estimation marks at Mount Weather, the camp, a burial ground. They recognized it as the one Clarke had made when the delinquents first arrived—

A clatter and a huff caught their attention. Raven had dropped whatever she was working on and turned to Kova. "What do you want? Why are you still here?"

“What’s bothering you?”

“Excuse me?”

Being nosy with one of the few people in this camp who didn't hate them was the last thing Kova wanted to do, but they've gone on missions with people who had lingering issues from an argument right before, and it never ends well. 'Like Zoya and Zandara, when they had a fight right before our mission because Zandara thought Zoya had been stealing her food, but it had actually been their other roommate at the time.' While the memories had a tint of melancholy attached, internally, Kova didn't know whether to laugh or shiver with fear. 'That mission was the only blemish on their record.'

"Something is going on with you and Finn." Octavia had mentioned their strained relationship before, that almost everyone on camp thought he had been cheating on Raven with Clarke out of all people, but she didn't go in depth at the time, and right now, Kova really wished she had. "Do you want to talk about it?"

As if Kova had damaged the final piece of a dam on its last legs, Raven burst with a long rant. "My head still hurts when I crash landed on Earth and I'm kind of terrified of a concussion even though Clarke checked me out; I'm worried about what's gonna happen to the people on the Ark; I'm worried I'm gonna die in some war I never signed up for; and I came down here to be with the guy I've loved for years only to find out he's—?" She paused, her voice cracking. "He cheated on me? He cheated on me with Clarke, and wasn't even going to tell me about it. I had to find out myself. And I think he's still cheating, even though he says the opposite, and I—" She took a deep breath, her tense shoulders sagging. "There's a lot of things bothering me right now."

To be entirely truthful, Kova had actually expected Raven to tell them to leave her alone, or that she didn't want to talk about it, or maybe even tell them to fuck off. And while they were pleasantly surprised about the rant, they weren't going to interrupt or stop her.

She continued, “And today when Clarke passed out, Finn just caught her without hesitating! He risked his entire life for her and didn’t even think twice about it! The last time he did that was for me on the Ark, and…" Her voice trembled, and the first tears dropped and gathered at her chin. "As much as I don't want to admit this, but I think I lost him the moment he came down here. I just don't know what to do."

"Did she know?"

"What?"

"Did Clarke know that you and him were in a relationship?"

"I…" Raven recalled the sky leader's surprised face when she kissed Finn, how heartbroken she looked. "I don't think so."

"So he didn't tell Clarke about your relationship, and he didn't tell you about his relationship with her. That's on him. As much as I hate to say it, you're right. You probably lost him the moment he came down here. If he has fallen for her, there’s not much you can do about it now.” While their words felt harsh, they tried to speak as gently as they could. Raven wiped her face with the back of her hands. They weren't one to give out advice like this, but if it reeled Raven back from those types of thoughts, they didn't mind. “I'm not sure if you're angry at Clarke, but regardless, there's no point in fighting over some boy, especially one who isn’t giving you the love and appreciation you deserve, and you deserve much better than that.”

“He’s the only one I have.” It was a weak argument, and Raven's jarring quiet voice showed that.

“Then you need more people on your side." They purposely made eye contact and said, "Fuck him.”

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Obtaining the hydrazine from the Exodus ship wasn't as hard as Raven expected, and pouring it into a mason jar was even less. Like any responsible scientist/mechanic, Raven wore a suit — the same one she came down to Earth with — but once she sealed the jar closed and set it safely on the desk, she took it off and addressed the people waiting outside her tent. "Alright, you can come in now."

Bellamy entered the tent first, Kova following close behind—

Two hands grabbed the sides of their arms. "Boom!"

If they jumped and busted the top of their head on the overhanging lamp, that was their business and theirs only. They tried to play off the spook by clearing their throat, but that only made Raven cackle. Even Bellamy couldn't hide his snort.

Then Finn entered, and Raven's mood soured slightly. She dropped her hands from Kova's shoulders, trying to play it off as nothing and said, "You guys can relax, it needs an accelerant.” Then, she got into business on how the bomb needed to be built and placed on the bridge. “To be safe, you need to be at least 200 feet away to make the shot and not get injured.”

“Feet? Imperial system?” Kova's question was implied — 'Why use the Imperil system?'

“It’s the measuring system we used on the Ark.” Finn explained. “What do you use?”

“The metric system. We’re not animals.” They refused to acknowledge the smirk on Bellamy's face. "Does the distance you calculated include traumatic force?”

“It should.”

Bellamy laid out the billion dollar question. "Alright, who plants the bomb?"

The silence lasted well under a minute, but long enough to feel like an hour. Finn finally stepped up, and Bellamy dragged him to the map to discuss how to go about it.

Meanwhile, Raven and Kova stood side by side, speaking lowly as to not attract attention.

"So he hesitates when it comes to a bomb, with everyone's lives on the line, but not with Clarke? You see what I'm talking about right? I'm not crazy?"

"No, you're right. I get what you mean."

“Finn, we only have one bomb.” Bellamy’s voice brought both of them back to the conversation at hand, but Kova turned around and organized the bullet shells on the table, keeping their back to the others. “We need to use it to kill as many of them as possible.”

“But they don’t know we only have one bomb.” Finn argued. “If we did, why would we waste it on a bridge? It’s supposed to be a deterrent. Peace through strength.”

“The appearance of strength, you mean.” Raven countered, ignoring the look he sent to her.

“The men who built the bombs thought they were peacemakers too. How’d that work out for them?”

“They were scientists, Bellamy." They turned, eyes lowered on the bullet shell they held. "They knew exactly what they were doing while building those bombs, they definitely knew they weren’t peacemakers. They just did it for the money.” Looking up, Kova's eyes widened, face blanching, and they dropped the shell. "Shit.”

Before he could ask, warmth trailed down from his nose to his philtrum. He pressed the back of his hand underneath his nose and grimaced. "Great."

“Don’t touch anything.”

“Who else can take a shot?”

“Appreciate the concern.” His usual snark felt weak. A heavy tiredness fell over Bellamy's body like a weighted blanket, so suddenly that his head felt fuzzy. He could barely muster the energy to glare at Finn. Instead, he stumbled towards the exit. “Just make sure the bomb is packed and ready to go in ten minutes, I’ll go find someone.”

“Wait, Bellamy!” Kova called out, but he already left. "Shit, he's only going to hurt himself like that. I'll bring him to the dropship — I'll see you two later, don't die and don't get hurt!"

"Kova—!"

"Wait—!"

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On the Ark, there had been a few rounds of the common cold and the like running around. It was hard to avoid getting sick once there was an outbreak — the quarters were too close to one another, people ate together, shared their drinks, etc, etc. Back then, everyone had to self-isolate, and those sick had to deal with a stuffy nose, running snot, and sometimes a fever for a week or two.

Those illnesses were a joke compared to whatever the fuck this virus was.

The nosebleed was just a breaking point to the onslaught of other symptoms that racked Bellamy's body. The dizziness popped up in the tent and only grew worse when he reached the campfire, the flicks of the flames staining his eyesight. He thought he might have snapped at the friends Jasper was with, but that didn't matter right now. Right now, all that mattered was getting Jasper to do the job. After making sure Jasper was at least six feet away from him, he explained what the group discussed at the tent.

Later on in the dropship, once the fever broke, Bellamy will stare into the metal ceiling and wonder what exactly did he say to Jasper that made him blanch and shake so much.

“Take the shot. You can't miss, or we’ll all die.” Once the words were out of Bellamy's mouth, it wasn't his problem anymore. He grew more delirious with every passing second, but one coherent thought made its way through. 'Dropship.'

Staggering rather than walking, he only made it three steps before the world abruptly turned white and his head felt staticky. Wind whooshed through his hair, in his rushing ears, cooling his heated and sweaty skin, and the side of his head bumped into metal before his body tilted towards the floor—

—Warm hands splayed across his back and the nape of his neck.

At first, he thought it might have been Jasper who caught him, and he tried to push him away. But then his hands landed on strong shoulders and thick arms, and even through his delirium he thought, 'Muscles…not Jasper—?'

A deep voice, surprisingly gentle for its owner, confirmed his thoughts. "Relax. It's me."

The whiteness cleared up from the edges and inward to reveal a blurry Kova-shaped blob. They tried pushing him back on his feet, but his legs and arms shook under his weight, and with another whoosh of the wind, Bellamy found himself being carried bridal style, an arm against the back of his sticky, sweat-soaked shirt, another arm beneath the back of his equally sweaty knees.

His mouth felt dry, although he wasn't sure if it was from the fever or—

Kova's cold glare fixated past him. He followed their line of sight to Jasper, who had stepped forward with his arm stretched out, as if he wanted to snatch his leader and run from the grounder. The last of Bellamy's energy went into holding up his hand in a placating manner. His voice was awfully raspy, but it got the job done. “I’ll be fine, go find Finn. Take the shot.”

Half reluctant, half relieved, the boy ran off.

"By the Gods, Bellamy. What did you say to the kid? He looks even paler than you."

Too many words. Head too heated. Bellamy thought he internally groaned, but it seemed as if he did this externally, given that Kova hushed him (gently, to his surprise). Later on, while staring at the metal ceiling of the dropship, his embarrassment over being carried so easily in such a way will turn into a frustration he had never felt before, and he'll end up kicking his legs against the bed in anger, much to the distaste of the other patients around him.

But for now, his neck lolled around, energy finally giving out, and black spots dotted the edges of his vision. Just before he closed his eyes, he heard them murmur, "Don't worry, I got you."

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"…tavia!"

The frantic call of her name came from outside the dropship. The young woman in question raised her head and settled the bowl of water next to the patient she had been looking after. A few seconds of silence passed, and Octavia thought she might have imagined it—

"Octavia!"

The sound of crunching leaves turned into metal thumps. She sprung into action and hurried to the curtains, yanking the fabric back—

Kova rushed inside, bending over slightly to avoid the curtains. It was only when they straightened did Octavia notice the body in their arms, the person's face buried in their neck and nose dripping dark blood against their skin, and automatically, she pointed to the open bed at the corner.

Then it hit her — the ruffled black hair, olive skin blanched and covered with a sheen of sweat, sprinkled with freckles and blood— "Bell, no…"

By the color of his face and the spasm of his throat, Kova realized he was about to vomit any second and quickly laid him on his side, and the moment his hip met the mattress, he vomited. Some caught on Kova's pants, but they paid little mind to it as they pushed the fringe of his hair back. "I'll go get him some water."

Octavia knelt on the opposite side and rubbed soothing circles against his back. "Okay. Thank you."

On their way, they heard a faint murmur of Bellamy's voice and Octavia's quiet, assuring tone. Distracted, they shoulder-checked a passerby. Kova turned to apologize, but paused when they found Murphy's back instead. Jaw tense, they prepared for whatever verbal attack he would send them, but to their surprise, he walked off without a word.

'Oh? Maybe Clarke spoke to him.' Whatever, Murphy wasn't their problem. Eventually, they returned to the Blake siblings with a cup of water, but Bellamy had fallen into unconsciousness once again.

“Kova…"

"Hm?"

"I still have a few hours before Wells takes over this shift." Her gaze shifted, hesitant. "Would… You mind keep an eye on him?"

'Oh. She…' "Of course." They answered. "Go ahead."

Any animosity her eyes might have held this morning were long gone now. Eyes shining, she squeezed their shoulder in thanks before running off to finish her duties.

Leaving Kova alone with her brother.

Pointedly looking away from the mess, they sat by Bellamy's side and brushed the fringe of hair away from his eyes. They leaned down and pressed their forehead against his, only to flinch away. "Hot." They muttered, taking the wet towel and cold bucket of water Octavia had left behind, "His temperature is still going up." A sigh passed their lips. They dabbed at the sweat rolling down his forehead, cheeks, and neck before wrapping the towel in a neat rectangle and placing it over his forehead. “It’s going to be a long night.”

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Waking from unconsciousness felt like wading through tar, and it took Bellamy a moment to register the cold towel across his forehead, the warmth of someone kneeling by his side. Thinking it was his sister, he placed a hand on 'her' knee in comfort—

"You're awake." A surprised, yet quiet voice, far deeper than Octavia's, spoke.

He pulled his hand away slowly. Phlegm stuck in his throat, he tried clearing it out to speak, only to flinch at what felt like sandpaper grinding against his vocal cords.

"Don't strain yourself. You coughed and vomited a lot."

The sound of dry grinding caught his attention, and it was only then did Bellamy notice the mortar and pestle in Kova's hands. As if someone flipped a switch in his nose, the stench hit him like a sucker punch — whatever ingredients they had blended together made his eyes water and the bridge of his nose to crease.

Kova didn't look like they were doing any better, and they answered the unasked question with a wry smile on their lips. "Lime juice, onion, cloves, and ginger. Nasty combo, but it works like a charm. It's also the only thing I can make without fucking it up somehow."

His throat protested, but he managed to get one word out. "Why?"

"My younger sister would get sick often, so I learned my mom's recipe." The pestle paused, they looked at him over the mortar. Whether it was the headache from being stuck in a sick room the entire day or exhaustion from caring for Bellamy and the others around them that made their brain falter, Kova couldn't tell, but it certainly loosened their tongue. "Unless… that wasn't the question?"

With a gritty sensation clawing at his throat, Bellamy didn't want to reply, and simply watched as Kova stopped grinding. They raised the bowl to their nose, grimacing like the ingredients physically attacked their well-being, and pulled away. They nodded as if thinking, 'Yup, perfect.'

And while Bellamy couldn't tell where the fuck the spoon in their other hand came from, he knew damn well what was going to happen, and no way was he letting that monstrosity of a concoction anywhere near his mouth—

"Stop being a baby," Kova snapped after the third time Bellamy clenched his lips and turned his head away. After the fifth attempt, they let out a heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of their nose. "The things I do for Octavia…" They muttered under their breath, and suddenly the mortar under his nose vanished.

At first, Bellamy thought he won.

And then he watched as Kova pour the so-called medicine into their own mouth, and suddenly, he wished he had just accepted the mortar. It seemed as though the onion hadn't been properly grounded in the first place, judging from the audible crunches in their mouth. They chewed up the concoction further for good measure—

Leaned over his face—

His mouth parted in shock, eyes widening—

'Are they actually going to—?'

Three fingers pried his mouth open, and there was a plop! before the palm of their hand pressed against his mouth, letting the mushed up medicine slide right on his tongue. He gagged, but they refused to move until he swallowed with a thick gulp. God, the aftertaste was even worse than what he expected.

They were about to remove their hand, only to yelp and snatch it back, cradling it against their chest. "Did you just bite me?!"

"Fuck you."

"You fucking animal." Filled with disbelief and indignation, they scoffed and wiped their hand on his shirt, adding onto his anger. "Whatever — I only did what Octavia asked of me."

They pulled out a cup of water, and as tempted as he was to knock it out of their hands, he wanted to be rid of this awful aftertaste, now that his throat didn't crawl with discomfort. 'Huh.' His suspicious gaze landed on them. "Why are you helping me?"

"Didn't I just say?" They grabbed one of his hands and forced him to hold the water. "Your sister entrusted you to me. How could I possibly let her down? Now drink."

“You need to stay away from her.” He warned, albeit halfheartedly. His arms shook under his weight, but Bellamy managed to lift himself on his elbows. He took a sip, then gulped down the entire cup. But when he set it down on the floor, he noted the streaks of blood and the remaining specks of vomit splattered around, including on Kova's pants. Realization dawned on his face, and Kova pointedly ignored it as they took the cup from him.

“I would take you more seriously if you weren't acting like a child.” The teasing smirk on their face only riled him up more. "Besides, it's far too late for that, anyways."

The perk of his eyebrow was a question all on its own.

"Don't forget, as much as you don't like my brother, they're a thing now." They gathered the used towel and the bucket of water dyed orange from the blood. "She surprisingly understands our culture. As long as she protects my brother, and I'll protect hers." Their own eyebrows perked up, the teasing smirk growing. "Even if I don't like him too much."

Bellamy's scoff turned into a small huff of laughter. "Shut up." He looked away with a sniff. "Any updates on the bridge?"

"Finn and Jasper left a while ago. Raven is missing — no clue where she is, but she most likely went to follow them. No explosion so far." Suddenly, they looked over his head. "Clarke."

"Hey. Didn't know he woke up." The mattress dipped when she plopped next to him. Red lined the deep circle around her eyes and dry blood cracked along her cheeks to her chin, as if she had been crying.

"Finn said you shouldn't be taking shifts." They were met with a pair of guilt ridden eyes, and an exasperated sigh passed their lips. "Rest. I can handle it now that sleeping beauty here is awake." 

"Shut the fuck up." Bellamy never had the intense feeling of wanting to smack that frustrating smirk off their face until now.

In the end, Clarke nodded her agreement. Kova stood, patting Bellamy's shoulder before grabbing the bucket and the towel. "Don't die while I'm gone. Applies to the both of you."

"Got it." The two leaders rasped out at the same time.

Clarke noticed the way his eyes followed Kova until they were out of sight. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah." His scowl returned, and he struggled to sit up fully, swinging his legs over the mattress and planting his feet on the floor. His eyes caught sight of Murphy when the boy had moved to another patient. "I see you're letting him take care of the sick." Pausing, he turned to her. "You trust him?"

"After everything? No." She scoffed. "But I do believe in second chances."

His eyes flickered to the cup, then to the mess on the floor. Kova's update finally hit him. "It's almost dawn. We should get everyone inside. If we lock the doors, maybe the grounders won’t think we’re home.”

“But not everyone is sick.”

“Sick is better than dead.”

Silence stood between them for a moment. “You don’t think Finn and Jasper are gonna pull it off.”

“Do you?”

Clarke's sigh broke another moment of silence. “I’ll get everyone inside.”

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The sun rose, and so did everyone's worries. There had still been no signal from the Jasper, Finn, or Raven, so everyone assumed the worst and lined up outside the dropship, wearing makeshift masks from rags. Some even had gloves.

'With such an enclosed, small space, and no ventilation, there's a good chance a few of them will catch the virus.' Kova thought while waiting at the curtained entrance for Clarke's signal. 'But there's a chance for survival. Trikru's attack is an inevitable fatality.'

Their train of thoughts traveled to their time on the Mountain, when they and their fellow warriors had been infected, puking every few steps until it was only acid against their throat. Miller rushed past the ramp and through the curtains, carrying as many guns as his arms would allow, and Kova realized how truly weak the delinquents were. No training whatsoever in 'Earth Skills' or whatever Monty had called it before, no fighting or weapon experience, nothing. If they had landed in Azgeda territory, they would have died within the week—

Boom!

For the first time in Kova's life, an explosion brought relief.

Everyone turned to the mushroom cloud punching through the air.

"They did it." Bellamy's voice startled Kova. They hadn't realized the two leaders stepped out from the dropship.

“'I am become death, destroyer of worlds.'” A murmur came from Clarke's lips. She felt eyes on her, and turned to Bellamy and Kova looking at her with confusion. "Oppenheimer. The man who built the first—”

“I know who Oppenheimer is.” Bellamy interrupted with a small smirk.

“He actually stole that quote from a Hindu scripture, if I recall correctly. So not really his quote." Eyes returning to the mushroom cloud, fear crawled up their spine, jaw clenching, tongue feeling heavy in their mouth, and Kova signaled for Miller to take over on sending people away from the dropship.

Once they knew no eyes were on them, they snuck behind the dropship, pressing the back of their hand to their mouth. This sudden nausea wasn't new — they were well acquainted with how their body reacted to guilt and shame to this degree. But then the mental onslaught came, 'who am I?' 'why did I let them do that?' 'will TonDC and the other villages survive?' 'will Fort Nauk function without the bridge?' 'treason,' 'kill order,' 'my family—?' 

They had already answered a few of these questions when they first heard of the plan to blow up the bridge. There were countless weavers in the villages, and quite a few bridge builders from the Old families. 'They'll be fine,' The one thought cycled a few times while their body climbed over the back wall, stiff, as if on autopilot. They landed, light on their feet—

"Hey."

Kova stood to their full height.

'They'll be fine.'

"Hey." They greeted back, clasping a hand on Octavia's shoulder. "Ready?"

"Let's go."

The two trekked through the forest, following the trail of gladiolus' and lilies.

They'll be fine.

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[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

An Abnormal Job Search (Post 79) 3-11-15

The Friday before last my job search took an unexpected turn as my employer offered me a severance package, which I accepted.  It has been a difficult workplace since last August when the plant manager resigned and was initially not replaced, then later replaced by a contract employee. The plant performance began to drift and communication has remained poor.  I was distracted by Nicholas’ health issues and couldn’t seem to find the right recipe for our team’s success.  My employer came to the same conclusion and we parted ways amicably.

Their decision came at an opportune time for our family as Nick’s health is now good.  His doctors have told him to return to normal life. I had already made the decision to look for another job as my current work hours and conditions would not have cooperated with Natalie’s return at the end of the summer.  I had been praying for help in finding a new position. God answered my prayers with an intensity that surprised and disconcerted me.

Job loss triggered an emotional jambalaya of fear, confusion, depression, relief and embarrassment.  I had not been unemployed since I resigned my military commission and entered the private sector decades ago.  As plant superintendent, I had done all the hiring for the plant last year, so I had interviewed close to a hundred unemployed people recently.  Now I knew I would be in the candidate’s chair across the interview table, an uncomfortable thought.

The strangest emotions in the stew were relief and peace. I had evidently been carrying a heavy burden of worry about both the overall plant performance and each individual detail for which I had been responsible.  If you notice a knock in your car’s engine and your tires are bald, driving can become a stressful experience … until your vehicle is totaled.  Other worries invade, but the burdens about the engine knock and bald tires are suddenly released and there is a peaceful feeling too. I felt an almost disconcerting feeling of peace during my exit interview.  I knew at that moment that the work I had done at the plant was completed and no further adjustments, phone calls, calculations or discussions would be required or desired.  It was done. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief and then all the other bad emotions began a fist fight in my stomach.

The interview process has been up and down over the last week.  I had two interviews for consultant jobs that don’t look like they are a fit for me.  They were both very similar to work that I had done in my previous position, but I was unable to convince either potential employer that I actually enjoy flying around the country to interact with clients.  Doing the actual work would have been fine, I am sure, but considering the hotel rooms and car travel gave me an empty feeling … kind of the same feeling that I had been suffering with during my year as plant superintendent.  Still, having interviews not work out is disheartening even when it is for the best.

Part of my issue seemed to be a prayer that I had offered back in February when I was on vacation in Ohio.  I knew then that I would be seeking greener pastures, but I was worried that I might make the wrong decision.  I prayed that Jesus would select the opportunity for me that would best fit my needs.  I prayed that he would prevent me from being offered any job that wasn’t the best one so that I wasn’t tempted by pride or the chance to amass material possessions. Essentially, I asked him to lock all the doors but the one He selected for me.  It seemed at the time to be a safe strategy because I already had a good job. I wanted to make sure that if I chose to leave my employer, it would only be for the right opportunity.

Retrospectively, praying for a chorus of slamming doors seems to have been a pretty ill-advised prayer strategy.  I expected to reach for Jesus’s hand from safely inside the boat, but instead, my shipmates unexpectedly tossed me overboard.  Now I would really like for Jesus to give me a hand, really soon if he can oblige.  Did I say that I could use a hand from Jesus?  I imagine that Peter felt pretty nervous when the waves reached his armpits. I definitely would not have climbed out of the boat myself, but I believe that Jesus intends something good for me that requires this particular experience.  Endure it I will.

The job search continues to be the oddest I have ever experienced.  One of the potential employers is a company that I have an odd connection to.  Here is the story:

The group of consultants that I was working with about four years ago knew that I was interested in moving back to Ohio if an opportunity presented itself.  Whenever they would run across something that they thought I could do, they would give me a call.  One of the consultants named Jonathan had a distinctly British accent, because he was, in fact, British.  One day on my commute home I thought I heard him call Catholic Answers Live and ask a question.  It surprised me that a British Jonathan might have been the first caller I ever recognized on a Catholic Answers – I expected to hear Rene Solorzano, Rudy Adames, or another one of the Men of St Joseph.

Anyway, in the same time period Pam was having trouble with her chemo and difficulty sleeping.  She was waking up each night at about 4 AM after dreaming vividly about, Jesus, Mary or purgatory.  I was on my commute by that time, so she would call me on the phone and relay her nightly dream.  They were puzzling and I looked forward to them.  Usually they involved her being asked to pray for some unknown person who had been robbed, shamed or killed.  I would often arrive at work and later discover another staff member had been robbed during the night or had a family member die.  It was oddly coincidental how Pam’s dream would predict some circumstance that I would later discover.

This went on for several weeks, until finally Pam called me with a dream so odd that I couldn’t puzzle through it at all.  She said that I was supposed to go to Ohio to help a man with his pool and that another man needed help with his roof and windows.  I was disappointed.  Her dreams had seemed to be leading me towards opportunities to pray for my coworkers who needed help.  This one just seemed silly.

I arrived at work and noticed an email from Jonathan the British guy asking me to give him a call. I usually would have put off calling him until later, but I wanted to ask him about whether he had called Catholic Answers.  I picked up the phone and dialed his number on the east coast.  “No,” Jonathan informed me, I had heard a different British bloke.  Jonathan was not a Catholic.  I was disappointed for a second time that morning.

Jonathan then went on to explain that he had called about two companies in Ohio that might be a fit for me: one was a small manufacturer of pool products and the other company was maker of roofing material and windows.  I was stunned.  I expressed my appreciation to Jonathan and explained that my wife had a serious medical condition that would prevent me from interviewing for the foreseeable future. We hung up.  

I put my head down on my desk and teared up.  Jonathan had described two opportunities to me that perfectly matched the puzzling dream that Pam had described not two hours earlier.  Yet, I was in a situation where I could not act on her dream. Still, the match between the dream and the phone call was too close; coincidence was not a possibility.  I had been communicated to in such a way that could serve no purpose other than to emphatically confirm for me that God exists. That confirmation was very helpful on the journey that I still had ahead of me.

Within two months of the phone call, Pam would suffer a stroke during her second brain surgery.  After the operation, she needed extensive rehab and something in her spiritual consciousness shifted.  Pam’s morning dreams ceased, and she instead developed a fascination with the television show Big Bang Theory. Life changes that way. I got no more looks into the mystical universe, but Sheldon was pretty funny.  Pam passed away about six months after her second craniotomy as her tumor grew back unchecked.

We flew Pam’s remains for burial in Maryland, where my journey began with her.  I was surprised at who attended the service.  While we were dating, Pam and I had had a falling out with the couple, Jim and Joan, who introduced us.  We reconciled with them after about a decade later, but were never as close.  They attended the service. Joan died two months later of a brain tumor.

Terry, my oldest friend from childhood, also showed up.  He was in our wedding party, and then fell off the face of the earth. He drove down in the middle of the night to attend the funeral and surprised us.  Nobody recognized him after a quarter century. His father had died of a brain tumor when we were about ten years old.  Pam’s death brought the pain back for him, but it reignited our friendship as well.  

We got together several months later when I dropped Natalie off for the summer.  He hadn’t been to my folk’s house in 23 years.  We watched the Indians play and talked about our lives. He mentioned his employer and my jaw hit the floor.  Terry worked for the pool manufacturer from Jonathan’s call and Pam’s dream.  Life is funny that way.  Terry began to text me late at night when he was feeling down.

Life got pretty busy again with Stephen and then Nick’s illnesses.  I made a few trips East but didn’t run into Terry.  Finally, when Nick got healthy again, I was ready to find a new job.  I started lining things up including two interviews with consultants that were interested in my background.  Neither one would get me to Ohio but each would get me away from the bad work situation I was in.  Maybe Jesus’s path included a way station on the way to wherever I was headed.

Then Terry texted me in the middle of the workday which he had never done. He had noticed that his company was trying to hire for the position in which I am most comfortable and for which I am most qualified.  Did I have a resume?  I forwarded mine immediately, but was sort of disappointed.  I was sure the opportunity would come to fruition after I would already have other offers.  I didn’t think I could turn down an opportunity to safely escape the bad employment situation that I was currently enduring.  Shortly, thereafter I was called to the Plant Manger’s office and let go.

All in all, my situation is very strange.  Whenever I am waiting for news from one of my interviews, I hear from Terry’s company instead.  Things move forward in that one direction and backward with regard to all other opportunities.  Terry’s boss is flying me out on Saturday for a week get a feel for their business. There is a portion of my personality in open rebellion against anything with the aroma of good news, but it is the company from Pam’s dream.  In a way the whole situation appears to have climbed out of the pages of a Narnia book. Still, the question remains:  do I trust and submit to Jesus?  Yes, I think I do.

Note to the young – this is not how normal job searches work.

[scootoaster]

Why do so many diseases come from bats?

Members of a newly discovered bat species, the Hipposideros bats, flying out of an abandoned gold mine in Western Kenya. (B.D. Patterson, Field Museum/)

Much about the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic remains unclear, but it’s likely that the novel coronavirus originated in bats, perhaps then spread to another animal that in turn passed it to people.

This isn’t the first disease we’ve faced that has come from the little flying mammals. Other coronaviruses that researchers are aware of that also cause severe illnesses in people—the original SARS and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)—have been linked to bats. A recent study found that bats and the coronavirus family have in fact been evolving together for millions of years, although it’s rare for different bat species to pass coronaviruses to each other.

Bats are natural hosts for other high-profile pathogens such as the Ebola and Nipah viruses as well. Scientists have found that bats seem to harbor a particularly large number of viruses that can infect people compared with most other animals.

So what is it about bats that causes them to carry so many of these viruses? Researchers have identified a few possible explanations—although none of them mean we should live in fear of bats or blame them for the spread of COVID-19. Just because bats harbor viruses that can infect people doesn’t mean that they’re spreading disease in their wake while flitting across the countryside every night.

Bats have some unique characteristics that might allow them to host an abundance of viruses, says Bruce Patterson, a curator of mammals at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. These mammals are “extraordinarily social” and spend much of their time packed together. During the summer, the world’s largest bat colony descends on Bracken Cave in Texas, bringing more than 15 million Mexican free-tailed bats together. The pups born in this cave can roost in densities of up to 500 bats per square foot.

“We’re all learning about social distancing and its effects on breaking up viral transmission—well, that’s hard to do when your whole biology involves huddling and taking care of one another in these very…tight social groupings,” Patterson says. “It doesn’t take very long for any pathogen or parasite to make its way through the entire population.”

Because of this gregarious way of life, bats evolved powerful immune systems in order to survive, Patterson says. This robust defense allows them to carry viruses without falling ill or at least withstand deadly diseases such as rabies longer than other mammals can.

“Bats are able to keep rabies at arm’s length and actually live with it for a while, whereas a human that comes down with rabies is gone in very little time,” Patterson says.

This natural protection powers down only when bats hibernate in winter to save energy. That’s part of why the tiny mammals are so vulnerable to the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, the disease devastating bat populations in North America, while hibernating.

In addition to having this beastly immune system, bats are also the only mammals with the ability to fly. Some of the adaptations bats have evolved to help them stay aloft could also make them resilient to viruses.

“Flying is one of the most expensive ways to get around; it’s far more costly energetically than swimming or walking or running,” Patterson says. “Bats have to really work to stay in the air and do it hour after hour through the night.”

Because bats use so much energy to fly, they have a high metabolic rate. When animals metabolize food and turn it into energy, though, this process creates byproducts called free radicals that are harmful to our DNA. Animals, including humans, have ways of preventing or repairing DNA damage, and these capabilities seem to have become particularly efficient in bats to help them cope with their whirring metabolisms, Patterson says.

When viruses infect an animal, they invade its cells and force them to build more viruses instead of copying their own genetic code into new cells. But viruses might not be able to hijack bats’ genetic machinery as effectively as they do in other mammals because bats have such excellent DNA editing and repair mechanisms.

“That same property translates into really exceptional longevity in bats,” Patterson says. A little brown bat living in your attic might survive 30 years or more, he says, while the house mouse, another mammal of similar size, has a lifespan of only two or three years.

It’s also possible that flying gives bats such an incredible workout that their bodies heat up enough to fight off viruses while on the wing. This is in some ways similar to the way a fever helps fight infection.

All of these factors combined—their super social behavior, adaptations for turbo-charged metabolisms, and elite immune systems—creates the perfect storm for harboring and transmitting diseases. “The things…that are peculiar to bats that make them pretty good at keeping viruses from overwhelming their systems also make those viruses persist in their systems longer than they do in other groups,” Patterson says. “And that increases the potential for bats to pass it along to somebody else.”

Bats are extremely social, have turbo-charged metabolisms, and elite immune systems. Combined, these characteristics provide an ideal situation for harboring and transmitting diseases. (B.D. Patterson, Field Museum/)

However, detecting a virus in a given animal only provides evidence that it can infect that particular species, Nardus Mollentze, a viral ecologist at the University of Glasgow, told Popular Science in an email. It doesn’t directly imply that the species in question is actually transmitting the virus to people. In fact, his team found that bats are not the most common animal to transmit infectious diseases to humans. There are other species that are just as likely.

Mollentze and his colleague Daniel Streicker, also at the University of Glasgow, recently created a database of viruses found in mammals and birds. They found that groups of closely related animals that had a lot of species within their group had more human-infecting viruses associated with them compared to groups of animals with less species. In other words: there are a lot of different bat species, so it’s not surprising that we’ve detected so many zoonotic viruses in bats.

They reported their work on April 28 in Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

“The number of zoonotic viruses coming from bats is certainly high, but that is also true of other species rich groups such as rodents,” Mollentze said. “What our data shows is that as a group, bats do not transmit more viruses to humans than other mammalian groupings of comparable size, and are not more likely to transmit viruses to humans than any other group.”

Many species of bats are endangered and very rarely come into contact with humans, he added. In fact, a number of diseases found in bats are typically passed to people by other animals. You’re more likely to catch rabies from a skunk or raccoon than a bat, MERS is often transmitted by dromedary camels, and the SARS epidemic in 2003 probably began with captive civet cats.

To avert future pandemics, it’s essential that we discover which viruses are circulating in wild animals and could potentially infect people. That means monitoring animals that could play a role in their transmission to people, including bats.

However, there’s a lot we still don’t know about this diverse group of animals, Patterson says. In the journal ZooKeys, he and his colleagues recently reported their discovery of four new species of leaf-nosed bats, which are closely related to the family of horseshoe bats from which the novel coronavirus may have originated.

Despite the fact that bats contain and spread disease, they are still vital members of the world’s ecosystems and we are far better off with them than without them. Bats often escape our notice because they’re nocturnal and different species tend to look very similar. “They aren’t colorful [and] they don’t have beautiful songs that we can listen to and recognize the way we can with birds,” Patterson says. “Twenty-five percent of the bat species we recognize today were thought to be something else 15 years ago; that’s a shocking number.”

What we do know, however, is that bats are incredibly valuable members of their ecological communities. They gobble up insects that would otherwise feast on crops; bats are estimated to save farmers in the United States at least $3.7 billion per year in pest control services. Their hearty appetites also keep insects that transmit diseases such as West Nile Virus in check.

Nectar-drinking bats pollinate the plants they feed from; in Africa, baobab trees are mainly pollinated by fruit bats. As they fly about, bats also help plant new vegetation in tropical forests by pooping out seeds from the fruit they dine on.

“All of these things are really important ecological roles and we can’t lose track of that because of our fears and concerns about viruses associated with [bats],” Patterson says. Bats are facing threats enough from habitat loss, climate change, diseases like white-nose syndrome, and the bushmeat trade. “They’re already on the ropes because of human activities and we should do all we can to make sure we don’t further imperil them through our actions.”

[mastcomm]

As Coronavirus Spreads from China, Scientists See Grim Reminders

Less than a month after the first few cases of a new respiratory illness were reported in Wuhan, China, travelers have carried the virus to at least four other countries, including the United States. More than 500 people are known to have been infected, at least 17 have died — and the world is bracing itself for what might come next.

On Wednesday, experts at the World Health Organization decided to postpone until Thursday a decision on whether the current outbreak constitutes a “public health emergency of international concern,” a label given to serious public health events that endanger international public health” and “potentially require a coordinated international response.”

A vote by W.H.O.’s emergency committee was split down the middle, its chairman said, and the group concluded that it did not have enough information to make a decision.

“The decision about whether or not to declare a public health emergency of international concern is one I take extremely seriously, and one I am only prepared to make with appropriate consideration of all the evidence,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, W.H.O.’s director general, said at news briefing.

Adding that a W.H.O. team was in China gathering information, he said, “We will have much more to say tomorrow

But even as the W.H.O. debated its decision, officials in China began closing transportation links from and within Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak. The move was a significant escalation in the country’s attempts to contain the spread of the virus as the Lunar New Year approaches and holiday travel commences.

Dr. Tedros and W.H.O. officials at the briefing said they had not advised China to close Wuhan, but nonetheless expressed support for the decision, saying it could protect other parts of China and other countries.

Public health officials around the world are on alert because the new infection is caused by a coronavirus, from the same family that caused outbreaks of SARS and MERS, killing hundreds of people in dozens of countries.

The W.H.O. has already advised governments to be prepared for the disease, to be vigilant and ready to test anyone with symptoms like cough and fever who has traveled to affected regions. Air travel is expected to surge as the Lunar New Year approaches this weekend.

More important than an emergency declaration is the need for more data on the outbreak, said Jennifer B. Nuzzo of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Scientists still do not have enough information about the severity of the disease, she said.

“I want to see from the emergency committee all the information on the table and an assessment of what the risk really is,” Dr. Nuzzo said. “To me, that’s far more important than their declaration.”

One purpose of an emergency declaration is to draw world attention to an outbreak, so that governments can prepare and also provide needed help.

“There’s already a high level of global attention,” Dr. Nuzzo said, adding that she was not sure how much a declaration would have changed things.

Several countries have already begun screening travelers from China for fever and cough. Airports in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco last week started to screen arriving flights from Wuhan, and airports in Atlanta and Chicago will begin doing so this week.

“Data shows that entry screening requires a tremendous amount of resources and is not tremendously effective,” Dr. Nuzzo said.

North Korea has suspended tourism because of the outbreak, according to Reuters.

Important questions about the outbreak are still unanswered, and W.H.O.’s expert committee now must grapple with significant unknowns.

“We don’t know how many people are infected,” said Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the W.H.O. “The more you test, the more you will find people who are infected. We don’t know if there are asymptomatic cases. If they are asymptomatic, are they contagious?”

Broad studies to test for evidence of infection, past and present, would give a true picture of how many people have been exposed to the virus.

The virus causes a pneumonialike illness, with coughing and fever in some people but not all. The severity matters: If there are cases with mild illness or no symptoms at all, they may go undetected, and those people will keep working, shopping and traveling, possibly infecting others.

A milder illness has the potential to spread farther and cause longer-lasting outbreaks than one with more obvious symptoms, according to Dr. Mark R. Denison, an infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine who studies coronaviruses.

Compared to SARS and MERS, the Wuhan illness so far does seem less severe, he said.

SARS, which began in live-animal markets in China in 2002, quickly spread to dozens of countries, infecting more than 8,000 people and killing nearly 800. The virus is thought to have originated in bats and spread to civet cats that were being sold for consumption.

The civets spread the virus to humans, who infected one another through respiratory secretions and also exposure to feces.

SARS often caused severe illness, so cases were detectable, Dr. Denison said; aggressive public health measures, including quarantines and travel restrictions, helped stamp out the epidemic.

But the travel bans, not to mention widespread fear and distrust, took a heavy economic toll on China, and since then international authorities have become hesitant about taking drastic steps to quell outbreaks.

MERS cases have been occurring in the Middle East since 2012, mainly in people who have been exposed to camels, which were most likely infected by bats. Human-to-human transmission does occur, and some spread has happened in hospitals.

As of November, there had been 2,494 cases of MERS in the last seven years, mostly in Saudi Arabia. The death rate is 34 percent, but may actually be lower if there are mild cases of the disease that have not been detected or counted.

Dr. Denison described the new Wuhan coronavirus as “sort of a first cousin of SARS,” more closely related to it than to MERS, based on its genetic sequence.

Researchers do not know just how contagious the Wuhan coronavirus is. The first people to be infected are thought to have contracted it at a market in Wuhan that sold meat, fish and live animals.

That market has been shut down and disinfected. Which animal might have been carrying the virus is not yet known.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

Initially, the illness appeared to spread only from animals to people. Then, experts said there was evidence of “limited” human-to-human transmission. Now, more cases are emerging among people with no known exposure to the animal markets, and in medical staff members caring for infected patients.

“Now that you have a cluster of 14 health care workers infected, it suggests that the potential for spread is much greater,” said Dr. Ian W. Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York, who has researched SARS and MERS.

“I saw film footage of a hospital lobby in Wuhan, and they are wearing full personal protective equipment from head to toe,” he said. “They are taking it very seriously. I still don’t think this is as bad as SARS, but it’s worse than they originally portrayed it.”

Dr. Denison said that with both SARS and MERS, there were episodes in which individual patients became “super-spreaders” who infected many other people, for unknown reasons.

“That’s a wild card we don’t know, the capacity to have multiple transmissions from one person,” Dr. Denison said. “There was no evidence they had dramatically different virus.”

It is possible, he said, that super-spreaders had received a high dose of the virus and had more of it to transmit. Alternatively, their immune systems might have not been able to control the virus, allowing it to multiply and spread extensively in their bodies, making them more contagious.

Although no drugs have been approved specifically to treat coronavirus diseases, Dr. Denison said that in animal studies, an antiviral called remdesivir appeared effective. He has been working with other researchers to develop treatments.

Mr. Jasarevic said that antivirals were being tested against MERS, but that none had been approved yet.

How and why viruses that have peacefully coexisted with their animal hosts for a long time strike out for new territory — us — is not well understood.

Coronaviruses often inhabit bats without harming them, and sometimes move into other animal species and from them to humans.

In places that bring multiple animal species together with lots of people — like the food markets in Wuhan and in other parts of China that sell live mammals and birds, along with meat and fish — viruses can pass back and forth between species, mutating as they go. Along the way, they may become able to infect humans.

“Coronaviruses have repeatedly shown an ability to probe across species and cause new animal and human diseases,” Dr. Denison said.

To go successfully from animal hosts to people, the viruses need to adapt in several ways: They must gain the ability to invade human cells, evade the immune system, replicate inside the human body and spread to others.

The move is often described as “jumping” into humans, but that is an oversimplification, Dr. Denison said. “The process it has to go through is more like high hurdles with a thousand hurdles along the way,” he said.

Still, the new outbreak does not greatly surprise him: “This was a matter of not if, but when.”

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[biofunmy]

As Coronavirus Spreads from China, Scientists See Grim Reminders

Less than a month after the first few cases of a new respiratory illness were reported in Wuhan, China, travelers have carried the virus to at least four other countries, including the United States. More than 500 people are known to have been infected, at least 17 have died — and the world is bracing itself for what might come next.

On Wednesday, experts at the World Health Organization decided to postpone until Thursday a decision on whether the current outbreak constitutes a “public health emergency of international concern,” a label given to serious public health events that endanger international public health” and “potentially require a coordinated international response.”

A vote by W.H.O.’s emergency committee was split down the middle, its chairman said, and the group concluded that it did not have enough information to make a decision.

“The decision about whether or not to declare a public health emergency of international concern is one I take extremely seriously, and one I am only prepared to make with appropriate consideration of all the evidence,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, W.H.O.’s director general, said at news briefing.

Adding that a W.H.O. team was in China gathering information, he said, “We will have much more to say tomorrow

But even as the W.H.O. debated its decision, officials in China began closing transportation links from and within Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak. The move was a significant escalation in the country’s attempts to contain the spread of the virus as the Lunar New Year approaches and holiday travel commences.

Dr. Tedros and W.H.O. officials at the briefing said they had not advised China to close Wuhan, but nonetheless expressed support for the decision, saying it could protect other parts of China and other countries.

Public health officials around the world are on alert because the new infection is caused by a coronavirus, from the same family that caused outbreaks of SARS and MERS, killing hundreds of people in dozens of countries.

The W.H.O. has already advised governments to be prepared for the disease, to be vigilant and ready to test anyone with symptoms like cough and fever who has traveled to affected regions. Air travel is expected to surge as the Lunar New Year approaches this weekend.

More important than an emergency declaration is the need for more data on the outbreak, said Jennifer B. Nuzzo of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Scientists still do not have enough information about the severity of the disease, she said.

“I want to see from the emergency committee all the information on the table and an assessment of what the risk really is,” Dr. Nuzzo said. “To me, that’s far more important than their declaration.”

One purpose of an emergency declaration is to draw world attention to an outbreak, so that governments can prepare and also provide needed help.

“There’s already a high level of global attention,” Dr. Nuzzo said, adding that she was not sure how much a declaration would have changed things.

Several countries have already begun screening travelers from China for fever and cough. Airports in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco last week started to screen arriving flights from Wuhan, and airports in Atlanta and Chicago will begin doing so this week.

“Data shows that entry screening requires a tremendous amount of resources and is not tremendously effective,” Dr. Nuzzo said.

North Korea has suspended tourism because of the outbreak, according to Reuters.

Important questions about the outbreak are still unanswered, and W.H.O.’s expert committee now must grapple with significant unknowns.

“We don’t know how many people are infected,” said Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the W.H.O. “The more you test, the more you will find people who are infected. We don’t know if there are asymptomatic cases. If they are asymptomatic, are they contagious?”

Broad studies to test for evidence of infection, past and present, would give a true picture of how many people have been exposed to the virus.

The virus causes a pneumonialike illness, with coughing and fever in some people but not all. The severity matters: If there are cases with mild illness or no symptoms at all, they may go undetected, and those people will keep working, shopping and traveling, possibly infecting others.

A milder illness has the potential to spread farther and cause longer-lasting outbreaks than one with more obvious symptoms, according to Dr. Mark R. Denison, an infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine who studies coronaviruses.

Compared to SARS and MERS, the Wuhan illness so far does seem less severe, he said.

SARS, which began in live-animal markets in China in 2002, quickly spread to dozens of countries, infecting more than 8,000 people and killing nearly 800. The virus is thought to have originated in bats and spread to civet cats that were being sold for consumption.

The civets spread the virus to humans, who infected one another through respiratory secretions and also exposure to feces.

SARS often caused severe illness, so cases were detectable, Dr. Denison said; aggressive public health measures, including quarantines and travel restrictions, helped stamp out the epidemic.

But the travel bans, not to mention widespread fear and distrust, took a heavy economic toll on China, and since then international authorities have become hesitant about taking drastic steps to quell outbreaks.

MERS cases have been occurring in the Middle East since 2012, mainly in people who have been exposed to camels, which were most likely infected by bats. Human-to-human transmission does occur, and some spread has happened in hospitals.

As of November, there had been 2,494 cases of MERS in the last seven years, mostly in Saudi Arabia. The death rate is 34 percent, but may actually be lower if there are mild cases of the disease that have not been detected or counted.

Dr. Denison described the new Wuhan coronavirus as “sort of a first cousin of SARS,” more closely related to it than to MERS, based on its genetic sequence.

Researchers do not know just how contagious the Wuhan coronavirus is. The first people to be infected are thought to have contracted it at a market in Wuhan that sold meat, fish and live animals.

That market has been shut down and disinfected. Which animal might have been carrying the virus is not yet known.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

Initially, the illness appeared to spread only from animals to people. Then, experts said there was evidence of “limited” human-to-human transmission. Now, more cases are emerging among people with no known exposure to the animal markets, and in medical staff members caring for infected patients.

“Now that you have a cluster of 14 health care workers infected, it suggests that the potential for spread is much greater,” said Dr. Ian W. Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York, who has researched SARS and MERS.

“I saw film footage of a hospital lobby in Wuhan, and they are wearing full personal protective equipment from head to toe,” he said. “They are taking it very seriously. I still don’t think this is as bad as SARS, but it’s worse than they originally portrayed it.”

Dr. Denison said that with both SARS and MERS, there were episodes in which individual patients became “super-spreaders” who infected many other people, for unknown reasons.

“That’s a wild card we don’t know, the capacity to have multiple transmissions from one person,” Dr. Denison said. “There was no evidence they had dramatically different virus.”

It is possible, he said, that super-spreaders had received a high dose of the virus and had more of it to transmit. Alternatively, their immune systems might have not been able to control the virus, allowing it to multiply and spread extensively in their bodies, making them more contagious.

Although no drugs have been approved specifically to treat coronavirus diseases, Dr. Denison said that in animal studies, an antiviral called remdesivir appeared effective. He has been working with other researchers to develop treatments.

Mr. Jasarevic said that antivirals were being tested against MERS, but that none had been approved yet.

How and why viruses that have peacefully coexisted with their animal hosts for a long time strike out for new territory — us — is not well understood.

Coronaviruses often inhabit bats without harming them, and sometimes move into other animal species and from them to humans.

In places that bring multiple animal species together with lots of people — like the food markets in Wuhan and in other parts of China that sell live mammals and birds, along with meat and fish — viruses can pass back and forth between species, mutating as they go. Along the way, they may become able to infect humans.

“Coronaviruses have repeatedly shown an ability to probe across species and cause new animal and human diseases,” Dr. Denison said.

To go successfully from animal hosts to people, the viruses need to adapt in several ways: They must gain the ability to invade human cells, evade the immune system, replicate inside the human body and spread to others.

The move is often described as “jumping” into humans, but that is an oversimplification, Dr. Denison said. “The process it has to go through is more like high hurdles with a thousand hurdles along the way,” he said.

Still, the new outbreak does not greatly surprise him: “This was a matter of not if, but when.”

Sahred From Source link Travel

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[genuine-history-blog]

Armenia - the oldest Christian nation in the world

HISTORICAL ARMENIA in Classical and Byzantine times covered a large area to the east of Asia Minor and to the south of the Caucasus range. To the south-east was the land of the Medes and Persians. The Black Sea lies north-west of Armenia, and the Caspian to the north-east. However, the Armenians have never enjoyed continuous access to these important seas.

The best known landmark of Armenia is Mount Ararat, on which according to the Book of Genesis Noah’s Ark alighted after its long voyage from Mesopotamia. Mount Ararat which the Armenians call ‘Masis’ is situated today a few miles inside the Turkish frontier, but is fully visible from many parts of Armenia. This fact helps to keep alive the feelings both of frustration and of national pride which are characteristic of Armenians everywhere.

The geographical name ‘Ararat’ is closely linked with that of Urartu, which is the name given by the Assyrians to the ancient kingdom which once existed on the territory of historical Armenia. This kingdom, originally a confederation of local tribes, flourished as a unified state from the ninth to the early sixth century 30; it constituted a formidable rival to Assyria for supremacy in the Near East.

The Urartian capital was the ancient city of Van, today in modem Turkey. Van is situated on the eastern shore of the large lake of that name. The plain of Van is very fertile, and this fertility was enhanced by magnificent aqueducts built by the ancient Urartians - some of the water channels remaining in use right up to modern times. Another Armenian granary is the broad Araxes valley, particularly in the vicinity of Erevan and near the ancient capital of Artashat. Some authors have even maintained that this region of Armenia was the original Garden of Eden.

Soon after 600 BC, Urartu was invaded by various warlike hordes, including the Scythians, the Medes (ancestors of the modem Kurds), and also a tribe known as the people of Hayasa. These Hayasa people came from central Anatolia, close to the old Hittite state. The Armenians call themselves ‘Hai-k’, and their country, Hayastan, and many modern scholars consider that this Hayasa element forms an important constituent in the makeup of the modern Armenian nation.

Less than a century after these invasions, we find the ethnic names ‘Armina’ and ‘Armenians’ or ‘Armenioi’ mentioned in Persian inscriptions and in Greek sources. Thus, the people of Armina were known to Great King Darius I Hystaspes of Iran (521 - 485 BC), who mentions them in an important royal inscription, and Herodotus, Father of History, was familiar with the Armenians.

The Armenian language is an independent, one-language subgroup within the Indo-European language family. However, the identification of ethnic origins with linguistic affinity is deceptive. It seems clear that the Armenians themselves, in the majority of cases, belong to an ancient population stratum of eastern Anatolia, akin to the ancient Hurrians and Urartians. We have only to look at ancient Hittite, Assyrian and Achaemenid sculptures to pick out the prototypes of the modern Armenians, praying, toiling, and bringing tribute to the Great Kings of the ancient world.

Up to the great dispersal between 1895 and 1915, Armenian life was generally marked by ethnic continuity and social conservatism. Considering the pressures which the Armenians have undergone over the centuries to become assimilated in various foreign environments, they have contrived to maintain a remarkable ethnic and cultural individuality, especially where they have been able to set up an offshoot of their ancient Apostolic Church. Some Armenian communities are in fact rather inbred, and many Armenians are still reluctant to tolerate intermarriage with non-Armenians, who are referred to rather contemptuously as ‘odars’ - an equivalent of the term ‘gentile’. Like the British in India under the Raj, Armenians have sometimes tended to create various taboos and erect invisible barriers to maintain their community ethos intact. This group solidarity has in turn helped to preserve over the centuries certain readily identifiable physical traits.

”The ‘Armenoid’ physical type is well known to anthropologists, and forms one of the three brunette subgroups of the broad-headed complex of white races This Armenoid type is quite conspicuous it has the skull abruptly flattened behind, while the head is characterized by a lofty vault, with what physical anthropologists call ‘outward-drooping orbits’. The hair is usually brown or black. The eyes are large, mostly hazel, brown or black in colour, often framed by bushy eyebrows. Occasionally one meets Armenians with lustrous blue eyes, which are very striking.

The Armenian physique is renowned for toughness and endurance. This befits the rugged terrain of most of the Armenian homeland. Although the Araxes valley and the Van region can be described as a land of milk and honey, more than half of historical Armenia consists of barren upland with a harsh climate. The landscape is cut up by enormous mountains, and prevailing weather conditions are more like those of the Scottish Highlands or the Rocky Mountains than those of most of the Fertile Crescent lands.

Nowadays, the Armenian mountaineers are athletic and relatively tall. However, the general type found in the older generations both in Armenia and the diaspora communities is rather short and compact. The nose is often prominent and bulbous or else aquilinc and high-bridged. The facial complexion is rather swarthy, and features are strongly marked. There is a tendency to chunky solidity in middle age. A bristling moustache, turned up at the ends, is often seen in the older generation of men.

Wherever fate may have led them, one is impressed by the Armenians’ intelligence and quick-wittedness. ‘Nothing escapes them,’ remarks that seasoned traveller, Sir Fitzroy Maclean. ‘They have read one’s thoughts almost before they have had time to take shape." Even in pagan times, two thousand years ago, Armenians were renowned as poets and musicians, as builders and sculptors, as orator: and philosophers, as generals and as hotel keepers.

In modern times, Armenians consistently display a high intelligence and are successful in a wide range of professional activities. They are renowned as scientists, mathematicians, doctors and dentists. They excel in the arts and in literature. Armenians are numbered among film directors, book illustrators, and among orchestral conductors and soloists. They are excellent cooks and famed for their hospitality. In spite of their tragic history, Armenians are noted for their sense of humour. They have also produced many outstanding administrators and military leaders.

A fine description of the manners and customs of ancient Armenia is provided by the Greek historian, philosopher and military adventurer Xenophon, who led his Ten Thousand followers through that country in the winter of 401-400 BC. After a gruelling march north wands through the wilds of Kurdistan, Xenophon’s men were happy to reach Armenia, west of Lake Van. The local Armenians offered the Greeks excellent wine, strong ale, lamb, kid, pork, veal and poultry. We learn that the Armenian aristocracy used beautiful drinking cups, and reclined on couches whose legs were cased in silver. The common people lived in houses partly tunnelled underground, both for security and to keep out the bitter winter cold. During this season, the family livestock was kept inside the houses, including goats, sheep, cattle and fowls together with their young. Such underground houses have continued to exist in Armenia and in Georgia right up to modern times.

After Alexander the Great overthrew the Persian Empire in 331 BC, the dynasty of the Orontids held sway in Armenia, until they were replaced by another ruling family, the Artaxiads, in 200 BC. In addition, there were smaller principalities and minor kingdoms in Western Armenia.

The most famous ruler of the Artaxiad dynasty was Tigrana the Great (95-55 BC), thanks to whom Armenia became, briefly, a world power. Tigranes built up an empire stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, and from the Pontic Alps near the Black Sea right down to northern Mesopotamia. He profited by the decay of the hybrid Greek and oriental Seleucid dynasty to take over Syria, which he ruled quite successfully for fourteen years, from 83 to 69 BC. Tigranes erected a magnificent new capital at Tigranokerta, close to present-day Farkin, in southern Turkey.

Emulating the conquerors of Assyrian times, Tigranes deported many thousands of Greeks, Jews and Syrians to populate his new capital. He grew arrogant and cruel as he got older: he used to humiliate vassal rulers by making them run along on foot beside his royal charger whenever he went out for ‘a ride. He was so bad-tempered and superstitious that he would kill any messenger who brought him bad news, so that nobody dared to tell him the truth. Seeing the Roman general Lucullus approaching with a well trained army of ten thousand men, Tigranes uttered the famous but ill-judged witticism: ‘If they are coming as ambassadors, they are too many; if as enemies, they are too few !’

The territory of Great Armenia much exceeded in size that of England and Wales combined it amounted to about 100,000 square miles. But much of Armenia has always been unfit for human settlement. In addition to the two great inland seas of Van and Sevan, there are mighty mountains and extinct volcanoes, some topped by eternal snow. Ravine: and canyons break up the landscape, and make comunication difficult. Earthquakes add to the hazards of life.

The average height of the Armenian plateau, often described as a ‘natural fortress’, is over 5,000 feet. Outside the Araxes valley and the plain of Van, the windswept uplands have a harsh climate, winter persisting for seven months of the year. The short, dry summer extends for little more than three months. A typical highland Armenian town, such as Gyumri, has an average winter temperature as low as 12° F, or minus 11 C.

Even more unfavourable to the development of Armenia as an independent country is the lack of convenient road and river transport, and of assured access to the sea. Armenia lies astride main invasion routes leading from Asia Minor into Iran, and from the Caucasian isthmus southwards into Mesopotamia. But the land itself is poor in trunk roads., Whereas three great river: the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Araxes -all have their source in Armenia, none of them is navigable for any but the smallest vessels while still flowing through Armenian territory.

Despite these natural handicaps, combined with remorseless Roman pressure, the Armenians survived remarkably well throughout the Classical period. They were helped by their strategic position and inaccessible strongholds, and also by support from the Parthians, the warlike ruling dynasty of Iran. In fact, the Roman emperor Nero invited the founder of the Armenian dynasty of the Arsacids, King Tiridates I, to come to Rome in AD 66, and solemnly crowned him in the Forum in spite of the fact that Tiridata was himself a scion of the ruling Parthian royal family. On his return to Armenia, Tiridates built a magnificent temple in the Classical style at his summer capital of Garni. Destroyed by an earthquake in 1679, this monument has recently been re-erected by the Armenian Academy of Sciences, under the direction of Dr A. Sahinian.

During the Classical era, the Armenians laid the foundations of their rich and splendid national literature. It is true that the distinctive Armenian alphabet was not invented until after the introduction of Christianity, but pagan Armenia was far from being illiterate. From Moses of Khorene, the national chronicler, we have the texts of ancient ballads and legends, which were earlier handed down by word of mouth. Official documents and inscriptions were written in Greek or else in Iranian using Aramaic characters an ancient form of the Semitic alphabet. King Artavazd II, son of Tigranes the Great, maintained a Greek theatre in his palace, and himself wrote dramas in Greek to be staged there. Roman legionaries brought Latin script with them, notably in the reign of Emperor Trajan, though this failed to take root among the local population.

A key event in early Armenian history was the conversion of the country to Christianity by St Gregory the Illuminator, a missionary from Parthia, during the reign of King Tiridates III. This event determined the entire future course of Armenian history. It occurred in or about the year 301, though according to hallowed legend Armenia is supposed to have been visited by the Apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus much earlier, about twenty years after Christ’s crucifixion. Armenia is thus the oldest Christian nation in the world, if we except the now vanished Christian realm of King Abgar of Edessa.

[elizabethleslie7654]

The Iran Attack Part III: America’s Burden

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by Tom Shackleford

This is the final article in a series about a potential conflict with Iran for the benefit of Israel. The first article described the fraught situation that currently prevails in the Middle East. The second examined why the panicked mentality in Israel and its partner Saudi Arabia make a conflict with Iran involving the US highly probable, barring a successful Russian attempt at prevention. Now, let’s examine what might be expected of this ill-fated war.

Why must the US be involved?

Israel’s late President Shimon Peres disclosed to the Jerusalem Post in 2014 that he had dissuaded Netanyahu from ordering a preemptive airstrike on Iran. Peres considered it a defining accomplishment of his presidency. He halted the madness by explaining that “the consequences would be catastrophic.” This didn’t come out until last year because he requested that the story be withheld until after his death. Unsurprisingly, it also emerged later that the Saudis secretly offered for the Israelis to overfly their country on the way, during which time Saudi tanker aircraft and rescue helicopters would be airborne to assist. That strike never happened because it would have accomplished nothing of long-term value at a tremendous cost. What the Israelis require is for their golem, Uncle Sam, to deliver comprehensive devastation to the Iranians. Nothing short of that would be a satisfactory solution to Israel’s national security crisis.

What Form Will it Take?

First consider logistics. Iran is more than a few times larger than Iraq, both in population and geography. In order to carry out the Neocon plan for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, nearly a year of buildup was required. The military capability to perform a similar operation in Iran simply does not exist. Moreover, the Bush administration went in hastily. To do so, it had to discard senior voices of reason who clarified precisely why invading Iraq would be a disaster. Some explained how a Shi’a vs Sunni conflict would be unleashed, among other catastrophes. They were invited to hit the road. I attended a bitter lecture by one of these men a couple years after the fact. His description of the foolishness of people with the fate of so many in their hands was disturbing to say the least. It seemed consistent with the facile papers they put out.

The US Central Command makes plans for all sorts of contingencies within its zone of operation. The original plan from Cold Warriors for occupying Iraq rightly involved far more soldiers. The Neocons (often Jewish academics) figured that they could just topple Saddam, introduce democracy, and things would turn out fine. The US Army Chief of Staff, Eric Shinskei , didn’t agree with this naïve outlook. He was forced out.

He was eventually justified by a very painful lesson for the US Army. They will not agree to make that mistake again on an impossible scale. Thus, an attack on Iran would involve an air campaign. There would also be a cyber-warfare component, probably targeting assets like the electrical grid. This has already been attempted by the US and Israel against Iranian nuclear facilities using the Stuxnet Virus, but it ultimately failed to stop the program.

Iran’s nuclear program is nothing like Iraq’s Osirak nuclear power program. Decades ago, Saddam paid the French, who designed the facility specifically to be unable to produce weapons material, to build a reactor that his people couldn’t dream of constructing. The Israelis responded with a combination of murders and a surprise airstrike on the facility. It was destroyed in 1981, and that was the end of things. That won’t work with Iran. Iran’s program is largely the result of their nascent native capabilities. Mossad has already murdered Iranian scientists, but that only slowed things down.

Iran is 17th largest country in the world at 636,372 square miles. They’ve dispersed their nuclear development facilities in the center of the country, buried under mountains. Assuming these facilities could be over-flown, multiple, stacked, direct hits by bunker-busting bombs would have to be achieved to destroy them. That’s never happened in real life before. Even then, that would be a temporary setback for an enraged Iranian populace. The only way to stop a nuclear program (a secondary objective) and stop the provision of Hezbollah (the primary objective) would be to gut Iran and bring down its government. Thus, expect a devastating and extensive campaign.

Ever wonder why we’re not leaving Afghanistan even though the situation there is hopeless, and this fact has been public knowledge for more than a decade? Well it happens to be positioned on the Eastern border of Iran. Our aircraft carriers are marvels of industry. But, the reality is that they’re gigantic targets. It’s really just a question of how many supersonic cruise missiles are fired at them at once. If enough are coming, accompanied by torpedo salvoes, then they don’t stand a chance. This is especially true in a confined space like the Persian Gulf. American military infrastructure in Afghanistan is critical for defeating the Iranians.

Tensions are high, and the rhetoric is hot enough already. However, it’s still Christmas season. The Neocons are busy trying to sell this strike on Iran to Trump, but even they aren’t reckless enough to recommend it immediately. No President in his right mind would want to say to the American people: “Merry Christmas, here’s a new war.” Moreover, wars are always best started before an election and better yet, not concluded before the next one.

Look at George H.W. Bush. He launched Operation Desert Storm on January 17th, 1991, safely after the holiday season. Unfortunately for him, it wrapped up a bit over a month later on February 28th. His popularity at that time neared 90%. That was all over before he lost to Clinton in 1992.

His bumbling son didn’t repeat that mistake. Iraq was invaded in March of 2003, right in time for his reelection campaign. The fake cowboy then gave the nauseating “Mission Accomplished” speech after his carrier-landing stunt that May. Troops were still in Iraq and the disaster hadn’t yet become readily apparent by the time ballots were cast in 2004. He was reelected. It would be hard for any competent politician not to take notice of this contrast. Their advisors certainly won’t. So, if something is going to happen, it will be before the 2018 midterms.

Many analysts have concluded that Hezbollah, Israel’s primary target, wouldn’t be prepared for the next conflict until 2019. An attack on Iran would absolutely involve retaliation against Israel by Hezbollah. This is yet another factor making a strike most likely to be carried out before November of 2018. If conflict is inevitable, Israel needs that to happen before Hezbollah is ready for it.

A full scale invasion is not viable and the military has paid a heavy price for Bush’s idiocy in Iraq. They won’t go along with that course of action again on a much larger scale. Even if they did, we would have at least a year of warning while logistical preparations are made. The American public has no stomach for that. So, an attack on Iran would most likely come out of the blue and after Christmas, probably as close to the midterms as possible. AIPAC can easily deliver whatever congressional support is required. However, the press will have a tough job selling a war that nobody wants launched by a president for whom they’ve stirred up fervent hatred.

In the meantime, the Russians are probably attempting to use their considerable influence with both parties to mediate some sort of stalemate. It’s also likely that they would sell Iran more weapons and ECM equipment to deter the entire endeavor if an attack appeared imminent. This isn’t the Russia from 15 years ago. Their S-400 mobile AA mobile and cruise missile capabilities are much better and cheaper than what our military-industrial complex has been producing. These systems pose a dire threat to US forces. That’s another reason why Washington would launch a surprise attack before the Russians got wind of what was about to happen.

Consequences

A war between Iran and Saudi Arabia is even more contrary to Russian and Chinese interests than the overthrow of Assad. Sure, Israel demands that the US destroy Iran. That was the same story in Syria. It didn’t work because the world is different now. This is all taken into account in the nebulous world of America’s bipartisan foreign policy makers. It won’t matter. No decision that they make has anything to do with the interests of ordinary Americans.

What happens if we open Pandora’s Box? Nobody knows for sure except that it would be extremely bad. The US imports over 7 million barrels of oil per day in order to function. A war that halts or inhibits shipping in the Persian Gulf is likely to lead to domestic shortages and price spikes. Plenty of Americans would die as well. Since it would also be a direct attack on the interests of Russia and China, they won’t respond favorably. They have multiple avenues of economic and financial retaliation that would be devastating. Iran has a population of 80 million. If even a small percentage fled, that would mean millions of more invaders for Europe.

Unfortunately, the consequences of war for the people of the US and Iran have little to do with any of this. Israel feels like it has a gun pointed at its head. It needs Uncle Sam to push it aside. Whatever price the goyim pay in that process is worth it. Sooner or later, we’ll fight our last war for Israel. Maybe this will be it.

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As Coronavirus Spreads from China, Scientists See Grim Reminders

Less than a month after the first few cases of a new respiratory illness were reported in Wuhan, China, travelers have carried the virus to at least four other countries, including the United States. More than 500 people are known to have been infected, at least 17 have died — and the world is bracing itself for what might come next.

On Wednesday, experts at the World Health Organization decided to postpone a decision on whether the current outbreak constitutes a “public health emergency of international concern,” a label given to “serious public health events that endanger international public health” and “potentially require a coordinated international response.”

But even as the W.H.O. debated its decision, officials in China began closing transportation links from and within Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak. The move was a significant escalation in the country’s attempts to contain the spread of the virus as the Lunar New Year approaches and holiday travel commences.

Public health officials around the world are on alert because the new infection is caused by a coronavirus, from the same family that caused outbreaks of SARS and MERS, killing hundreds of people in dozens of countries.

The W.H.O. has already advised governments to be prepared for the disease, to be vigilant and ready to test anyone with symptoms like cough and fever who has traveled to affected regions. Air travel is expected to surge as the Lunar New Year approaches this weekend.

More important than an emergency declaration is the need for the W.H.O. to present more data on the outbreak, said Jennifer B. Nuzzo of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Scientists still do not have enough information about the severity of the disease, she said. Nor is it known how many of the sickest patients also had underlying illnesses that might have made them more vulnerable.

“I want to see from the emergency committee all the information on the table and an assessment of what the risk really is,” Dr. Nuzzo said. “To me, that’s far more important than their declaration.”

One advantage of declaring an emergency is to draw world attention to the risk so that governments can prepare and also provide needed help.

“There’s already a high level of global attention,” Dr. Nuzzo said, adding that she was not sure how much the declaration would have change things.

Several countries have already begun screening travelers from China for fever and cough. Airports in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco last week started to screen arriving flights from Wuhan, and airports in Atlanta and Chicago will begin doing so this week.

“Data shows that entry screening requires a tremendous amount of resources and is not tremendously effective,” Dr. Nuzzo said.

North Korea has suspended tourism because of the outbreak, according to Reuters.

But important questions about the outbreak are still unanswered, and W.H.O.’s expert committee now must grapple with significant unknowns.

“We don’t know how many people are infected,” said Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the W.H.O. “The more you test, the more you will find people who are infected. We don’t know if there are asymptomatic cases. If they are asymptomatic, are they contagious?”

Broad studies to test for evidence of infection, past and present, would give a true picture of how many people have been exposed to the virus.

“Testing is possible because China immediately shared the genetic sequence of the virus, and we have to give them credit for that,” Mr. Jasarevic said.

The virus causes a pneumonialike illness, with coughing and fever in some people but not all. The severity matters: If there are cases with mild illness or no symptoms at all, they may go undetected, and those people will keep working, shopping and traveling, possibly infecting others.

A milder illness has the potential to spread farther and cause longer-lasting outbreaks than one with more obvious symptoms, according to Dr. Mark R. Denison, an infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine who studies coronaviruses.

Compared to SARS and MERS, the Wuhan illness so far does seem less severe, he said.

SARS, which began in live-animal markets in China in 2002, quickly spread to dozens of countries, infecting more than 8,000 people and killing nearly 800. The virus is thought to have originated in bats and spread to civet cats that were being sold for consumption.

The civets spread the virus to humans, who infected one another through respiratory secretions and also exposure to feces.

SARS often caused severe illness, so cases were detectable, Dr. Denison said; aggressive public health measures, including quarantines and travel restrictions, helped stamp out the epidemic.

But the travel bans, not to mention widespread fear and distrust, took a heavy economic toll on China, and since then international authorities have become hesitant about taking drastic steps to quell outbreaks.

MERS cases have been occurring in the Middle East since 2012, mainly in people who have been exposed to camels, which were most likely infected by bats. Human-to-human transmission does occur, and some spread has happened in hospitals.

As of November, there had been 2,494 cases of MERS in the last seven years, mostly in Saudi Arabia. The death rate is 34 percent, but may actually be lower if there are mild cases of the disease that have not been detected or counted.

Dr. Denison described the new Wuhan coronavirus as “sort of a first cousin of SARS,” more closely related to it than to MERS, based on its genetic sequence.

Researchers do not know just how contagious the Wuhan coronavirus is. The first people to be infected are thought to have contracted it at a market in Wuhan that sold meat, fish and live animals.

That market has been shut down and disinfected. Which animal might have been carrying the virus is not yet known.

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Initially, the illness appeared to spread only from animals to people. Then, experts said there was evidence of “limited” human-to-human transmission. Now, more cases are emerging among people with no known exposure to the animal markets, and in medical staff members caring for infected patients.

“Now that you have a cluster of 14 health care workers infected, it suggests that the potential for spread is much greater,” said Dr. Ian W. Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York, who has researched SARS and MERS.

“I saw film footage of a hospital lobby in Wuhan, and they are wearing full personal protective equipment from head to toe,” he said. “They are taking it very seriously. I still don’t think this is as bad as SARS, but it’s worse than they originally portrayed it.”

Dr. Denison said that with both SARS and MERS, there were episodes in which individual patients became “super-spreaders” who infected many other people, for unknown reasons.

“That’s a wild card we don’t know, the capacity to have multiple transmissions from one person,” Dr. Denison said. “There was no evidence they had dramatically different virus.”

It is possible, he said, that super-spreaders had received a high dose of the virus and had more of it to transmit. Alternatively, their immune systems might have not been able to control the virus, allowing it to multiply and spread extensively in their bodies, making them more contagious.

Although no drugs have been approved specifically to treat coronavirus diseases, Dr. Denison said that in animal studies, an antiviral called remdesivir appeared effective. He has been working with other researchers to develop treatments.

Mr. Jasarevic said that antivirals were being tested against MERS, but that none had been approved yet.

How and why viruses that have peacefully coexisted with their animal hosts for a long time strike out for new territory — us — is not well understood.

Coronaviruses often inhabit bats without harming them, and sometimes move into other animal species and from them to humans.

In places that bring multiple animal species together with lots of people — like the food markets in Wuhan and in other parts of China that sell live mammals and birds, along with meat and fish — viruses can pass back and forth between species, mutating as they go. Along the way, they may become able to infect humans.

“Coronaviruses have repeatedly shown an ability to probe across species and cause new animal and human diseases,” Dr. Denison said.

To go successfully from animal hosts to people, the viruses need to adapt in several ways: They must gain the ability to invade human cells, evade the immune system, replicate inside the human body and spread to others.

The move is often described as “jumping” into humans, but that is an oversimplification, Dr. Denison said. “The process it has to go through is more like high hurdles with a thousand hurdles along the way,” he said.

Still, the new outbreak does not greatly surprise him: “This was a matter of not if, but when.”

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