By Jonathan Turley | April 16, 2021
We recently discussed the move by Twitter to block the tweet of sports journalist Jason Whitlock criticizing the BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors for purchasing a $1.4 million home in a secluded area of Los Angeles. A self-professed Marxist, Cullors has reportedly purchased four homes worth more than $3 million and has looked at real estate investments in places like the Bahamas. As with the censoring of a New York Post article on the Hunter Biden laptop story, Twitter was criticized for the censoring of the story and later said it was a mistake. Now, Facebook has reportedly blocked the underlying New York Post report about the controversy. In the meantime, BLM itself insists that the controversy is little more than terrorism from white supremacists.
Various conservative sites reported this week that Facebook users could not share the link to a story that shed light on Cullors’ multi-million-dollar splurge on homes. Fox News reported that “an error message appears whenever users try sharing the article on their personal Facebook page or through the Messenger app.”
Cullors has not denied the purchase or the real estate investments, including in her statement below to the controversy. The story was widely circulated because Cullors has long insisted that she and her BLM co-founder “are trained Marxists. We are super versed on, sort of, ideological theories.” She has denounced capitalism as worse than Covid-19.
Critics like Nick Arama of RedState pointed out: “[I]t’s interesting to note that the demographics of the area are only about 1.4% black people there. So not exactly living up to her creed there.”
Moreover, the head of New York City’s Black Lives Matter chapter called for an independent investigation into the organization’s finances in the wake of the controversy.
The New York Post and other publications reported that Cullors is eyeing expensive properties in other locations, including the Bahamas. However, I noted earlier that there is no evidence that this money came from BLM, which has reportedly raised almost $100 million in donations from corporations and other sources. Indeed, Cullors seems to have ample sources of funds. She published a best selling memoir of her life and then a follow up book. She also signed a lucrative deal with Warner Bros to develop and produce original programming across all platforms, including broadcast, cable and streaming. She has also been featured in various magazines like her recent collaboration with Jane Fonda.
Cullors responded to the controversy but did not deny the underlying facts:
“This movement began as, and will always remain a love letter to Black people. Three words – Black Lives Matter – serve as a reminder to Black people that we are human and deserve to live a vibrant and full life. I worked multiple jobs across many organizations my entire life. I’m also a published author, writer, producer, professor, public speaker, and performance artist.”
She later denounced the coverage of her alleged hypocrisy as an effort to “take[] away from where the focus should be – ending white supremacy”.
The main issue for me is not the house or the claimed hypocrisy. It is the censorship of Twitter and now Facebook. Cullors is a public figure who is subject to public scrutiny and commentary. Twitter is rife with a such criticism over the lifestyle choices of figures on the right ranging from Donald Trump Jr. to Rand Paul. That is an unfortunate aspect of being in a high visibility position. I would be equally concerned if criticism of Trump Jr.’s big game hunting exploits or Giuliani’s lavish tastes were censored.
As stated recently in testimony before the House, I remain an unabashed “Internet Originalist,” favoring the free forum for speech that once defined these Big Tech companies. The expanding censorship of the Internet continues to show bias and contractions as politicians push for “robust modification” to silence opposing views of everything from climate change to social justice. Twitter and Facebook now actively determine what people should know and discuss on matters of public interest.
BLM however is denouncing the coverage as raw racism. In a statement, it insisted that Cullors has only made $120,000 from BLM. Once again, I see no evidence that Cullors has taken any money inappropriately from BLM. To that end, I can see why BLM would issue a strong statement to knock down any suggestions of fraud or self-dealing with BLM funds. For any such organization, suggestions of fraud can have a serious impact on corporate and individual donations. As for Cullors herself, her own corporate deals would give her ample money for these real estate investments if the story is accurate.
Yet, BLM added that the reporting about her properties “continues a tradition of terror by white supremacists against Black activists.” What is odd is that the head of NY BLM was that one of those calling for an investigation and presumably it is not part of that “tradition of terror by white supremacists.”
Most of the coverage concerned the irony of Cullors investing millions in real estate given her public persona as a dedicated Marxist. Indeed, some on the left have denounced her as a hypocrite after the disclosures of her investments and homes. Cullors has told followers that “While the COVID-19 illness is tragic, what’s more tragic is capitalism.” Nevertheless, BLM called the coverage of the Cullors investments as a familiar “tactic of terror time and again, but our movement will not be silenced.”
As noted earlier, the greatest irony may not be the home purchase but the corporate support. A professed Marxist, Cullors has not only been paid handsomely by corporations like Warner Brothers but is being actively protected by corporations like Twitter and now Facebook in blocking the underlying story.
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | April 18, 2021
Currently, the only global nuclear-armed powers with a “no first use” (NFU) nuclear policy are China and India. According to the working common definition, “A no-first-use policy means that the United States would pledge to use nuclear weapons only in retaliation for a nuclear attack.”
Going back to the Cold War the United States has consistently resisted implementing a no first use nuclear policy, stating it “reserves the right to use” nuclear weapons first in a conflict scenario, which was reaffirmed most recently in its Nuclear Posture Review in 2010.
And now Democratic lawmakers have reintroduced a bill in the House and Senate on Friday that seeks to prohibit the US from using nuclear weapons first.
Introduced by Democrats Senator Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Rep. Adam Smith (WA) the bill introduces: “It is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first.”
“Threatening to use nuclear weapons first makes America less safe because it increases the chances of a miscalculation or an accident,” Warren said in a statement arguing the bill’s urgency. “There are no winners in a nuclear war, and the US should never start one.”
Rep. Smith also affirmed, “The United States should never initiate a nuclear war,” in his statement, saying further, “This bill would strengthen deterrence while reducing the chance of nuclear use due to miscalculation or misunderstanding.”
According to The Hill, the Biden presidency could have a receptive ear to the change in policy:
Opponents of such a policy argue that taking the option off the table to use a nuclear weapon first could embolden adversaries and undermine the confidence of allies in the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
But the bill could find a more receptive audience in President Biden. Biden has not addressed the topic since he became president, but as vice president in 2017, he said he finds it “hard to envision a plausible scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States would be necessary or make sense.”
And further critics of America’s current nuclear posture most often emphasize that with the Cold War long behind us, the real concern should be “the chances of a miscalculation or an accident” – as the bill’s language underscores.
Nuclear treaties between the US and Russia, the latest major remaining one being New START which was renewed by Biden for five years, have further sought to mitigate this “unthinkable” disastrous scenario.
Sputnik – 18.04.2021
Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo signed the peace agreement with the Afghan Taliban on behalf of the Trump administration on February 29, 2020. But new president Joe Biden has already broken the terms of the deal by delaying the US troop pull-out until September 11, the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks that prompted the US invasion.
Former US president Donald Trump has laid into his successor Joe Biden’s delay in withdrawing troops from Afghanistan to September 11 this year.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the property tycoon laid out his reasons why postponing the pull-out was a mistake.
“First, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long,” Trump said.
“I made early withdraw possible by already pulling much of our billions of dollars of equipment out and, more importantly, reducing our military presence to less than 2,000 troops from the 16,000 level that was there,” he stressed.
Native New Yorker Trump also objected to Biden conflating the solemn 20th anniversary of the World Trade Centre suicide airliner attacks by Saudi al-Qaeda terrorists with the “wonderful and positive” peace deal.
“September 11th represents a very sad event and period for our Country and should remain a day of reflection and remembrance honoring those great souls we lost. Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do,” he said.
Trump also criticised his successor for reneging on the peace treaty his own administration agreed with the Taliban, under which all US forces were meant to leave the country by May 1st this year.
“I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible,” he insisted.
Biden claimed at his belated first press conference as president in March that sticking to the May 1 deadline would be “tough” — even as new Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin focuses on purging right-wingers from the military.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Friday that the US might actually deploy more forces to Afghanistan ahead of the delayed pull-out, while a senior government official told the media that Washington will maintain enough “military and intelligence capabilities” in and around the country to strike at the al-Qaeda terrorist group if it re-emerges.
But the Taliban has warned it will cease to observe the ceasefire and resume attacks on foreign troops if they stay beyond May 1.
By Duggan Flanakin ~ PA Pundits – International ~ April 17, 2021
As the merger of climate change and COVID panic materializes in front of our eyes, “global leaders” have found plenty developing world voices to join the crusade to “save the planet” from carbon (dioxide) “pollution.” But like their Chinese and Indian counterparts, many Africans, from heads of state to captains of industry and beyond, intend to expand, not shrink, reliance on fossil fuels to build their economies.
According to Oxford University researcher Galina Alova, “Africa’s electricity demand is set to increase significantly as the continent strives to industrialise and improve the well-being of its people,” but those who hope for rapid decarbonization in Africa will likely be disappointed.
Alova’s research found that Africa is likely to double its electricity generation by 2030, with fossil fuels providing two-thirds of the total, hydroelectric another 18 percent, and non-hydro renewables providing less than 10 percent.
Such an energy mix flies in the face of the firm commitment from the fledgling Biden Administration to demand an end to all international financing of fossil fuel based energy projects. Biden climate envoy John Kerry won a strong endorsement from 450 organizations worldwide after telling World Economic Forum members of the “plan for ending international finance of fossil fuel projects with public money.”
The Biden plan, which comports with the Paris climate agreement, echos the call by European Union foreign ministers for an end to financing fossil fuel projects abroad (which means in Africa). Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained that “development finance is a powerful tool for addressing the climate crisis” that the U.S. will use to “help drive investment toward climate solutions.” [Translation: “We intend to ram decarbonization down their throats!”]
Many Africans feel the need to placate their self-appointed betters and accept the climate change tenets.
World Bank veteran Ede Ijjasz and Africa Growth Initiative Director Aloysius Ordu claim that Africans must take advantage of the COVID pandemic to initiate a “great reset” of Africa’s economies according to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the principles of the Paris agreement. The world, they claim, cannot afford to give Africa a pass on decarbonization (though China and India get a pass).
Others prefer a more temperate approach.
In late March, investment professional Tariye Gbadegesin challenged President Biden to prioritize African nations as part of his global climate initiative. While admitting that Africa’s urban centers are swelling, “threatening more emissions,” she asserted that striking a balance between this ongoing development and its climate impact must be a global priority. For example, Nigeria could build a hybrid grid using plentiful natural gas and solar energy. But, Gbadegesin implied, such a hybrid grid would not meet the Biden-EU financing guidelines.
In early April, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Global Center for Adaptation, and the Africa Adaptation Initiative held a virtual Leaders Dialogue in response to the State of the Climate in Africa 2019 report. Over 30 heads of state and other global leaders committed to prioritize actions that will help African countries both adapt to the presumed impacts of “climate change” and overcome widespread energy poverty. African Union chair Felix Tshisekedi listed “nature-based solutions, energy transition, an enhanced transparency framework, technology transfer, and climate finance” as critical areas for adaptation.
During the meeting, AfDB president Dr. Akinwumi Adesina noted the group intends to mobilize $25 billion in financing for the success of the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program. “It is time,” he affirmed, “for developed countries to meet their promise of providing $100 billion annually for climate finance. And a greater share of this should go to climate adaptation.”
This African response to the Biden-EU decarbonization initiative – relying on adaptation and balance, not prohibition and eternal poverty, to achieve sustainability — reflects on the 1987 Brundtland Commission report, “Our Common Future.” In the report, the World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainable development” as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Commission Chair Gro Harlem Brundtland acknowledged that, “A world in which poverty is endemic will always be prone to ecological and other catastrophe.” In her view, “Meeting essential needs requires not only a new era of economic growth for nations in which the majority are poor, but an assurance that those poor get their fair share of the resources required to sustain that growth.”
Sadly, U.S. and EU (and the UN) climate “monarchs” have long ignored Brundtland’s promises. The UN’s 20-year assessment of the document did not even mention “poverty” or “Africa.” CFACT reported that year that sub-Saharan Africa was “in very short supply of energy and power, especially electricity, and overland trade [was] greatly hindered by an almost total lack of infrastructure.” Worse. curable diseases ran rampant as people relied on toxic dung and wood for heating and cooking.
At the 2011 UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, nuclear physicist (and CFACT advisor) Kelvin Kemm reported that the African representatives were not happy. “Their general feeling,” he recounted, “was that the First World is trying to push Africa around, bully African countries into accepting its opinions, and, even worse, adopting its supposed ‘solutions’.”
That feeling remains. Responding to the Biden-EU renewables-only energy financing plan, W. Gyude Moore, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and former Liberian minister of public works, mused that, “There’s this idea that because Africa is lacking in legacy infrastructure, it’s a good canvas to paint the energy future. But no African country has volunteered itself for that.”
With nearly 600 million Africans lacking access to electricity, Moore added, “it seems immoral to restrict options for energy sources” for the world’s poorest continent. Later, Moore, with Vijaya Ramachandran of The Breakthrough Institute, wrote that a ban on oil and gas projects in Africa would stifle economic growth and thus make poor populations even more vulnerable to climate change impacts.
Moore and Ramachandran explained that the top priority in most African countries is economic growth, first in agriculture, then in industry and services. For most Africans, worries of an increased carbon footprint generated from economic growth are a weak second to worries that growth may not happen at all. In their view, people in poverty don’t just need to power a single lightbulb at home; they need abundant, affordable energy at work too.
Overall, Moore and Ramachandran noted, Africa’s needs are too great to be met solely with current green energy technologies. Its finances too stretched to be able to afford the cost of carbon-neutral energy. Keeping Africa poor to fight climate change will do nothing to help the people most affected by it. But President Biden, his EU allies, and the “green 450” disagree.
This arrogance makes it quite clear that “Our Common Future” is still in the future, if at all.
The difference is that, today, Africans are no longer waiting for the UN, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, or even the African Development Bank to finally invest in sorely needed African infrastructure.
By hook or by crook, Africans are committed to using available resources to do the job.
Duggan Flanakin is the Director of Policy Research at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundations, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas.
Global Warming Policy Forum | April 16, 2021
GWPF research has shown that just six offshore windfarms are now sharing £1.6 billion pounds in subsidies between them every year. Three receive annual subsidies of over a quarter of a billion pounds each year. On a single day in April last year, Hornsea 1 received a subsidy payment of nearly £1.5 million pounds.
The level of subsidy is sufficient to cover the construction cost of these windfarms in just six or seven years, meaning that future payments will represent almost pure profit for the operators.
The cost of the Contracts for Difference regime is accelerating, and rose by £0.7 billion last year alone, reaching £2.3 billion in 2020. Consumers are already paying out £6 billion under the Renewables Obligation and another £1 billion under the Capacity Market.
Direct subsidies therefore amount to an annual payment from each household of £350, a sum that is rising by at least £25 per year.
There are further bills to pay too, because windfarms are causing destabilisation of the electricity grid. The cost of the Balancing Mechanism, which deals with grid imbalances, is rising rapidly, costing each household £65 per year, a figure that is rising at a rate of £20 per year.
And the consumer is having to pay for upgrades to the electricity grid too.
Lord Lawson, GWPF director, said:
We are in the middle of an economic crisis and consumers are hit with astronomical costs for unreliable wind energy. These multi-billion subsidies are not only a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, but are damaging the UK economy as a whole. This madness has to stop.”
Dr Benny Peiser said:
The level of handouts is an obscenity. Every time a new windfarm comes on stream, the consumer is hit with a double whammy – a relentless increase in annual subsidy payments to windfarm operators and an annual bill for fixing the damage that is done to grid stability. This can’t be kept hidden for much longer. The chickens are coming home to roost very soon, and there will be a big political price to pay”.
By Stephen Lendman | April 18, 2021
Founded in 1980, the most distrusted name in television news CNN consistently features fake news and mass deception over the real thing it long ago banned on air.
Like other establishment media, it reports a daily drumbeat of utter rubbish — truth and full disclosure on major issues nowhere in sight.
Project Veritas (PV) caught CNN reporting bald-faced Big Lies earlier.
Last week, Twitter suspended the account of its founder James O’Keefe for exposing anti-Trump propaganda reports by CNN — falsely claiming he violated company rules.
PV’s undercover video caught CNN technical director Charlie Chester red-handed — boasting about his anti-Trump propaganda, saying:
“Look what we did. (CNN fake news) got Trump out (sic).”
“I am 100 percent going to say it, and I 100 percent believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out (sic).”
“Our focus was to get Trump out of office, right? Without saying it, that’s what it was.”
He bragged about joining CNN to work on denying Trump a second term.
He also boasted about featuring (fake numbers of covid) deaths displayed at all times on CNN’s screen during broadcasts.
His aim was (and remains) all about boosting ratings by fear-mongering viewers to self-inflict harm by going along with government mandates and recommendations on all things seasonal flu-renamed covid.
He told an undercover PV reporter that “fear really drives numbers. (It) keeps them tuned in.”
Hyped covid related rubbish produced “gangbuster… ratings.”
“It’s why (CNN) constantly ha(s) the (covid) death toll on the side, which I have a major problem with, with how we’re tallying how many people die every day.”
Meaningless numbers are artificially inflated multiple times higher than reality.
CNN fake news artificially inflates them higher — for maximum fear-mongering effect.
Its viewers are too out-of-touch with real news and information to know they were willfully duped.
The same goes for other establishment media in cahoots with Big Government, Pharma and other monied interests.
Their mandate is all about proliferating fake news mass deception — CNN the worst of an on-air collective lying machine.
The same goes for the NYT in print.
CNN management mandates fake news about major issues, including about covid.
According to Chester, “(t)he special red phone rings and this producer picks it up.”
“You hear (murmurs) and every so often they put it on speaker, and it’s the head of the network being like, ‘There’s nothing that you’re doing right now that makes me want to stick.’ ”
Without mentioning WarnerMedia chairman Jeff Zooker by name, he quoted him, saying:
“Put the (fake covid death toll) numbers back up because that’s the most enticing thing that we had. So, put it back up.”
Virtually everything reported about all things covid since early last year was and continues to be willfully and maliciously fabricated.
It’s all about instituting and maintaining draconian control.
It’s part of Great Reset mass deception to create ruler/serf societies worldwide.
It’s about privileged interests owning everything, ordinary people nothing.
It’s about dystopian harshness replacing free and open societies.
It’s about government instituted/media supported tyrannical rule no one should tolerate anywhere.
Science with Dr. Doug | August 1, 2020
Will a vaccine to SARS-CoV-2 actually make the problem worse? Although not a certainty, all of the current data says that this prospect is a real possibility that needs to be paid careful attention to. If you stay with me, I’ll explain why.
First, let’s set aside the debate surrounding the topic of whether vaccines work and the negative health consequences due to the components of the vaccine. No matter where you stand on the vaccine issue, I’m not asking anyone to capitulate on this point. I’m just asking that this issue be set aside, because in this instance this argument is completely irrelevant. Even without bringing any other issue into the vaccine debate, a coronavirus vaccine is a highly dangerous undertaking due to a peculiar trojan horse mechanism known as Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE). Regardless of someone’s conviction about vaccines, this point needs to be acknowledged. In the remaining portion of this article, I’m going to explain how ADE works and the future perils it may bring.
For a vaccine to work, our immune system needs to be stimulated to produce a neutralizing antibody, as opposed to a non-neutralizing antibody. A neutralizing antibody is one that can recognize and bind to some region (‘epitope’) of the virus, and that subsequently results in the virus either not entering or replicating in your cells.
A non-neutralizing antibody is one that can bind to the virus, but for some reason, the antibody fails to neutralize the infectivity of the virus. This can occur, for example, if the antibody doesn’t bind tightly enough to the virus, or the percentage of the surface area of the virus covered by the antibody is too low, or the concentration of the antibody is not high enough. Basically, there is some type of generic binding of the antibody to the virus, but it fails to neutralize the virus.
In some viruses, if a person harbors a non-neutralizing antibody to the virus, a subsequent infection by the virus can cause that person to elicit a more severe reaction to the virus due to the presence of the non-neutralizing antibody. This is not true for all viruses, only particular ones. This is called Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE), and is a common problem with Dengue Virus, Ebola Virus, HIV, RSV, and the family of coronaviruses. In fact, this problem of ADE is a major reason why many previous vaccine trials for other coronaviruses failed. Major safety concerns were observed in animal models. If ADE occurs in an individual, their response to the virus can be worse than their response if they had never developed an antibody in the first place.
An antibody can be rendered a non-neutralizing antibody simply because it doesn’t bind to the right portion of the virus to neutralize it, or the antibody binds too weakly to the virus. This can also occur if a neutralizing antibody’s concentration falls over time and is now no longer of sufficient concentration to cause neutralization of the virus. In addition, a neutralizing antibody can subsequently transition to non-neutralizing antibody when encountering a different strain of the virus.
What does ADE entail? The exact mechanism of ADE in SARS is not known, but the leading theory is described as follows: In certain viruses, the binding of a non-neutralizing antibody to the virus can direct the virus to enter and infect your immune cells. This occurs through a receptor called FcγRII. FcγRII is expressed on the outside of many tissues of our body, and in particular, in monocyte derived macrophages, which are a type of white blood cell. In other words, the presence of the non-neutralizing antibody now directs the virus to infect cells of your immune system, and these viruses are then able to replicate in these cells and wreak havoc on your immune response. One end of the antibody grabs onto the virus, and the other end of the antibody grabs onto an immune cell. Essentially, the non-neutralizing antibody enables the virus to hitch a ride to infect immune cells. You can see this in the picture above.
This can cause a hyperinflammatory response, a cytokine storm, and a general dysregulation of the immune system that allows the virus to cause more damage to our lungs and other organs of our body. In addition, new cell types throughout our body are now susceptible to viral infection due to the additional viral entry pathway facilitated by the FcγRII receptor, which is expressed on many different cell types.
What this means is that you can be given a vaccine, which causes your immune system to produce an antibody to the vaccine, and then when your body is actually challenged with the real pathogen, the infection is much worse than if you had not been vaccinated.
Again, this is not seen in all viruses, or even in all strains of a given virus, and there is a great deal that scientists don’t understand about the complete set of factors that dictate when and if ADE may occur. It’s quite likely that genetic factors as well as the health status of the individual may play a role on modulating this response. That being said, there are many studies (in the reference section below) that demonstrate that ADE is a persistent problem with coronaviruses in general, and in particular, with SARS-related viruses. Less is known, of course, with respect to SARS-CoV-2, but the genetic and structural similarities between the SARS-CoV-2 and the other coronaviruses strongly suggests that this risk is real.
ADE has proven to be a serious challenge with coronavirus vaccines, and this is the primary reason many have failed in early in-vitro or animal trials. For example, rhesus macaques who were vaccinated with the Spike protein of the SARS-CoV virus demonstrated severe acute lung injury when challenged with SARS-CoV, while monkeys who were not vaccinated did not. Similarly, mice who were immunized with one of four different SARS-CoV vaccines showed histopathological changes in the lungs with eosinophil infiltration after being challenged with SARS-CoV virus. This did not occur in the controls that had not been vaccinated. A similar problem occurred in the development of a vaccine for FIPV, which is a feline coronavirus.
For a vaccine to work, vaccine developers will need to find a way to circumvent the ADE problem. This will require a very novel solution, and it may not be achievable, or at the very least, predictable. In addition, the vaccine must not induce ADE in subsequent strains of SARS-CoV-2 that emerge over time, or to other endemic coronaviruses that circulate every year and cause the common cold.
A major trigger for ADE is viral mutation. Changes to the amino acid sequence of the Spike Protein (which is the protein on the virus that facilitates entry into our cells via the ACE2 receptor) can cause antigenic drift. What this means is that an antibody that was once neutralizing can become a non-neutralizing antibody because the antigen has slightly changed. Therefore, mutations in the Spike protein that naturally occur with coronaviruses could presumably result in ADE. Since these future strains are not predictable, it is impossible to predict if ADE will become a problem at a future date.
This inherent unpredictability problem is highlighted in the following scenario: A coronavirus vaccine may not be dangerous initially. If the initial testing looks positive, mass vaccination efforts would presumably be administered to a large portion of the population. In the first year or two, it may appear that there is no real safety issue, and over time, a greater percentage of the world population will be vaccinated due to this perceived “safety”. During this interim period, the virus is busy mutating. Eventually, the antibodies that vaccinated individuals have floating around in their bloodstream are now rendered non-neutralizing because they fail to bind to the virus with the same affinity due to the structural change resulting from the mutation. Declining concentrations of the antibody over time would also contribute to this shift towards non-neutralization. When these previously vaccinated people are infected with this different strain of SARS-CoV-2, they could experience a much more severe reaction to the virus.
Ironically, in this scenario, this vaccine made the virus more pathogenic rather than less pathogenic. This is not something that vaccine producers would be able predict or test for with any level of real confidence at the outset, and it would only become evident at a later time.
If and when this does occur, who will be liable?
Does this vaccine industry know about this problem? The answer is yes, they do.
Quoting a Nature Biotechnology news article published on June 5th, 2020:
““It’s important to talk about it [ADE],” says Gregory Glenn, president of R&D at Novavax, which launched its COVID-19 vaccine trial in May. But “we can’t be overly cautious. People are dying. So we need to be aggressive here.””
And from the same article:
“ADE “is a genuine concern,” says virologist Kevin Gilligan, a senior consultant with Biologics Consulting, who advises thorough safety studies. “Because if the gun is jumped, and a vaccine is widely distributed that is disease enhancing, that would be worse than actually not doing any vaccination at all.””
The vaccine industry is aware of this problem. The degree to which they are taking it seriously, is another question.
While many vaccine developers are aware of the problem, some of them are approaching the problem with more Laissez-faire attitude. They see this problem as “theoretical,” and not guaranteed, with the idea that animal trials should rule out the potential of ADE in humans.
As a side note, it is not ethical to conduct “challenge” studies in humans. However, challenge studies are conducted in animals. In other words, a clinical trial for a vaccine does not include administering the vaccine to a person, and then exposing this person to the virus post-vaccination to monitor their reaction. In clinical trials, humans are only given the vaccine, they are not “challenged” with the virus afterward. In animal studies, they do conduct a challenge test to observe how the animals respond to being infected with the actual virus after being vaccinated.
Will conducting animal studies solve the issue and remove the risk?
Not at all.
Anne De Groot, CEO of EpiVax argues that testing for vaccine safety in primates does not guarantee safety in humans, mainly because primates express different major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, which alters epitope presentation and the immune response. Animals and humans are similar, but they are also very different. In addition, as pointed out above, the development of different viral strains in subsequent years could present a major problem not noticeable during the initial safety trials in either humans or animals.
What about unvaccinated people who are naturally infected with the virus and develop antibodies? Could these people experience ADE to a future strain of SARS-CoV-2?
The ADE response is actually much more complicated than the picture I outlined above. There are other competing and non-competing factors in our immune system that contribute to the ADE response, many of which are not fully understood. Part of that equation is a variety of different types of T-cells that modulate this response, and these T-Cells respond to other portions (epitopes) of the virus. In a vaccine, our body is normally presented with a small part of the virus (like the Spike protein), or a modified (attenuated or dead) virus which is more benign. A vaccine does not expose the entirety of our immune system to the actual virus.
These types of vaccines will only elicit antibodies that recognize the portion of the virus which is present in the vaccine. The other portions of the virus are not represented in the antibody pool. In this scenario, it is much more likely that the vaccine-induced antibodies can be rendered as non-neutralizing antibodies, because the entire virus is not coated in antibodies, only the portion that was used to develop the vaccine.
In a real infection, our immune system is exposed to every nook and cranny of the entire virus, and as such, our immune system develops a panacea of antibodies that recognize different portions of the virus and, therefore, coat more of the virus and neutralize it. In addition, our immune system develops T-Cell responses to hundreds of different peptide epitopes across the virus; whereas in the vaccine the plethora of these T-Cell responses are absent. Researchers are already aware that the T-Cell response plays a cooperative role in either the development of, or absence of, the ADE response.
Based on these differences and the skewed immunological response which is inherent with vaccines, I believe that the risk of ADE is an order of magnitude greater in a vaccine-primed immune system rather than a virus-primed immune system. This will certainly become more apparent as COVID-19 progresses over the years, but the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the vaccine industry to demonstrate that ADE will not rear its ugly head in the near term or the far term. Once a vaccine is administered and people develop antibodies to some misrepresentation of the virus, it cannot be reversed. Again, this is a problem that could manifest itself at a later date.
Although this article focused on the problem of ADE, it is not the only pathway or mechanism that could present a problem for people being infected after vaccination. Another pathway is governed by Th2 immunopathology, in which a defective T-cell response initiates an allergic inflammation reaction. A second pathway is based on the development of faulty antibodies that form immune complexes, which then activate the complement system a consequently damage the airways. These pathways are also potential risks for SARS-CoV-2.
Right now, the fatality rate of the virus is estimated to be approximately 0.26%, and this number seems to be dropping as the virus is naturally attenuating itself through the population. It would be a great shame to vaccinate the entire population against a virus with this low of a fatality rate, especially considering the considerable risk presented by ADE. I believe this risk of developing ADE in a vaccinated individual will be much greater than 0.26%, and, therefore, the vaccine stands to make the problem worse, not better. It would be the biggest blunder of the century to see the fatality rate of this virus increase in the years to come because of our sloppy, haphazard, rushed efforts to develop a vaccine with such a low threshold of safety testing and the prospect of ADE lurking in the shadows. I would hope (and this is a big hope), that this vaccine WILL NOT BE MANDATORY.
Hopefully, you now know a little more about the topic of Antibody Dependent Enhancement, and the real, unpredictable dangers of a coronavirus vaccine. In the end, your health should be your decision, not some bureaucrat’s that doesn’t know the first thing about molecular biology.
REFERENCES
Garber K. Coronavirus vaccine developers wary of errant antibodies. Nature Biotechnology. 2020 Jun 5.
Wan, Yushun, et al. “Molecular mechanism for antibody-dependent enhancement of coronavirus entry.” Journal of virology 94.5 (2020)
Yang, Zhi-yong, et al. “Evasion of antibody neutralization in emerging severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102.3 (2005): 797-801.
Ulrich, Henning, Micheli M. Pillat, and Attila Tárnok. “Dengue Fever, COVID‐19 (SARS‐CoV‐2), and Antibody‐Dependent Enhancement (ADE): A Perspective.” Cytometry Part A (2020).
Wang, Sheng-Fan, et al. “Antibody-dependent SARS coronavirus infection is mediated by antibodies against spike proteins.” Biochemical and biophysical research communications 451.2 (2014): 208-214.
Tseng C Te, Sbrana E, Iwata-Yoshikawa N, Newman PC, Garron T, Atmar RL, et al. Immunization with SARS coronavirus vaccines leads to pulmonary immunopathology on challenge with the SARS virus. PLoS ONE. (2012) 7:35421.
Tetro, Jason A. “Is COVID-19 receiving ADE from other coronaviruses?.” Microbes and infection 22.2 (2020): 72-73
Hohdatsu, Tsutomu, et al. “Antibody-dependent enhancement of feline infectious peritonitis virus infection in feline alveolar macrophages and human monocyte cell line U937 by serum of cats experimentally or naturally infected with feline coronavirus.” Journal of veterinary medical science 60.1 (1998): 49-55.
Leung, Hiu-lan, Nancy. Mechanism of antibody-dependent enhancement in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus infection (Thesis). The University of Hong Kong Libraries.
Yip, M. S., et al. “Antibody-dependent enhancement of SARS coronavirus infection and its role in the pathogenesis of SARS.” Hong Kong Med J 22.3 Suppl 4 (2016): 25-31.
Yip, Ming Shum, et al. “Antibody-dependent infection of human macrophages by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus.” Virology journal 11.1 (2014): 1-11.
Corapi, WAYNE V., C. W. Olsen, and FREDRIC W. Scott. “Monoclonal antibody analysis of neutralization and antibody-dependent enhancement of feline infectious peritonitis virus.” Journal of virology 66.11 (1992): 6695-6705.
Takano, Tomomi, et al. “Antibody-dependent enhancement of serotype II feline enteric coronavirus infection in primary feline monocytes.” Archives of virology 162.11 (2017): 3339-3345.
Yip, Ming S., et al. “Investigation of Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) of SARS coronavirus infection and its role in pathogenesis of SARS.” BMC Proceedings. Vol. 5. No. S1. BioMed Central, 2011.
Fierz, Walter, and Brigitte Walz. “Antibody dependent enhancement due to original antigenic sin and the development of SARS.” Frontiers in immunology 11 (2020).
Ricke, Darrell, and Robert W. Malone. “Medical countermeasures analysis of 2019-nCoV and vaccine risks for antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).” Available at SSRN 3546070 (2020).
Jaume, Martial, et al. “Anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus spike antibodies trigger infection of human immune cells via a pH-and cysteine protease-independent FcγR pathway.” Journal of virology 85.20 (2011): 10582-10597.
Peron, Jean Pierre Schatzmann, and Helder Nakaya. “Susceptibility of the Elderly to SARS-CoV-2 Infection: ACE-2 Overexpression, Shedding, and Antibody-dependent Enhancement (ADE).” Clinics 75 (2020).
Yong, Chean Yeah, et al. “Recent advances in the vaccine development against Middle East respiratory syndrome-coronavirus.” Frontiers in microbiology 10 (2019): 1781.
Wang, Qidi, et al. “Immunodominant SARS coronavirus epitopes in humans elicited both enhancing and neutralizing effects on infection in non-human primates.” ACS infectious diseases 2.5 (2016): 361-376.
Olsen, CHRISTOPHER W., et al. “Monoclonal antibodies to the spike protein of feline infectious peritonitis virus mediate antibody-dependent enhancement of infection of feline macrophages.” Journal of virology 66.2 (1992): 956-965.
Hotez, Peter J., Maria Elena Bottazzi, and David B. Corry. “The potential role of TH17 immune responses in coronavirus immunopathology and vaccine-induced immune enhancement.” (2020).
Morens DM. Antibody-dependent enhancement of infection and the pathogenesis of viral disease. Clin Infect Dis. (1994) 19:500–12
Liu L, Wei Q, Lin Q, Fang J, Wang H, Kwok H, Tang H, Nishiura K, Peng J, Tan Z, et al. Anti‐spike IgG causes severe acute lung injury by skewing macrophage responses during acute SARS‐CoV infection. JCI Insight.2019;4(4):e123158.
de Alwis R, Chen S, Gan ES, Ooi EE. Impact of immune enhancement on Covid‐19 polyclonal hyperimmune globulin therapy and vaccine development. EBioMedicine2020;55:102768.
21st Century Wire | April 12, 2021
Statement from the filmmakers:
A few days ago, Vimeo deleted our Documentary Feature “trustWHO”, directed by Lilian Franck, from their platform, stating that they do not support “Videos that depict or encourage self-harm, falsely claim that mass tragedies are hoaxes, or perpetuate false or misleading claims about vaccine safety.” This claim about our documentary is both misleading and false. “trustWHO” has been thoroughly researched for 7 years; it has been fact-checked and approved by lawyers, experts in the medical field and even by key executives of the WHO itself. The documentary simply investigates how efficiency and transparency of the World Health Organization are undermined by both corporate influences and a lack of public funding. It is a journalistic investigation based on facts – and far from what Vimeo makes it out to be.
This is our full statement on the matter, presented by Robert Cibis (Filmmaker, Co-author and producer of “trustWHO”).
Watch this brief statement and selected excerpts from the film:
To support our work and further investigations for the current Corona Crisis, please help us by donating here:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/co…
You will find the links to our full-length documentary “trustWHO” below:
English:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/det…
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/tru…
https://play.google.com/store/movies/…
Deutsch:
https://www.amazon.de/TrustWHO-OV-Lil…
Français:
https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0FW…
By Glenn Greenwald | April 16, 2021
That Russia placed “bounties” on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was one of the most-discussed and consequential news stories of 2020. It was also, as it turns out, one of the most baseless — as the intelligence agencies who spread it through their media spokespeople now admit, largely because the tale has fulfilled and outlived its purpose.
The saga began on June 26, 2020, when The New York Times announced that unnamed “American intelligence officials” have concluded that “a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops.” The paper called it “a significant and provocative escalation” by Russia. Though no evidence was ever presented to support the CIA’s claims — neither in that original story nor in any reporting since — most U.S. media outlets blindly believed it and spent weeks if not longer treating it as proven, highly significant truth. Leading politicians from both parties similarly used this emotional storyline to advance multiple agendas.
The story appeared — coincidentally or otherwise — just weeks after President Trump announced his plan to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2020. Pro-war members of Congress from both parties and liberal hawks in corporate media spent weeks weaponizing this story to accuse Trump of appeasing Putin by leaving Afghanistan and being too scared to punish the Kremlin. Cable outlets and the op-ed pages of The New York Times and Washington Post endlessly discussed the grave implications of this Russian treachery and debated which severe retaliation was needed. “This is as bad as it gets,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Then-candidate Joe Biden said Trump’s refusal to punish Russia and his casting doubt on the truth of the story was more proof that Trump’s “entire presidency has been a gift to Putin,” while Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) demanded that, in response, the U.S. put Russians and Afghans “in body bags.”
What was missing from this media orgy of indignation and militaristic demands for retaliation was an iota of questioning of whether the story was, in fact, true. All they had was an anonymous leak from “intelligence officials” — which The New York Times on Thursday admitted came from the CIA — but that was all they needed. That is because the vast majority of the corporate sector of the press lives under one overarching rule:
When the CIA or related security state agencies tell American journalists to believe something, we obey unquestioningly, and as a result, whatever assertions are spread by these agencies, no matter how bereft of evidence or shielded by accountability-free anonymity, they instantly transform, in our government-worshipping worldview, into a proven fact — gospel — never to be questioned but only affirmed and then repeated and spread as far and wide as possible.
That has been the dynamic driving the relationship between the corporate press and the CIA for decades, throughout the Cold War and then into the post-9/11 War on Terror and invasion of Iraq. But it has become so much more extreme in the Trump era. As the CIA became one of the leading anti-Trump #Resistance factions — a key player in domestic politics to subvert the presidency of the 45th President regarded by media figures as a Hitler-type menace — the bond between the corporate press and the intelligence community deepened more than ever. It is not an exaggeration to call it a merger: so much so that a parade of former security state officials from the CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS and others was hired by these news outlets to deliver the news. The partnership was no longer clandestine but official, out in the open, and proud.
John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price, Rick Francona…
Also Michael Morell, John McLaughlin, John Sipher, Thomas Bossert, Clint Watts, James Baker, Mike Baker, Daniel Hoffman, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, David Preiss, Evelyn Farkas, Tony Blinken, Mike Rogers, “Alex Finley,” Malcolm Nance…
The first goal this story served was to weaponize it in the battle waged by pro-war House Democrats and their neocon GOP allies to stop Trump’s withdrawal plan from Afghanistan. How, they began demanding upon publication of the CIA/NYT story, can we possibly leave Afghanistan when the Russians are trying to kill our troops? Would that not be a reckless abdication to the Kremlin of this country that we own, and would withdrawal not be a reward to Putin after we learned he was engaged in such dastardly plotting to kill our sons and daughters?
In late June, this alliance of pro-war House Democrats — funded overwhelmingly by military contractors — and the Liz-Cheney-led neocon wing announced amendments to the military budget authorization process that would defund Trump’s efforts to withdraw troops from either Afghanistan or Germany (where they had been stationed for decades to defend Western Europe against a country, the Soviet Union, that ceased to exist decades ago). They instantly weaponized the NYT/CIA story as their primary argument.
The record-breaking $740 billion military budget was scheduled to be approved by the House Armed Services Committee in early July. In a joint statement with Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) on June 29 — the day the NYT story appeared — Liz Cheney proclaimed that “we remain concerned about Russian activity in Afghanistan, including reports that they have targeted U.S. forces.” One of the Democrats’ most pro-war House members, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), announced on July 1 (three days after the NYT story) his own amendment to block any troop withdrawal from Germany, citing “increasing Russian aggression.”
On July 1 and 2, the House Armed Services Committee held its hearings and votes — I watched all fourteen hours and reported on it in a series of articles and a 90-minute video report — and it not only approved this massive military budget but also both amendments to bar troop withdrawal. Over and over, the union of pro-war Democrats and Cheney-led neocon Republicans steamrolled the anti-war faction of left-wing and right-wing war opponents (led by Congressmembers Ro Khanna (D-CA), Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL)), and repeatedly used the Russia bounty story to justify continuation of the longest war in America’s history. This little speech from Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) was illustrative of how this CIA story was used all day:
The U.S. media was somehow more militaristic and blindly trusting about this CIA story than even this pro-war union of lawmakers. That the CIA’s leaked claim to The New York Times should even be questioned at all — given that it was leaked anonymously and was accompanied by exactly zero evidence — is not something that even crossed their journalistic minds.
These people who call themselves “journalists” do not view pronouncements from the U.S. security state as something that prompts skepticism let alone requires evidence before believing. The officials who run those agencies are their friends, partners and colleagues — those they most revere — and their every utterance is treated as Gospel. If — after watching them behave this way the last five years without pause — you think that is an exaggeration, watch this short video compilation produced by The Daily Caller to see for yourself how they instantly converted this CIA “Russia bounty” leak into proven fact that nobody, least of all them, should question:
As usual, the media figure most loudly and dramatically enshrining the CIA leak about Russia as Proven Truth was the undisputed Queen of demented conspiracy theories, jingoistic rhetoric, and CIA propaganda: MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Over and over, she devoted melodramatic segments to denouncing the unparalleled evil of Russian treachery in Afghanistan (because the U.S. would never pay bounties to kill Russian soldiers in Afghanistan), at no point pausing her histrionics for even a second or two to wonder whether evidence ought to be presented before telling the millions of #Resistance liberals who watch her show that she is vouching for the truth of this story.
Predictably, now that this CIA tale has served its purpose (namely, preventing Trump from leaving Afghanistan), and now that its enduring effects are impeding the Biden administration (which wants to leave Afghanistan and so needs to get rid of this story), the U.S. Government is now admitting that — surprise! — they had no convincing evidence for this story all along.
The Daily Beast on Thursday was the first to notice that “the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had ‘low to moderate’ confidence in the story after all.” The outlet added: “that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.” The Guardian also reported that “US intelligence agencies have only ‘low to moderate confidence’ in reports last year that Russian spies were offering Taliban militants in Afghanistan bounties for killing US soldiers.” NBC News went even further, citing Biden’s campaign attacks on Trump for failing to punish Putin for these bounties, and noting: “Such a definitive statement was questionable even then…. They still have not found any evidence, a senior defense official said Thursday.”
What made this admission particularly bizarre — aside from rendering weeks of decrees from media figures and politicians humiliatingly reckless and baseless — is that the Biden administration continued to assert this claim as truth as recently as Thursday. When announcing new sanctions aimed at Moscow and diplomatic expulsions of Russian diplomats — primarily in response to allegations of Russian hacking — the White House said “it was responding to reports that Russia encouraged Taliban fighters to injure or kill coalition forces in Afghanistan.” The official White House announcement of the retaliation said explicitly that “the Administration is responding to the reports that Russia encouraged Taliban attacks against U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan based on the best assessments from the Intelligence Community (IC)” — a claim for which the IC itself admits it has only “low to moderate confidence” is even true.
When asked about this glaring contradiction yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki gave an answer that barely rose to the level of cogency, yet she clearly admitted the lack of evidentiary basis for this long-standing CIA/media tale:
That there is no evidence for this media-laundered CIA story is not something we learned only yesterday. It has been obvious for many months. In September, NBC News — as Maddow was in the midst of her performative sadness and indignation over the story on its cable network — noted:
Two months after top Pentagon officials vowed to get to the bottom of whether the Russian government bribed the Taliban to kill American service members, the commander of troops in the region says a detailed review of all available intelligence has not been able to corroborate the existence of such a program.
“It just has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me,” Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command, told NBC News. McKenzie oversees U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. continues to hunt for new information on the matter, he said.
“We continue to look for that evidence,” the general said. “I just haven’t seen it yet.
That was what made the refusal to question this story all along so maddening. Not only was no evidence presented to support the CIA’s assertions — something that, by itself, should have prevented every real journalist from endorsing its truth — but commanders in Afghanistan were saying months ago they could not find convincing evidence for it. That is what The Daily Beast meant in Thursday’s report when it said “there were reasons to doubt the story from the start” — not just the lack of evidence but also that “the initial stories emphasize[d] its basis on detainee reporting” and “the bounties represented a qualitative shift in recent Russian engagements with Afghan insurgents.” NBC News on Thursday also said that “such a definitive statement was questionable even then.”
But these doubts were virtually non-existent in most media reports. Indeed, one of the New York Times reporters who broke the story publicly attacked me as a conspiracy theorist back in September when I cited that NBC News story about the lack of evidence while pointing out what a crucial role this uncorroborated story played in stopping troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and claiming Trump was beholden to Putin. And while The Daily Beast on Thursday said there were reasons to doubt the story from the start, that same outlet was one of the most vocal and aggressive in pushing the story as true:
Even worse, other media outlets — led by The Washington Post — purported to have “independently confirmed” the NYT/CIA tale of Russian bounties. Twice in the last year, I have written about this bizarre practice where media outlets purport to “independently confirm” one another’s false stories by doing nothing more than going to the same anonymous sources who whisper to them the same things while providing no evidence. Yet they use this phrase “independent confirmation” to purposely imply that they obtained separate evidence corroborating the truth of the original story:
We have confirmed the @nytimes scoop: A Russian military spy unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan. From @nakashimae @missy_ryan me and @shaneharris
For months, pro-war members of both parties and leading members of the NYT/CNN/MSNBC media axis pushed a story — an inflammatory, dangerous one — based on nothing more than the say-so of anonymous CIA operatives. How can anyone do this who knows even the bare minimum about what this agency does and what its function is: to spread disinformation not just to foreign countries but the domestic population as well? It is both mystifying and toxic. But for people who call themselves “journalists” to repeat, over and over, evidence-free CIA claims, telling those who trust them to believe it, is nothing short of repulsive.
If you think that, upon learning yesterday’s news, there was any self-reflection on the part of the media figures who spread this, or that they felt chastened about it in any way, you would be very, very wrong. In fact, not only did few if any admit error, but they did exactly the same thing on Thursday about a brand new evidence-free assertion from the U.S. Government concerning Russia: they mindlessly assumed it true and then stated it to millions of people as fact. They are not embarrassed to get caught spreading false CIA propaganda. They see their role, correctly, as doing exactly that.
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, run by Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, issued a short Press Release about its targeting of Russian-Ukrainian political consultant, Konstantin Kilimnik, with new sanctions. One sentence of this press release asserted a claim that the Mueller investigation, after searching for eighteen months, never found: namely, that “Kilimnik provided the Russia intelligence services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy” that he received from then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Is it true that Kilimnik passed this polling data to the Kremlin? Maybe. But there is no way for a rational person — let alone someone calling themselves a “journalist” — to conclude that it is true. Why? Because, like the CIA tale about Russian bounties — a claim they learned yesterday had no evidence — this is nothing more than a U.S. Government assertion that lacks any evidence.
Do you think journalists learned the lesson that they just had rubbed in their faces hours before about the foolishness of assuming official statements to be true with no evidence? Of course that is a rhetorical question: too many to count instantly proclaimed that this story was true without spending an ounce of mental energy to question if it was or apply any skepticism. Here’s Maddow’s MSNBC comrade showing how this is done:
Do you see what Hayes just did there? It is vital not to lose sight of how irresponsible and destructive this behavior is just because it is now so common. He saw a Press Release from a U.S. Government agency, read an assertion that it contained in one sentence, had no evidence that this assertion was true, but nonetheless “reported” it as if it were proven fact to millions of people in a predictably viral tweet.
Hayes was far from alone. I cannot count how many employees of corporate media outlets did the same: read the Treasury Department’s Press Release and, without pausing for a second, proclaimed it to be true. Indeed, the two MSNBC hosts who follow Hayes’s nightly news program explicitly described this evidence-free Press Release as “confirmation”— confirmation!
Let’s set aside the absurdity of treating this as some shocking revelation even if it were true. Just like the oozing historical ignorance of pretending that there would be something astonishing about Russians paying for the killing of U.S. troops in Afghanistan when the CIA just last week explicitly boasted of having done the same to Russian soldiers in Afghanistan, what is this Treasury Press Release supposed to prove that is so breathtaking and scandalous: that the Kremlin could not possibly have obtained polling data about the U.S. electorate had Manafort not provided it to them? That they never would have known that Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were swing states without an elaborate plot of collusion to learn this from the Trump campaign?
But the far more important point is the U.S. media’s willingness — their subservient eagerness — to obediently treat U.S. government pronouncements as Truth. Just like with the Russia bounty story, where there were ample reasons to doubt it from the start, the same is true of this Treasury Press Release. To begin with, if this were such a smoking gun “confirming” collusion, why did the Mueller investigation after eighteen months of highly aggressive subpoena-driven investigative activity not discover it?
Let’s express this as clearly as it can be expressed. Any journalist who treats unverified stories from the CIA or other government agencies as true, without needing any evidence or applying any skepticism, is worthless. Actually, they are worse than worthless: they are toxic influences who deserve pure contempt. Every journalist knows that governments lie constantly and that it is a betrayal of their profession to serve as mindless mouthpieces for these security agencies: that is why they will vehemently deny they do this if you confront them with this accusation. They know it is a shameful thing to do.
But just look at what they are doing: exactly this. These are not journalists. They are obsequious spokespeople for the CIA and other official authorities. Even when they learn that they deceived millions of people by uncritically repeating a story that the CIA told them was true, they will — on the very same day that they learn they did this — do exactly the same thing, this time with a one-paragraph Treasury Department Press Release. These are agents of disinformation: state media. And when they speak, you should listen to them with the knowledge of what they really are, and treat them accordingly.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation | April 16, 2021
The latest attack by the Biden administration against our country cannot go unanswered. It seems Washington is unwilling to accept that there is no room for unilateral dictates in the new geopolitical reality. Meanwhile, the bankrupt scenarios for deterring Moscow that the US myopically continues to pursue only promise to further degrade Russian-US relations.
In this context, the appeals from across the ocean to refrain from escalation and essentially accept this attempt to talk to us from a position of strength sound hypocritical. We have repeatedly warned and demonstrated in practice that sanctions and any other pressure will never succeed and will only have dire consequences for those who dare attempt such provocations.
We will introduce the following countermeasures in response to anti-Russian sanctions in the near future:
These steps represent just a fraction of the capabilities at our disposal. Unfortunately, US statements threatening to introduce new forms of punishment show that Washington is not willing to listen and does not appreciate the restraint that we have displayed despite the tensions that have been purposefully fuelled since the presidency of Barack Obama.
Recall that after a large-scale expulsion of Russian diplomats in December 2016 and the seizure of Russian diplomatic property in the US, we did not take any response measures for seven months. We responded only when Russia was declared a US adversary legislatively in August 2017.
In general, compared to the Russian diplomatic missions in the United States, the US Embassy in Moscow operates in better conditions, enjoying a numerical advantage and actively benefitting from the work of Russian citizens hired in-country. This form of disparity frees up “titular” diplomats to interfere in our domestic affairs, which is one of the main tenets of Washington’s foreign policy doctrine.
Incidentally, soon the Foreign Ministry will publish on its website the names of eight incumbent and former high-ranking US officials and other figures involved in drafting and implementing anti-Russia policy. They will be permanently banned from entering the Russian Federation. This is our equivalent response to the sanctions against Russian officials that the US blacklisted last month.
Now is the time for the United States to show common sense and pull back from this confrontational course. Otherwise, the US will face a host of painful decisions, for instance, an order for US diplomatic missions to reduce personnel in Russia to 300 people. This will establish real parity at bilateral foreign offices because the US quota of 455 employees still includes the 155 people sent to the Russian Permanent Mission to the UN in New York. However, this has nothing to do with our bilateral mission.
There are also other options. Of course, we realise that we are limited in our ability to squeeze the Americans economically as they have us. However, we have some resources in this respect and they will also be used if Washington chooses to follow the path of spiraling sanctions.
None of this is our choice. We would like to avoid further escalation with the US. We are ready to engage in calm and professional dialogue with the US in order to find ways of normalising bilateral ties. However, the reality is that we hear one thing from Washington but see something completely different in practice. There must be no doubt – not a single round of sanctions will go unanswered.
We have obviously heard President Joe Biden express interest in stable, constructive and predictable relations with Russia, including a proposed Russian-US summit. When this offer was made, it was received positively and is now being considered in the context of concrete developments.
Press release on a ban on entry of certain US citizens into the Russian Federation
In response to the sanctions against Russian officials imposed by the US administration on March 2 of this year, the following incumbent and former US high-ranking officials and figures complicit in pursuing the anti-Russia policy, are denied entry to the Russian Federation:
In addition, entry is denied to John Robert Bolton, former National Security Advisor to the United States President, former US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and Robert James Woolsey Jr., former director of the US Central Intelligence Agency.
In view of the unprecedented complications in Russia-US relations provoked by Washington, it was decided to deviate from the usual practice of not making public the response measures taken by the Russian side.
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | April 17, 2021
The question of how SARS-CoV-2 came to wreak havoc on the planet is one many have asked but none, so far, have answered. The truth is out there, but the very people on the case could have every reason to ensure it doesn’t emerge.
On April 14, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines revealed that after over a year of determined sleuthing, US spying agencies had no concrete answers on basic questions regarding the origins of the 2019 coronavirus.
“It is absolutely accurate the intelligence community does not know exactly where, when, or how Covid-19 virus was transmitted initially,” Haines told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Components have coalesced around two alternative theories, these scenarios are it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, or it was a laboratory accident.”
This time last year, Donald Trump alleged he’d seen evidence confirming covid was laboratory-made and, throughout 2020, former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove also claimed the virus was “an engineered escapee” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Haines’ public admission that a “laboratory accident” is a possible explanation is significant because intelligence services have thus far been quick to dismiss the suggestion as a conspiracy theory whenever it’s been aired in public. In response to Trump’s statement for example, the Director of National Intelligence’s office firmly refuted the idea Covid-19 was “manmade or genetically modified.” Of course, the virus could be neither and still have escaped from a lab.
WHO, what, why, where and Wuhan?
While the World Health Organization (WHO) is yet to comment on Haines’ seeming change of heart, the lab theory stands in stark contrast with the agency’s long-held public position. In March, it issued a report, based on the findings of an international team of scientists who spent four weeks in Wuhan probing covid’s origins. They concluded that of all the various explanations, a laboratory leak was by far and away the least likely.
For many though, the report raised far more questions than it answered. Even WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was critical of the team’s investigation – his response to the scientists’ public presentation of their findings was measured yet withering.
“The team… visited several laboratories in Wuhan and considered the possibility that the virus entered the human population as a result of a laboratory incident. I do not believe this assessment was extensive enough,” he said. “Further data and studies will be needed to reach more robust conclusions…this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy.”
Quite an indictment of the 10-strong squad of researchers, considering they had been presented by the mainstream media ahead of their excursion as unimpeachable, world-class authorities on virology and public health determined – and destined – to get to the truth. That their investigation of the laboratory leak theory was so undercooked is particularly striking given the only US-based representative on the team, Peter Daszak, is President of EcoHealth Alliance, which has in recent years conducted extensive work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Friends and funding
Then again, Daszak would have a great many reasons for leaving certain stones unturned. For one, he’s a close friend and ardent supporter of Shi Zhengli, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at WIV, who has been repeatedly forced to deny her lab was the source of coronavirus. In June 2020, Scientific American described the pair as “long-time collaborators” – Daszak also staunchly defended his associate, stating she “leads a world-class lab of the highest standards,” and rubbished allegations she or her organization were in any way responsible for covid’s spread.
From 2014 to 2019, Daszak worked with Zhengli on investigating and cataloging bat coronaviruses across China, an initiative funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the tune of $3.7 million. Thereafter, the EcoHealth chief transferred this effort to the University of North Carolina, where he began ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses and chimeras in humanized mice.
In a December 2019 interview, he somewhat ominously told virologist Vincent Racaniello that some coronaviruses may “get into human cells,” one can “manipulate in the lab pretty easily,” are untreatable with antibodies, and “you can’t vaccinate against them with a vaccine.”
NIH withdrew its backing for the EcoHealth project in April 2020 under pressure from the Trump administration, a move that garnered significant sympathetic media attention for the organisation, and Daszak. The move was reversed to much fanfare in August, and EcoHealth’s funding more than doubled to $7.5 million. However, what no media outlet noted at any stage was the non-profit’s NIH support represents a negligible fraction of its US government income. The overwhelming majority of EcoHealth’s revenue, accounting for almost $40 million between 2013 and 2020, flows from the Department of Defense (DoD).
What happened in 2019?
A State Department factsheet on WIV published in January notes that “several researchers” at the Institute became sick in autumn 2019, “before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses,” raising questions about the credibility of Zhengli’s claims that there was “zero infection” among WIV staff and students prior to the pandemic.
The factsheet also asserted that “scientists in China have researched animal-derived coronaviruses under conditions that increased the risk for accidental and potentially unwitting exposure,” and “secret Chinese military projects” may have been conducted at the Institute since at least 2017.
Perhaps predictably, there was no mention that the US military may have funded, whether directly or indirectly, projects conducted at WIV. It’s notable that $34.6 million of EcoHealth’s DoD funding came from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a Pentagon division working to “counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.”
‘Rumours and misinformation’
Daszak’s clear conflict of interest in the WHO probe is rendered all the more shocking when one considers he was lead author of a joint statement published in The Lancet in February 2020, which strongly condemned “rumours and misinformation” relating to covid – namely, that it may have emerged from a laboratory.
“Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus,” the statement, signed by 27 scientists – four of whom hold positions with EcoHealth – contended.
The letter’s publication was highly significant, as it publicly cemented the notion of a scientific consensus around covid’s origins. This ‘consensus’ emerged shortly after a draft genome of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 had been released for analysis. As MIT’s Technology Review notes, numerous scientists who’d begun studying the draft were surprised by what they found.
Among them was Nikolai Petrovsky, a highly-regarded professor at Australia’s Flinders University and chair of Vaxine, a company that develops immunizations for infectious diseases, which since 2005 has received millions in NIH funding.
“[Computer modeling] generated a startling result: the spike proteins studding SARS-CoV-2 bound more tightly to their human cell receptor, a protein called ACE2, than target receptors on any other species evaluated. In other words, SARS-CoV-2 was surprisingly well adapted to its human prey, which is unusual for a newly emerging pathogen,” Technology Review records.
Petrovsky and his associates immediately set about writing a speculative paper asking whether the virus was “completely natural” or had originated from “a recombination event that occurred inadvertently or intentionally in a laboratory handling coronaviruses.”
The virological is political
But Petrovsky struggled to find a publisher, with at least one open access repository rejecting his work outright. It wasn’t until May 2020 that the paper was finally released, and by that time suggestions of a lab leak had been comprehensively discredited – not least due to Trump’s pronouncements in that regard having made the matter political.
As Technology Review notes, it had become “career suicide for scientists to voice suspicions about a possible lab leak,” and the community was “unwilling to challenge the orthodoxy” as a result. In turn, it was virtually impossible for journalists to write credible stories questioning covid’s origins without being branded Trump apologists, conspiracy theorists, or worse.
The WHO Director General’s pledge to redeploy experts to Wuhan has prompted several scientists, who reluctantly fell victim to this conspiracy of silence, to come forward and voice their concerns. It also raises the prospect that some answers might finally be found.
One would hope that between the WHO, grossly overpaid US intelligence services ($85 billion last year), and millions of independent researchers the world over, the truth may one day emerge. But one shouldn’t hold one’s breath. When powerful people have a vested interest in suppressing inconvenient facts, secrets can be kept forever, and that’s without factoring in the cottage industry that has emerged dedicated to stigmatizing laboratory accident theories.
A case in point; The Lancet has established a 12-member COVID Commission panel to investigate the origins of the virus. Its chair is none other than the ubiquitous Peter Daszak – and half his taskforce’s members were signatories to the February 2020 statement that did so much to muzzle so many.
Peter Daszak and EcoHealth have been approached for comment.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
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Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
By James Petras • Unz Review • April 8, 2018
Introduction
As of April 7, nearly three thousand unarmed Christian, Muslim and secular Palestinians have been wounded, over three dozen are in critical condition and at least twenty-five unarmed protestors, including children have been assassinated by hundreds of Israeli snipers and heavily armed troops shooting tank shells into crowds of civilians protesting their decades of incarceration by the racist Israeli state.
The Israeli government praised the ‘restraint and morality’ of the IDF, as did the fifty-two Major Jewish American Organizations (MJAO) who largely control the US Congress. These grotesque massacres began during the Christian Holy Week on Good Friday and Easter, coinciding with the Jewish Passover. The self-righteous officials of the MJAO and their relatives and friends broke matzos at joyful Seders as the blood of Palestinians soaked into ground at the fence containing the largest open-air prison camp in history, Gaza.
While tribal loyalties bonded the Israeli and Jewish American leaders, the politicians of the Western oligarchic electoral regimes refrained from criticizing the shocking display of brute force and even defended Israel’s cold blood mass killings of Palestinian civilians in their Gaza prison.
This paper will discuss and analyze the reasons for Israel’s willing Western accomplices and the centrality of its fifth column in the United States. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
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