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WHO Renews Push for Global Pandemic Treaty, as World Bank Creates $1 Billion Fund for Vaccine Passports

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 9, 2022

The World Health Organization (WHO) is moving ahead with plans to enact a new or revised international pandemic preparedness treaty, despite encountering setbacks earlier this summer after dozens of countries, primarily outside the Western world, objected to the plan.

A majority of WHO member states on July 21, during a meeting of WHO’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), agreed to pursue a legally binding pandemic instrument that will contain “both legally binding as well as non-legally binding elements.”

STAT News described the agreement, which would create a new global framework for responding to pandemics, as “the most transformative global health call to action since [the] WHO itself was formed as the first specialized United Nations agency in 1948.”

Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum, African Union and World Bank — which created a $1 billion fund for “disease surveillance” and “support against the current as well as future pandemics” — are developing their own pandemic response mechanisms, including new cross-country vaccine passport frameworks.

WHO’s ‘pandemic treaty’: what’s been proposed and what would it mean?

Ongoing talks to formulate a new or revised “pandemic treaty” are building on the existing international framework for global pandemic response, the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR), considered a binding instrument of international law.

On Dec. 1, 2021, in response to calls from various governments for a “strengthened global pandemic strategy” and signaling the urgency with which these entities are acting, the WHO formally launched the process of creating a new treaty or amending the IHR, during Special Session — only the second in the organization’s history.

During the meeting, held May 10-11, WHO’s 194 member countries unanimously agreed to launch the process, which previously had been discussed only informally.

The member countries agreed to:

“Kickstart a global process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”

The IHR, a relatively recent development, were first enacted in 2005, in the aftermath of SARS-CoV-1.

The IHR legal framework is one of only two binding treaties the WHO has achieved since its inception, the other being the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

The IHR framework already allows the WHO director-general to declare a public health emergency in any country, without the consent of that country’s government, though the framework requires the two sides to first attempt to reach an agreement.

The proposals for a new or revised pandemic treaty, put forth at the special ministerial session of the WHO in May, would “somewhat” strengthen the WHO’s pandemic-related powers, including establishing a “Compliance Committee” that would issue advisory recommendations for states.

However, according to the Daily Sceptic, while the IHR is already legally binding, the amendments proposed in May would not strengthen existing legal obligations or requirements:

“The existing treaty regulations, like all (or most) international law, do not actually compel states to do anything other than talk to the WHO and listen to it, and neither do they specify sanctions for non-compliance; almost all their output is advice.

“The proposed amendments don’t alter that. They don’t allow the WHO unilaterally to impose legally binding measures on or within countries.”

The Daily Sceptic noted one of the risks stemming from the negotiations for a new or updated treaty include the potential codification of “the new lockdown orthodoxy for future pandemics,” which would “replace the sound, science-based, pre-COVID recommendations” previously in place.

According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, such a treaty would grant the WHO “absolute power over global biosecurity, such as the power to implement digital identities/vaccine passports, mandatory vaccinations, travel restrictions, standardized medical care and more.”

Mercola also questioned a “one-size-fits-all approach to pandemic response,” pointing out that “pandemic threats are not identical in all parts of the world. In his view, he said, “the WHO is not qualified to make global health decisions.”

Similar concerns contributed at least in part to opposition against the proposals presented at the special ministerial session, during which a bloc of mostly non-Western countries, including China, India, Russia and 47 African nations, prevented an agreement from being finalized.

Will opposition fade away?

Although no final agreement was achieved at the May meeting, consensus was reached to organize a new special ministerial session of the WHO later this year, possibly after the WHO’s World Health Assembly, scheduled for Nov. 29 through Dec. 1, Reuters reported.

Mxolisi Nkosi, South Africa’s ambassador to the UN, told the WHO’s annual ministerial assembly the new special session would “consider the benefits for such a convention, agreement or other international instrument.”

Nkosi added:

“Probably the most important lesson COVID-19 has taught us is the need for stronger and more agile collective defences against health threats as well as for building resilience to address future potential pandemics.

“A new pandemic treaty is central to this.”

At the time, the U.K.’s ambassador to the UN, Simon Manley, addressing the lack of an immediate agreement and the consensus to hold a new meeting, tweeted “negotiations may take time, but this is a historic step towards global health security.”

The INB, at its meeting held in Geneva July 18-21, also agreed with this view, reaching a consensus that its members will work on finalizing a new legally binding international pandemic agreement by May 2024.

As part of this process, the INB will meet again in December and will deliver a progress report to the 76th World Health Assembly of the WHO in 2023.

According to the WHO, “Any new agreement, if any when agreed by Member States, is drafted and negotiated by governments themselves, [which] will take any action in line with their sovereignty.”

The WHO further claims that “governments themselves will determine actions under the accord while considering their own national laws and regulations.”

The Biden administration expressed broad support for a new or updated pandemic treaty, with the U.S. heading previous negotiations on this issue, along with the European Commission, via its president Ursula von der Leyen, who, as previously reported by The Defender, is also a strong proponent of vaccine passports and mandatory COVID-19 vaccination.

An analysis by the Alliance for Natural Health International speculated that any final agreement may simply strengthen the existing IHR or, alternatively, may involve an amendment to the WHO’s constitution — or both.

Just two days after the July 21 INB agreement, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, tweeted:

“I’m pleased that alongside the process of negotiating a new [international] accord on pandemic preparedness & response, WHO’s Member States are also considering targeted amendments to the [IHR], incl. ways to improve the process for declaring a [public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC].”

In the same Twitter thread, he also declared the ongoing monkeypox outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern,” one “that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners.”

Notably, the WHO director-general overruled an expert panel that was divided over whether to classify the outbreak as a global public health emergency.

With this declaration, three “global health emergencies” are now in place, as determined by the WHO: COVID-19, monkeypox and polio.

Busy summer for vaccine passport proposals

While the WHO and global governments weigh plans for an updated or new pandemic treaty, other organizations are moving forward on vaccine passport technologies and partnerships.

On July 8, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), composed of many of the world’s industrialized nations, announced it would promote the unification of the different vaccine passport systems currently in use around the world.

Thirty-six countries and international organizations participated in a July meeting with the goal of “creating a multilateral framework for establishing a global vaccine passport regime,” according to Nick Corbishley of Naked Capitalism.

The development is a continuation of efforts involving the WHO to harmonize global vaccine passport regimes.

In February, the WHO selected Germany’s T-Systems as an “industry partner to develop the vaccination validation service,” which would enable “vaccination certificates to be checked across national borders.”

T-Systems, an arm of Deutsche Telekom, was previously instrumental in developing the interoperability of vaccine passport systems in Europe.

Also in July, 21 African governments “quietly embraced” a vaccine passport system, which in turn would also be interlinked with other such systems globally.

On July 8, which is also Africa Integration Day, the African Union and the Africa Centers for Disease Control launched a digital vaccine passport valid throughout the African Union, describing it as “the e-health backbone” of Africa’s “new health order.”

This follows the development in 2021, of the Trusted Travel platform, now required by several African countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Togo and Zimbabwe, and air carriers such as EgyptAir, Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya Airways, for both inbound and outbound travel.

Beyond Africa, Indonesia, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the G20, is conducting “pilot projects” that would bring about the interoperability of the various digital vaccine passport systems currently in use globally. The project is expected to be completed by November, in time for the G20 Leaders’ Summit.

Naked Capitalism highlighted the role of South African company Cassava Fintech in the efforts to develop an interoperable vaccine passport for all of Africa.

A subsidiary of African telecommunication company Econet, Cassava initially developed the “Sasail” app, which the company described as Africa’s first “global super app” that combines “social payments” with the ability to send and receive money and pay bills, chat with others and play games.

Cassava and Econet entered into a strategic partnership with Mastercard, “to advance digital inclusion across Africa and collaborate on a range of initiatives, including expansion of the Africa CDC TravelPass.”

As previously reported by The Defender, Mastercard supports the Good Health Pass vaccine passport initiative that is also backed by the ID2020 alliance and endorsed by embattled former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair.

Mastercard has also promoted technology that can be embedded into the DO Card, a credit/debit card that keeps track of one’s “personal carbon allowance.”

ID2020, founded in 2016, claims to support “ethical, privacy-protecting approaches to digital ID.” Its founding partners include Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation, Accenture, GAVI-The Vaccine Alliance (itself a core partner of the WHO), UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank.

Mastercard’s top two stockholders are Vanguard and BlackRock, which hold significant stakes in dozens of companies that supported the development of vaccine passports or implemented vaccine mandates for their employees. The two investment firms also hold large stakes in vaccine manufacturers, including Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

Mastercard provides funding for the World Bank’s Identity for Development (ID4D) Program, which “focuses on promoting digital identification systems to improve development outcomes while maintaining trust and privacy.”

The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York School of Law recently described the ID4D program, which touts its alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) , as one which could pave the way to a “digital road to hell.”

According to the center, this would occur through the prioritization of “economic identity” and the use of an infrastructure that has “been linked to severe and large-scale human rights violations” in several countries.

Mastercard is also active in Africa through its joint initiative with another fintech (financial technology) company, Paycode, to “increase access to financial services and government assistance for remote communities across Africa” via a biometric identity system containing the data of 30 million individuals.

World Bank, WHO promote ‘pandemic preparedness’ and vaccine passports

The World Bank in late June announced the creation of a fund that will “finance investments in strengthening the fight against pandemics” and “support prevention, preparedness and response … with a focus on low- and middle-income countries.”

The fund was developed under the lead of the U.S., Italy and current G20 president Indonesia, “with broad support from the G20,” and will be active later this year.

It will provide more than $1 billion in funding for areas such as “disease surveillance” and “support against the current as well as future pandemics.”

The WHO is also a “stakeholder” in the project and will provide “technical expertise,” according to WHO’s director-general.

The agreement follows a 2019 strategic partnership between the UN and the World Economic Forum, to “accelerate” the implementation of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its SDGs.

Although the agreement has recently circulated on social media, it was announced in June 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. It encompasses six areas of focus, including “health” and “digital cooperation.”

In terms of health, the agreement purports that it will “support countries [sic] achieve good health and well-being for all, within the context of the 2030 Agenda, focusing on key emerging global health threats that require stronger multistakeholder partnership and action.”

In turn, the “digital cooperation” promoted by the agreement will purportedly “meet the needs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution while seeking to advance global analysis, dialogue and standards for digital governance and digital inclusiveness.”

However, despite rhetoric preaching “inclusiveness,” individuals and entities that have refused to go along with applications such as vaccine passports have faced repercussions in their personal and professional lives.

Such was the example of a Canadian doctor who was fined $6,255 in June over her refusal to use the country’s ArriveCAN health information app — which is being investigated over privacy concerns — to enter the country.

Dr. Ann Gillies said she was fined when re-entering Canada after attending a conference in the U.S.

Andrew Bud, the CEO of biometric ID company iProove, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security contractor, described vaccine certificates as driving “the whole field of digital ID in the future,” adding they are “not just about COVID [but] about something even bigger” and that “once adopted for COVID [they] will be rapidly used for everything else.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

August 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Germany plans China-style color code vaccine passport upgrade with multiple tiers of “rights”

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | August 10, 2022

German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has announced that the nation’s digital contact tracing and vaccine passport app, Corona-Warn-App (CWA), will start assigning different colors to citizens based on whether they received a COVID-19 vaccine within the last three months.

The CWA will assign one color to citizens who add proof that they received a vaccine within the last three months and a different color to citizens who add proof of vaccination that’s more than three months old. Only those with the color showing that they’re “freshly vaccinated” (have received a vaccine within the last three months) will be exempt from Germany’s mask requirement in public indoor spaces.

Other citizens, including those who received multiple vaccines but had their last vaccine more than three months ago, will have to show proof of recent recovery from COVID or a current negative test to get an exemption from this mask requirement.

Germany’s Berliner Zeitung noted that the colors codes in the vaccine passport app would “give different rights in the future” and said the system would put citizens who are already quadruple vaccinated on the same legal footing as those who are unvaccinated.

Berliner Zeitung also reported that this new German vaccine passport system would be similar to China’s color code vaccine passport system. China’s system assigns a green, yellow, or red code to citizens. Those with a green code are allowed to move freely, those with a yellow code may be asked to stay home for seven days, and those with a red code have to quarantine for two weeks.

Despite moving to this color code vaccine passport system, Lauterbach has admitted that the goalposts could shift at any time and that if too many freshly vaccinated people make use of the mask exception, Germany will change the rules and close the exception.

Lauterbach, who is quadruple vaccinated, announced this new color code vaccine passport system four days after he contracted COVID. The new vaccine passport system is being introduced as part of Germany’s “Infection Protection Act.”

Health agencies defended the rollout of vaccine passports and other COVID surveillance measures by claiming that they would prevent the spread of the coronavirus. However, in recent weeks, government health experts have admitted that COVID vaccines don’t prevent infection.

Despite this admission, Germany and other nations are continuing to push far-reaching, restrictive vaccine passport systems. Some countries are also combining vaccine passports with digital ID or rolling out more invasive COVID surveillance devices such as wristbands and ankle bracelets.

August 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 2 Comments

‘Coup’ Means Whatever the Regime Wants It to Mean

 By Ryan McMaken – Ludwig von Mises Institute – August 10, 2022 

In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, many pundits and politicians were eager to describe the events of that day a s a coup d’etat in which the nation was “this close” to having some sort of junta void the 2020 election and take power in Washington.

The headlines at the time were unambiguous in their assertions that the riot was a coup or attempted coup. For example, the riot was “A Very American Coup” according to a headline at the New Republic. “This Is a Coup” insists a writer at Foreign Policy. The Atlantic presented photos purported to be “Scenes from an American Coup.”

This general tactic has not changed since then. Just this month, for example, Vanity Fair referred to the January 6 riots as “Trump’s attempted coup” Last month, Vox called it “Trump’s cuckoo coup.” Moreover, anti-Trump politicians have repeatedly referred to the riot as a coup, and “attempted coup” has become the standard term of choice for the January 6 panel.

At the time, it was obvious that if the riot was a coup at all, it failed utterly. Thus, the debate is now over whether or not it was an attempted coup. On January 8, 2021, I argued the riot was not an attempted coup. Now, 18 months later, after months of “investigation” and testimony to the January 6 committee, we’ve learned new details about the events that occurred that day. And now I can say with even more confidence: the January 6 riot was not an attempted coup.

It was not an attempted coup because it simply wasn’t the sort of event that historians and political scientists—the people who actually study coups—generally define as a coup. Even the Justice Department admits that virtually all of the rioters were, at most, guilty only of crimes such as trespassing and disorderly conduct. Among the tiny minority of those charged with actual conspiracy—11 people—they lacked any sort of institutional backing or support that is necessary for a coup attempt to take place.

Nor is this just some meaningless debate over semantics. Words matter and definitions matter. This should be abundantly clear to anyone in our current age of debates over what terms like “recession” or “vaccine” or “woman” mean. In fact, the use of the term “coup” has been thoroughly weaponized in that outside academic circles it is employed largely as a pejorative to discredit political acts designed to register discontent with a ruling regime or to oppose a ruling coalition. For many, the term coup is now used increasingly to describe political acts one doesn’t like. But if the term “coup” ultimately means “political thing those bad guys did” then it ceases to have any precise meaning at all. But, the use of the term in this way does explain why so many pundits and politicians routinely use the term to label their opponents coup plotters. It’s basically name calling, and really only tells us about the user’s political leanings.

What Is a Coup?

In their article for the Journal of Peace Research, “Global Instances of Coups from 1950 to 2010: A New Dataset,” authors Jonathan M. Powell and Clayton L. Thyne provide a definition:

A coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive.

Although the terms “military” and “coup” are routinely employed together, Powell and Thyne emphasize military involvement at early stages is not necessary:

[Other definitions] more broadly allow non-military elites, civilian groups, and even mercenaries to be included as coup perpetrators. This broad definition includes four sources, including [a definition stating that coup] perpetrators need only be ‘organized factions’. We take a middle ground. Coups may be undertaken by any elite who is part of the state apparatus. These can include non-civilian members of the military and security services, or civilian members of government.

Moreover, it is not necessary that violence actually be used. The presence of a threat issued by some organized group of elites is sufficient.

This definition is helpful because there are many types of political actions that are not coups, even if the intended outcome is a change in the ruling regime. The definition offered by Powell and Thyne is useful because it avoids “conflating coups with other forms of anti-regime activity, which is the primary problem with broader approaches.”

For example, popular uprisings that force ruling executives from power are not generally coups. Intervention by a foreign regime is not a coup. Civil wars initiated by non-elites or other outsiders are not coups.

Why the Jan 6 Riot Was Not a Coup

In the case of the January 6 riot, the rioters had no institutional backing, no promises of help from elites, and no reason to assume they had access to any coercive tools necessary to seize and hold control of a state’s executive apparatus. Nor was Donald Trump even in a position to promise such things. As noted by Elaine Kamarck at the Brookings Institution:

we now know that Trump did not even have the support of his own family and friends nor his handpicked White House staff. To pursue his plans, he had to rely on a close group of advisors known as “the clown show” led by Rudi Giuliani, a pillow manufacturer, and a dot-com millionaire—none of whom was in government and none of whom controlled the most important “assets” (guns, tanks, planes etc.) needed to take over a government. In contrast to most successful coups in history, Trump had no faction of the military, no faction of the National Guard, and no faction of the District of Colombia Metropolitan Police at his disposal.

In other words, the rioters had no avenue to calling upon any faction of the state or group of elites to secure backing. Kamarck continues:

As we learned in some of the most recent hearings, it was Vice President Mike Pence who was in contact with the military and the police, and most importantly, the military and the police were taking orders from Pence not Trump, the commander in chief!

Given that Trump didn’t actually attempt to secure any government agency to secure power for himself, we can guess Trump knew no branch of the federal government was about to step in to illegally secure an extension to his tenure as president. We can never know for sure what Trump was really thinking on that day, but even if Trump sought to encourage a group of protestors to somehow put pressure on Congress—even if by violent means—that’s not a coup. It’s a popular uprising.

The Bolivian “Coup”: The Anti-Morales Protestors in Bolivia 

The protests that followed the 2019 elections in Bolivia provide an interestingly similar case to the January 6 riot and demonstrate that it’s often quite debatable as to what constitutes a coup.

As the Bolivian election neared its end on October 24, sitting president Evo Morales began to claim victory. Numerous opponents, however, claimed Morales’s supporters had engaged in electoral fraud. Both sides refused to accept the results of the election, and protests and riots soon erupted across the nation. Morales and his supporters accused the opposition of staging a coup. The opposition accused Morales of the same. Or, more precisely, they accused Morales of attempting an “autocoup”—autogolpe in Spanish—in which Morales was attempting to hold on to power via illegal means.

Ultimately, Morales ended up resigning after he failed to maintain control over the police and military. High ranking officials from those institutions “recommended” Morales resign, and Morales did so soon after. Morales went into exile and Mexico and the opposition became the de facto governing coalition in Bolivia.

There remains no agreement, however, as to whether or not the actions of either side in Bolivia constituted a coup (or autocoup.) Morales’s supporters—mostly leftists—refer to the political crisis following the election as a coup. Those who are convinced Morales did indeed lose the election refer to his efforts as an autocoup. But many also refer to the events as a popular uprising.

For many, the situation in Bolivia in 2019 remains ambiguous, and we can see how it shares many elements in common with the events surrounding the January 6 riot at the Capitol. It began with claims of election fraud, and ended with a group of protestors attempting to pressure congress to change the outcome. This is not fundamentally different from the popular uprisings in Bolivia, except that in the US the outcome was never really dubious. There was never really any doubt as to whether the Pentagon would he helping Trump push through an autocoup. Trump never had any real reason to believe he could hold on to power, even with 900 mostly unarmed protestors trespassing in the Capitol.

“Coup” Now Means “Thing I Don’t Like”

The Bolivia situation also helps to illustrate how the term “coup” is used selectively for political effect. The fact that Morales’s leftist supporters are generally those who favor the use of the term to describe Morales’ removal from office is no coincidence. Those who support one side say it’s a coup, while the other side does not.

We see the same dynamic at work in the U.S., and we should not be surprised that the media has rushed to apply the term to the riot. This phenomenon was examined in a November 2019 article titled “Coup with Adjectives: Conceptual Stretching or Innovation in Comparative Research?,” by Leiv Marsteintredet and Andres Malamud. The authors note that as the incidence of real coups has declined, the word has become more commonly applied to political events that are generally not coups. But, as the authors note, this is no mere issue of splitting hairs, explaining that “The choice of how to conceptualize a coup is not to be taken lightly since it carries normative, analytical, and political implications.”

Increasingly, the term really means “this is a thing I don’t like.” It’s clear the January 6 panel in Congress, and countless anti-Trump pundits use the term in this way to express disapproval and also to justify regime crackdowns against pro-Trump opponents of the regime. It’s easier to justify harsh prison sentences for a disorganized group of vandals if their acts can be framed as a nearly successful coup and therefore a threat to “our democracy.” Moreover, if the situation were reversed, and if protestors invaded the Capitol to support a leftwing, pro-regime candidate, we can be sure that the vocabulary used to describe the event in the mainstream press would be quite different.

August 10, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

August 10th: Remembering a Day of Tragedy for the People of Vietnam

Samizdat – 10.08.2022

On this day, August 10, 1961, the United States began chemical warfare in Vietnam War, having sprayed 77 million liters of defoliants over South Vietnam by the end of 1971. Of that amount, 44 million liters contained dioxin, which causes various diseases and genetic mutations in humans and other living beings exposed to it.

Some three million Vietnamese were affected by direct contact with dioxin in that decade.

14% of the territory of South Vietnam was exposed to this toxin, causing severe consequences for the land and nature. Five thousand square kilometers of mangrove forests were almost completely destroyed; about 10,000 square kilometers of jungle and more than a thousand square kilometers of lowland forests were affected. American troops destroyed 70% of the coconut plantations and 60% of the Gewea plantations; they also changed the ecological balance of Vietnam.

The affected areas lost 18 out of 150 bird species; nearly all amphibians and insects disappeared; the number of fish in rivers decreased, and their composition changed. The microbiological composition of soils was disturbed. Changes in the fauna resulted in the replacement of black rats, which are safe for humans, with other species that were plague carriers. Alterations in the mosquito species composition led to the introduction of malaria-carrying ones. Dioxin: A Permanently Exploding Bomb The large-scale US use of chemical warfare in Vietnam lasted until late 1971. But this war was not over for Vietnam itself, said Professor Andrei Kuznetsov, director general of the Russian Division of the Joint Russo-Vietnamese Research and Technology Tropical Center, in an interview with Sputnik.

“This is because dioxins, once inside the human body, begin to work like an HIV infection. If a person is completely healthy, they do not affect him. As soon as the human immune system weakens and any disease begins, dioxins immediately get integrated into the disease chains and start working in their own way. No one knows just how. They can cause cancer, damage to the liver, skin, respiratory system, and much more. Dioxin pathology is very diverse. And the most tragic thing is that it is inherited through mother’s milk. More than a million and a half Vietnamese in the three postwar generations have suffered from it. For an extremely long time, for many generations, dioxins will continue to be passed on from women to their children. Moreover, there is no minimum permissible dose for dioxins,” says Andrei Kuznetsov.

Today, Vietnam faces the ever-present threat that children will be born with a wide variety of defects. To this day, several villages there are closed to the public, where children are born into families with various deformities. There are several specialized boarding schools where children with genetic defects live. Scientists from different countries have been studying the effects of dioxin on soil for a long time, but only in temperate and northern climates. No one has studied its impact in the tropics. There have been no studies on what happens when dioxin molecules enter the soil under tropical conditions, continued Professor Kuznetsov.

“The Joint Russo-Vietnamese Research and Tropical Technology Center is the first and only one to address this issue. It was commonly believed that dioxin molecules were insoluble. Supposedly, humus binds them and they remain in the top layer of the soil. One could bulldoze or even shovel it and burn it. But it turns out that things are different in the tropics. Dioxin molecules bind with various acids in the soil, forming new dioxin-containing molecules that become water-soluble and water-permeable. They mix with rainfall streams, sink into the soil, get transported by subsurface water, and subsequently enter wells, lakes, rivers, and seas hundreds of kilometers away from where they were sprayed. This situation persists in Vietnam to this day. There are several ‘hot spots’; places where, during the aggression, the Americans stored barrels with chemical agents. When they left Vietnam, they shot these barrels with large-caliber machine guns and left them there. For example, this happened in Da Nang, which was one of the largest US military bases. And the same happened at the US military base in Bien Hoa. These two former bases are still the largest and scariest hotbeds of contamination,” said Andrei Kuznetsov.

The expert also noted that the Americans recently have conducted a demonstrative action in Da Nang – and have now begun it in Bien Hoa – to decontaminate the soil to a depth of two meters in those places where barrels with warfare agents were stored. But they don`t check the level of dioxin contamination even within the radius of 200-300 meters from the storage sites. Meanwhile, subsurface water transports pesticides far beyond those limits.

The Mission of Joint Tropical Center The Joint Russo-Vietnamese Research and Technology Tropical Center has been studying the consequences of the US chemical war in Vietnam since its founding. In fact, it was established precisely for this work, noted Professor Kuznetsov.

“We were tasked with determining whether contact with dioxin leads to genetic changes in humans and has a detrimental effect on soil, flora, and fauna. Our conclusion – yes, it does. The results of our work were published and reported to the leadership of Vietnam’s Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Health, together with our scientific and practical recommendations on combating various dioxin-related effects. At the same time, we noted that the most effective, global way to prevent dioxins from damaging people is to take maximum care of their health. That is, Vietnam needs to invest much more in health care than countries that have not been exposed to this toxic chemical. We cannot yet say when the effects of US chemical warfare will cease in Vietnam. After all, Vietnam is the first and only country to have been exposed to such massive amounts of poisonous substances,” Kuznetsov concluded.

August 10, 2022 Posted by | Environmentalism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 2 Comments

Pelosi’s visit was a wake up call for China: Appeasing the US will never work

By Timur Fomenko | Samizdat | August 10, 2022

China’s announcement that it was suspending eight channels for cooperation and dialogue with the US following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei appears to mark a break with the country’s previously overly indulgent approach to Washington’s caprice. The Americans’ reaction, meanwhile, was as predictable as it was revealing.

Washington unsurprisingly condemned the cutting of ties and insisted it did nothing wrong in giving the go-ahead for Pelosi’s visit.

Such a reaction might tell us a few things about US President Joe Biden’s China policy as a whole. In short, it can be described as ‘having your cake and eating it’. The US believes it can get away with treating China as an enemy in most areas but still selectively solicit cooperation in the pursuit of US interests in others. This stems from the unilateralist nature of American foreign policy, which strives to maximize its own advantages at all costs and never offer concessions in negotiations with adversaries.

But finally, the US went too far, and China has made clear that it has now had enough. Cooperation can now only be conditional on respecting China’s core interests. Some say this has been long overdue.

Why so? Because for a long time, China was perhaps way too patient with the United States. As Washington continually meted out malice, Beijing still believed the relationship could somehow be salvaged, repaired or rekindled, and kept showing the Americans good will they didn’t deserve.

China believed engagement was the answer. This is a product of the country’s post-Deng Xiaoping foreign policy doctrine, which above all emphasizes stability and taking only calculated risks. China reasoned that its development and rise would be jeopardized if it confronted the hegemon that sought to contain it.

This idea was great in the 1980s and 1990s, when China was not a threat to the US, and the Americans believed it was destined to liberalize. But that ‘end of history’ world doesn’t exist anymore.

And China has been slow to respond to that – meaning that its foreign-policy assumptions have recently led it to make strategic missteps again and again. During the first year of the Trump administration, Beijing decided to engage with Trump and give him what he wanted on the issue of North Korea, rolling out the red carpet for him in the Forbidden City, believing it would temper the feared anti-China turn his administration had promised previously.

It didn’t work. Once Trump got what he wanted from Xi on North Korea sanctions, he commenced his anti-China foreign policy the following year in 2018. He unleashed the trade war, he blacklisted Huawei and scores of other Chinese companies, while his administration rolled out the Xinjiang narrative to taint China’s engagement with the West.

But China still held firm to engagement, focusing on negotiating a trade deal with Trump. This seemed to work in January 2020. Then Covid-19 came, hitting the US hard, and the Trump administration’s hostility to China went off the charts. The opportunity was taken to permanently shift US foreign policy into an adversarial cold-war mode.

What did Beijing do? Seeing an election on the horizon, it waited. Trump after all, the Chinese reasoned, was just a bad spell, erratic and destabilizing, and the US surely would become reasonable again once he was gone. They decided to wait him out and pursue an all-out effort to engage Biden instead, again hoping to rekindle the relationship.

It was wrong again. The Biden administration not only immediately embraced Trump’s entire foreign policy but actually expanded it. China attempted to engage, but nothing changed and displays of relentless hostility continued. Every meeting the Biden administration pursued with China was accompanied by an announcement of new sanctions both before and after it.

The American rendering of China as new cold-war style adversary was now a permanent consensus and feature of US foreign policy that goes far beyond one man. Worse still, Washington began to ‘multilateralize’ this approach and co-opt allies into joining in.

China, of course, knew this but was naïve or too optimistic in believing the reality could be averted. It was not until late 2021 that it began to ‘wake up’ to this new normal. Yet, it has taken until Pelosi’s Taiwan trip for China to find the strength to come out with “we can no longer have business as usual” but even then, some people still think the Chinese are bluffing, prompting an online meme described as “China’s final warning,” which was a form of ridicule the Soviet Union used against China for issuing ‘final warnings’ it never followed up on.

Yet there is nonetheless a sense that this time things are different. China’s military exercises have been relentless, with claims that they will become ‘the new normal’. That’s because even if China has been duly lenient with the US in the past, it now sees Washington as taking the liberty to trample on the commitments it had taken on to normalize its relationship with Beijing.

If China is forced to back away from its lines in the sand, it becomes an enormous loss of face and political prestige. While economics have also been a primary consideration of China’s foreign policy, the pendulum is now swinging towards the realization that the US has to be confronted, rather than simply lived with. It doesn’t respect China’s interests, only its own.

Therefore, how can dialogue and engagement be unconditional? So far, this bilateral relationship has functioned only on the premise of “Hi China, we hate you, we’re going to accuse you of genocide, we’re going to blacklist your companies, we’re going to build military alliances against you, break our commitments on Taiwan… oh, please help us on climate change… nothing in return.” And China’s patience is apparently at its end.

August 10, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , | 3 Comments

US to Conduct Military Operations in Chinese Claimed Waters

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | August 9, 2022

Amid unprecedented Chinese military drills surrounding Taiwan, a top defense official said the US will carry out Taiwan Strait transits and freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in waters claimed by China.

Colin Kahl, the undersecretary for defense policy, said the Navy is expected to send warships on FONOPS in the coming days. “We will continue to stand by our allies and partners. So even as China tries to kind of chip away at the status quo, our policy is to maintain the status quo with [a] free and open Indo-Pacific which frankly, is what I think most of the countries in the region would prefer,” Kahl said.

Beijing routinely denounces FONOPs and Taiwan Strait transits as the US meddling in China’s internal affairs. The US has increased its military activity in the region under the Biden administration, leading to increased tensions with Xi’s government.

Beijing has carried out several military exercises in the waters around Taiwan since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a high-profile visit to Taipei last week. China views the trip by Pelosi as a violation of the ‘One China’ policy that has been the foundation of the Washington-Beijing relationship for decades.

China currently has 13 warships in waters off Taiwan’s shores. Beijing has taken several other unprecedented steps like sending warplanes over the median line in the Taiwan Strait and firing missiles over Taiwan. A Chinese defense official warned the drills could become real military operations at any point.

Taiwan has responded to Beijing’s war games with its own military drills. Taipei kicked off two days of military exercises involving 700 troops firing live rounds.

Despite the increased Chinese military activity targeting Taiwan, both Pelosi and Kahl defended the Speaker’s trip to Taipei. On Tuesday, Pelosi said the visit was “absolutely” worth it and Kahl claimed, “Legislatures from around the world go to Taiwan. Our Congress is an independent body of our government. Nothing about the visit and visit change one iota of the US government’s policy toward Taiwan or towards China.”

August 10, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | 1 Comment

Biden’s Bounty on Your Life: Hospitals’ Incentive Payments for COVID-19

THE SEVEN US GOVERNMENT PAYOFFS TO KILL YOU IN HOSPITALS BY DR. PETERSON PIERRE

By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. and Ali Shultz, J.D. | November 17, 2021

Upon admission to a once-trusted hospital, American patients with COVID-19 become virtual prisoners, subjected to a rigid treatment protocol with roots in Ezekiel Emanuel’s “Complete Lives System” for rationing medical care in those over age 50. They have a shockingly high mortality rate. How and why is this happening, and what can be done about it?

As exposed in audio recordings, hospital executives in Arizona admitted meeting several times a week to lower standards of care, with coordinated restrictions on visitation rights. Most COVID-19 patients’ families are deliberately kept in the dark about what is really being done to their loved ones.

The combination that enables this tragic and avoidable loss of hundreds of thousands of lives includes (1) The CARES Act, which provides hospitals with bonus incentive payments for all things related to COVID-19 (testing, diagnosing, admitting to hospital, use of remdesivir and ventilators, reporting COVID-19 deaths, and vaccinations) and (2) waivers of customary and long-standing patient rights by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

In 2020, the Texas Hospital Association submitted requests for waivers to  CMS. According to Texas attorney Jerri Ward, “CMS has granted ‘waivers’ of federal law regarding patient rights. Specifically, CMS purports to allow hospitals to violate the rights of patients or their surrogates with regard to medical record access, to have patient visitation, and to be free from seclusion.” She notes that “rights do not come from the hospital or CMS and cannot be waived, as that is the antithesis of a ‘right.’ The purported waivers are meant to isolate and gain total control over the patient and to deny patient and patient’s decision-maker the ability to exercise informed consent.”

Creating a “National Pandemic Emergency” provided justification for such sweeping actions that override individual physician medical decision-making and patients’ rights. The CARES Act provides incentives for hospitals to use treatments dictated solely by the federal government under the auspices of the NIH. These “bounties” must be paid back if not “earned” by making the COVID-19 diagnosis and following the COVID-19 protocol.

The hospital payments include:

  • A “free” required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.
  • Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.
  • Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.
  • A 20 percent “boost” bonus payment from Medicare on the entire hospital bill for use of remdesivir instead of medicines such as Ivermectin.
  • Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.
  • More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.
  • A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.

CMS implemented “value-based” payment programs that track data such as how many workers at a healthcare facility receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Now we see why many hospitals implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They are paid more.

Outside hospitals, physician MIPS quality metrics link doctors’ income to performance-based pay for treating patients with COVID-19 EUA drugs. Failure to report information to CMS can cost the physician 4% of reimbursement.

Because of obfuscation with medical coding and legal jargon, we cannot be certain of the actual amount each hospital receives per COVID-19 patient. But Attorney Thomas Renz and CMS whistleblowers have calculated a total payment of at least $100,000 per patient.

What does this mean for your health and safety as a patient in the hospital?

There are deaths from the government-directed COVID treatments. For remdesivir, studies show that 71–75 percent of patients suffer an adverse effect, and the drug often had to be stopped after five to ten days because of these effects, such as kidney and liver damage, and death. Remdesivir trials during the 2018 West African Ebola outbreak had to be discontinued because death rate exceeded 50%. Yet, in 2020, Anthony Fauci directed that remdesivir was to be the drug hospitals use to treat COVID-19, even when the COVID clinical trials of remdesivir showed similar adverse effects.

In ventilated patients, the death toll is staggering. A National Library of Medicine January 2021 report of 69 studies involving more than 57,000 patients concluded that fatality rates were 45 percent in COVID-19 patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation, increasing to 84 percent in older patients. Renz announced at a Truth for Health Foundation Press Conference that CMS data showed that in Texas hospitals, 84.9% percent of all patients died after more than 96 hours on a ventilator.

Then there are deaths from restrictions on effective treatments for hospitalized patients. Renz and a team of data analysts have estimated that more than 800,000 deaths in America’s hospitals, in COVID-19 and other patients, have been caused by approaches restricting fluids, nutrition, antibiotics, effective antivirals, anti-inflammatories, and therapeutic doses of anti-coagulants.

We now see government-dictated medical care at its worst in our history since the federal government mandated these ineffective and dangerous treatments for COVID-19, and then created financial incentives for hospitals and doctors to use only those “approved” (and paid for) approaches.

Our formerly trusted medical community of hospitals and hospital-employed medical staff have effectively become “bounty hunters” for your life. Patients need to now take unprecedented steps to avoid going into the hospital for COVID-19.

Patients need to take active steps to plan before getting sick to use early home-based treatment of COVID-19 that can help you save your life.

August 10, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment