Pakistan’s top court orders release of ex-PM khan, declares his arrest ‘invalid’
Press TV – May 11, 2023
Pakistan’s top court has ordered the anti-graft agency to release former Prime Minister Imran Khan from its custody amid violent and widespread protests sparked by his detention.
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Imran Khan’s arrest earlier this week, which sparked deadly protests across the South Asian country, was “illegal and invalid”.
“Your arrest was invalid so the whole process needs to be backtracked,” Pakistan’s Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial told Khan, who has been in custody since Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, the court directed the the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to present the former premier before the court.
Subsequently, Khan was presented in court amid tight security about 5:45 pm local time. The top court’s order on Thursday came after Khan’s legal team challenged his arrest by the NAB on Tuesday.
The shock arrest has triggered violent protests across the country, prompting the government to call out the army to help restore order.
Tensions remained high on Thursday with paramilitary troops and police on the streets in big cities.
Supporters of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party have attacked military establishments and set other state buildings and assets ablaze.
A total of nearly 2,500 people have been arrested so far and at least 11 killed and dozens injured. Authorities have also arrested at least three senior leaders of PTI party as of Thursday.
Footage shared by an Islamabad police official showed military vehicles with mounted guns lined up on the side of a road and soldiers holding assault rifles.
Mobile data services remained suspended and schools and offices were closed in two of Pakistan’s four provinces. Social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram have been blocked.
More than 100 police cases have been registered against Khan by the government since his removal from power in April 2022 after he lost a confidence vote in parliament.
Pakistan’s President Arif Alvi, who is also a senior PTI leader, said he was “alarmed, shocked and deeply disturbed” over the situation in the country.
After his ouster in April last year, Khan accused an unnamed “foreign power” — in a clear reference to the United States — of funding a “conspiracy” to topple his democratically elected government.
Khan insisted that the “foreign power” sent millions of dollars to opposition parties to launch a no-confidence vote against him in the parliament.
The former prime minister has declared he fears for his life if detained, and that authorities want him jailed to prevent him from contesting an election.
Last year, Khan was shot in the leg during a political rally. Previous attempts to arrest Khan from his home in Lahore saw clashes between his supporters and security forces.
Vice President of Imran Khan’s Opposition Party Arrested in Pakistan
Sputnik – 10.05.2023
Fawad Chaudhry, the vice president of the opposition Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party in Pakistan, has been arrested from outside the Supreme Court premises, Pakistani media reported on Wednesday.
Chaudhry was arrested late Wednesday night after he came out of the apex court premises after having spent over 12 hours inside the Supreme Court in a bid to evade the arrest, media reported.
It was earlier reported that Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the vice chairman of the PTI, and PTI Secretary-General Asad Umar were also arrested in Pakistan.
The Pakistani authorities said Monday that former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had been taken into custody following a hearing of the Islamabad High Court in the Al-Qadir Trust case.
PTI called on citizens of Pakistan to gather for mass protests, demanding Khan’s release.
On Tuesday, Pakistan’s authorities said Khan was facing an inquiry by the National Accountability Bureau in the Al-Qadir Trust case, related to a settlement between the PTI government and a property tycoon, which reportedly caused a loss of 50 billion Pakistani rupees ($17.6 million) to the national exchequer.
The actions spurred mass protests across the country, with activists setting police vehicles on fire and damaging government property and the police using tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd.
NATO’s Planned Liaison Office In Japan Will Accelerate The Expansion Of AUKUS+
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 11, 2023
“The US Is Rounding Up Allies Ahead Of A Possible War With China”, which the former plans to fight via the emerging alliance system that can be described as AUKUS+ if it unfolds. This refers to that regional group’s function as the core of a larger anti-Chinese network that informally includes Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea. NATO will also obviously play a role too, with that bloc building upon its Secretary-General’s related statement of intent by opening a liaison office in Japan.
Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told CNN that this development is supposedly due to the Ukrainian Conflict making the entire world less stable, but the reality is that this is part of a preplanned move to more effectively coordinate the containment of China. It would have happened on a different pretext had that aforementioned conflict’s latest phase not broken out last year, but that event provided a convenient excuse for speeding up their plans and disguising them as anti-Russian instead.
NATO’s liaison office in Japan will serve as that alliance’s first official outpost in the Asia-Pacific, thus enabling it to more directly organize AUKUS+’s expansion. Assembling that regional dimension of this emerging system is important in and of itself, but the European one is indispensable for maximally pressuring China. It’s therefore expected that more countries from the continent will soon dispatch vessels to the region as part of the joint operations that the liaison office will organize.
This is precisely what EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell had in mind when suggesting late last month that member states should patrol the Taiwan Strait. Since practically every EU member is also part of NATO, this de facto amounts to that alliance doing this, which is dangerous due to the risk of this provoking an incident with China that could prompt the implementation of Article 5. That’s probably the point though, namely to create a crisis that can justify the further acceleration of AUKUS+’s expansion.
Nothing good is therefore expected to come from the opening of NATO’s planned liaison office in Japan. This development will only destabilize the Asia-Pacific, put additional pressure on China, and thus take the chance that whatever incident transpires as a result is incapable of being contained. It’s an irresponsible risk, but NATO has convinced itself that it’s worth taking in order to speed up its regional hegemonic plans.
Who is behind Canada’s state-level Sinophobia?
By Timur Fomenko | RT | May 11, 2023
On Tuesday, China and Canada engaged in a tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats. The row was triggered by allegations that Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei had“interfered” in Canadian politics, apparently targeting anti-China Conservative MP Michael Chong.
The claims created a media firestorm in Ottawa after the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service (CSIS) reportedly accused “an accredited Chinese diplomat” of targeting Chong. Justin Trudeau’s government, under political pressure from the opposition, subsequently decided to act.
This row isn’t the first to derail relations between China and Canada. It’s one of many, including Ottawa’s decision to arrest Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018, China’s retaliatory arrest of Canadian nationals Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, Ottawa’s sporadic allegations of Chinese interference, and then Xi Jinping’s harsh rebuke of Trudeau on the sidelines of the G20 summit last November. It’s fair to say that relations between the two countries are in a state of freefall. But the question might be asked, who is the real culprit here? Or more to the point, who governs Canada?
Allegations of foreign interference are a funny thing, because they tend to only be used against countries who represent an ideological or cultural “other.” They never focus on certain “allied” countries that actually do interfere in the nation’s politics, controlling its media and political discourse, while using think tanks, often sponsored by military and government bodies, and to deliberately cause controversies in Canada in order to steer the country in a certain direction. It seems, for example, very fishy that in the midst of this whole saga, the US-sponsored Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank published an article calling for Canada to join AUKUS, the Australia, UK, US Pacific military alliance.
If it was not obvious enough already, no country has interfered in Canadian politics more than the United States. Although Canada appears more “progressive” and “forward-thinking” than its southern neighbor in many respects, the reality is that Ottawa is a loyal and obligated follower of the US and steadfast in its commitment to Anglophone exceptionalism. Although Canada is geographically larger than the US, its population is about 10% the size and as such, it is strategically, economically, culturally, and geographically dominated by Washington, giving it very little leverage in its foreign policy direction.
Arguably, out of all the Five Eyes nations (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), these realities mean Canada has the least political autonomy and space to pursue its own foreign policy path. While under Trudeau the country is not as openly aggressive as it might have been under its conservative prime ministers, the US has been deftly manipulating Canadian politics by either driving through “wedge issues” such as arresting Meng, or using economic leverage to coerce Canada into making anti-China commitments. The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) and its “poison pill” clause, which allows the US to terminate the entire agreement if Canada enters into a free-trade agreement with a “non-market” economy (i.e. China), is an excellent example.
Likewise, through the Five Eyes mechanism, the US exerts direct influence over Canada’s intelligence service, the CSIS, which in turn, then cooperates with and manipulates the Canadian mainstream media through newspapers such as the Globe and Mail. This has long been revealed in detail by Canadian investigative website The Canada Files. With Canada having a higher percentage of ethnic Chinese residents than any other Anglosphere country, amounting to nearly 5% of the population, this has been weaponized into a wholesale “yellow peril” narrative. While Canada is seemingly more progressive, one should note that beneath the surface, the foundation of the country and its heritage is built on racism. The liberal image of Trudeau’s government, for one, is easily overshadowed by the dark legacy of indigenous boarding schools, wherein thousands died at the hands of authorities in what is considered genocide by many.
Yet, despite this heritage, Canadian politicians regularly point fingers at China, accusing it of genocide of Uyghurs, especially figures such as Chong, who sponsored a 2021 motion to that end. This demonstrates the problem the country faces. Who really governs Canada, and which country is actually interfering in its politics? The fact that Ottawa is repeatedly roped into supporting Washington’s preferences, policies, and worldviews is not so much an alliance bound by common values as it is full-scale manipulation of the country’s politics. The US baits Canada into making abrasive and rash moves which provoke China, only for Beijing to respond, and then for Ottawa to frame itself as the victim. But is this narrative really true? Canadians ought to think about who the real culprit is here.
America faces major hurdles trying to form ‘Asia-Pacific NATO’
By Drago Bosnic | May 11, 2023
While serving as the UK Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss pompously announced that so-called “Global NATO” was in the making, while also calling for the United Nations to be reformed to the political West’s liking (although quite the opposite is sorely needed). However, the ever-belligerent power pole seems to be having trouble forming even the “Asia-Pacific NATO”, let alone a global organization that would gather virtually all of Washington DC’s vassals and satellite states. The main issue seems to be stemming from the unresolved historical disputes of the Second World War and the way it affected the Asia-Pacific region.
It should be noted that attempts to create a NATO equivalent in the region are hardly new. The United States has been trying to accomplish this for decades during the (First) Cold War. However, the deals would usually fall apart faster than it took them to be signed by all parties involved. Such disunity greatly contributed to the humiliating defeat of US aggression in Vietnam/Indochina half a century ago. Nowadays, similar disunity is once again emerging among America’s East Asian satellite states, specifically between South Korea and Japan. The US insists that the two countries should set their differences aside and go for a historical push that would lead to complete reconciliation.
However, numerous Japanese war crimes during WWII (as well as in the decades prior) are deeply ingrained in the minds of the Korean people, on both sides of the 38th parallel. In fact, it’s one of the few things both Seoul and Pyongyang actually agree on, albeit tacitly. A recent South Korean court case was supposed to resolve the issue of several major Japanese companies using forced labor in Korea during WWII, but Tokyo was still left unscathed by the process, which angered many Koreans. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol dubbed the court decision “a step towards trilateral cooperation to defend freedom, peace and prosperity not only in our two countries, but also around the world”.
The “trilateral cooperation” he was referring to is between the US, Japan and South Korea. However, only a third of South Korean citizens support the deal, as they consider it didn’t truly address Japanese war crimes. Worse yet, this isn’t the first time such deals have fallen through. In 2015, a similar arrangement regarding the so-called “comfort women battalions”, another Japanese war crime that went largely unpunished, collapsed shortly after it was announced, as the vast majority of South Koreans rejected the deal. On the other hand, Japan considers this to be a “case closed”, further antagonizing the (rightfully) angered Korean people who suffered tremendously during decades of Japanese occupation.
To add insult to injury, South Korea is doing all this so it could firmly join an explicitly anti-Chinese coalition (and also implicitly anti-Russian), becoming the first country in the line to get quite literally obliterated in a possible superpower confrontation, as if the US inability to deal with North Korea wasn’t enough already. And while Seoul might feel “motivated” by incessant US pressure, the people of South Korea are wholly unmoved. They see China as an important trade partner, as well as a virtually endless market for South Korean pop culture. Thus, they have no interest in an open confrontation (or any other kind) with their giant neighbor. On the contrary, they prefer the current status quo.
The US is worried this could greatly weaken their ability to form a wider and more compliant anti-Chinese coalition. For years, Washington DC has been trying to enlist Beijing’s neighbors in a “freedom and democracy alliance”, the bulk of which would be composed of Japanese and South Korean forces. Precisely this is the reason why Tokyo started a massive rearmament program last year, while Seoul engaged its fast-growing domestic military-industrial complex to arm several key US vassals around the world (particularly Poland). However, the question remains, how ready this anti-Chinese/anti-Russian coalition would be to deal with powers that make North Korea’s nuclear program look like a footnote?
America’s usual warmongering doesn’t only bring instability to the region that enjoyed decades of relative peace, prosperity and economic cooperation, but it also risks leading to the complete fracturing of US-imposed alliances, which itself could backfire and cause Washington DC to lose influence in the region. Naturally, this would be fantastic for the advancement of actual peace, but it makes America’s foreign policy framework look completely self-defeating and even suicidal. Similar efforts have already led to such results, with the Quad (Japan, UK, US, India) effectively dead as New Delhi has outright rejected anti-Russian rhetoric. The only exception to this is the AUKUS (Australia, UK and US), but even this alliance has created issues with other US partners.
Apart from being virtually redundant, as the so-called Five Eyes (UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) covers its functions, AUKUS created a lot of controversies after Australia backed out of the extremely lucrative submarine deal with France and opted for an arrangement with its Anglo-American overlords. This didn’t only make Canberra look like an outright satellite state, but also made Paris deeply frustrated, which might have contributed to its (for now only apparent) tilt towards Beijing, the very superpower AUKUS is aimed against. Such dictatorial US moves are creating multilayered problems in other geopolitical theaters as America is effectively forcing others to prioritize its national interests over their own.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Pfizer trial data showed danger for babies but health czars recommended jabs to pregnant women anyway
By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | May 11, 2023
A PREPRINT paper published this month highlights just how many unknowns we are dealing with when it comes to assessing the long-term outcomes of mRNA vaccination. It shows that IgG4 antibodies are present in umbilical cord blood of infants born to vaccinated mothers, meaning a theoretical risk to newborns of an ineffective response to Covid infection.
But was this really unknown to those recommending that mRNA vaccination was safe for pregnant women? Documents released by Pfizer under court order reveal that Pfizer and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were well aware of clinical trial results indicating appalling outcomes for babies of pregnant women.
Watch this 20-minute video where dozens of so-called experts in New Zealand are recorded telling us that the mRNA Covid vaccines are completely safe for pregnant women in direct contradiction of Pfizer trial results available in April 2021. These results indicated an unfolding disaster for babies including miscarriage, premature birth, cardiac arrest, toxic breast milk and spike protein crossing the placenta.
In the video, their comments are juxtaposed with scientists exposing the highly disturbing content of the Pfizer trials of pregnancy outcomes.
Was the NZ government aware of this information? Certainly the contractual arrangements that our government had made with Pfizer would have required Pfizer to fully inform the Ministry of Health of all the results of vaccine trials. But the MoH has completely ignored the information which has become public knowledge. Since the start of this month they are again encouraging pregnant and breastfeeding mothers from 16 and up to get a further booster shot. Why? Especially considering the increased incidence of miscarriages and stillbirths since the NZ vaccine rollout began.
I can’t imagine at this time a more important video to watch than this 20-minute film of our experts lining up to misinform prospective mothers of safety. Were they misled by Pfizer, by the MoH, by politicians, by the FDA, or by all of the above? Or did they just decide to promote a safety rating without any evidence to back up their statements? We may never know, but the lesson of this video is clear: we will not be able to trust the medical czars again.
Covid jabs the big picture: Part 1
Overview of evidence prior to rollout
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | May 10, 2023
HART have been asked to submit evidence to module 3 of the Covid-19 Public Inquiry. That module is about the impacts on healthcare but we were specifically asked to include evidence around deaths in males aged 15-18 years of age and so provided an overview of the full impact these novel products have had on the healthcare system. What follows are some of the highlights. There will be three parts to this series. Here the evidence on what was known before rollout will be presented. Part two covers the evidence after rollout (excluding deaths) and part three the evidence on deaths.
It is worth remembering how cautious people were about any novel products that might claim to prevent covid. In February 2020, Chris Whitty said,
“The rate limiting steps are late clinical trials for safety & efficacy, & then manufacturing. For a disease with a low (for the sake of argument 1%) mortality a vaccine has to be very safe so the safety studies can’t be shortcut. So important for the long run.”
He was right.
The belief that vaccines were safe had led to a circular belief that vaccines required fewer safety checks than other novel therapies. Novel vaccines take a decade or more to go through safety checks. Flu vaccines don’t. These novel drugs were treated like flu vaccines for regulatory purposes.
The regulators failed us in numerous ways as set out in The Perseus Report. Examples include:
- Companies were allowed to skip testing for gene and cancer toxicity and even studies showing how much spike is produced, for how long and where in the body it reaches. Pfizer said these studies were “not considered necessary.” Even while their trial info sheet said “Due to the urgent need for a vaccine against Covid-19, with agreement from the MHRA, some of the tests usually required for a newly manufactured vaccine have been modified, in order to make the vaccine available more quickly for assessment.”
- They did not demand these studies were done after rushed emergency approvals either. No human studies were carried out to see what happened to the synthetic modified RNA – no-one knows how long it takes to be removed from the body. There is evidence that in some it lasts between at least 28 days and 4 months in the blood.
- The regulators let the pharma companies get away with terminating the placebo arm of the study after ~3months by offering them all the novel products.This was despite us knowing that narcolepsy caused by Pandemrix vaccine took on average of 8 months to be diagnosed.
- The lipid nanoparticles that deliver the modified synthetic mRNA are themselves toxic. This mechanism of delivery was shelved in 2016 for gene therapy to treat inherited genetic conditions because of the multiple doses needed. It was claimed it could still be used in vaccine technology because that only requires one dose…
- The viral vector used for delivering the AstraZeneca DNA message was reported in 2007 to cause platelet activation, which can lead to blood clots.
- There were many more points made including failings in investigating deaths, failing to listen to patients, problems with manufacturing processes and problems with accountability and governance all of which are in the report.
Since 2005 there have been concerns about the regulator losing “sight of the need to protect and promote public health.” The CEO of the MHRA, Dame June Raine, claims the MHRA is now an “enabler” not a “watchdog.” Even before there was political capture there were pre-existing conflicts of interest.
The spike protein is the most toxic part of the virus. It damages lungs, vessel walls and causes clots. Part of the sequence is identical to a region of a bacterial sequence that can bind directly to a particular type of white blood cells resulting in lethal cytokine storms. This part of the sequence was heavily mutated in the Omicron variant making it less lethal. However, even the most recent injections contained the original Chinese spike sequence with this dangerous sequence.
The manufacturers decided to use the WHOLE chinese spike sequence rather than parts of it, or peptides, which have been shown to be safer for vaccine design. Some manufacturers modified the spike so that it could not bind to the receptor and enter a cell. This might have reduced some harm from receptor binding but not from the action of spike within cells. The spike was delivered into cells so spike was produced INSIDE the cells in the first place. AstraZeneca did not modify the sequence. From November 2020 it was clear that parts of AZ spike could be shed outside of cells.
The Pfizer and Moderna clinical trial data shows a higher rate of serious adverse reactions from the treatment group (12.5 per 10,000) than any reduction in serious events from covid (2.3 and 6.4 per 10,000 for Pfizer and Moderna respectively). Yet the claim of 90%+ efficacy was all that was reported and all that Dame June Raine claimed she needed to see in order to approve the drugs.
AZ issued a press release claiming 100% efficacy against hospitalisation and death after only two severe covid hospitalisations and one death in the placebo arm. This claim was repeated widely and was believed.
At the time, the priority was to protect the old and vulnerable who accounted for 98% of covid deaths. There were going to be 15 million jabs to freedom:
The evidence presented is damning. The failures of the regulators to adequately test the safety and efficacy of these novel vaccines are shocking. The circular belief that vaccines required fewer safety checks than other novel therapies is a dangerous assumption that has put the lives of millions at risk. The fact that serious adverse reactions were higher in the treatment group than any reduction in serious events from covid is deeply concerning. We must demand accountability from the regulators and demand that the safety and wellbeing of the public is always the top priority, not profit or political gain. There was total regulatory failure in allowing these products to be given to anyone, which was compounded by not withdrawing them promptly once evidence these issues were clinically relevant became clear.
Andrew Bridgen MP Joins Reclaim Party and Announces He is Suing Matt Hancock for Defamation
BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MAY 10, 2023
Ex-Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who was expelled from the party for criticising the Covid vaccines, has announced he’s joining Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party, making him its first member of Parliament. At a press conference today Bridgen said he would be standing at his North West Leicestershire constituency at the next General Election. He also confirmed he would be suing Matt Hancock MP for defamation over an allegation of antisemitism.
At the press conference this morning Bridgen confirmed he has decided not to appeal his expulsion and blasted the Conservative Party. He said:
Even if I were to be given a fair hearing, which I doubt, I would not wish to rejoin the party after the treatment received by myself and my family over the past few years.
I feel now that the party no longer represents the people of this great country. If I am to represent my constituents and countrymen it must be from outside the party which I have served dutifully for many decades.
I will be standing again in North West Leicestershire at the next election. Not as a Conservative, but as a Member of the Reclaim Party. More than anything, the Reclaim Party stands for freedom of speech.
I will cross the floor today, Wednesday May 10th, and sit on the opposition benches as the first Member of Parliament for the Reclaim Party. I say first because I have no doubt I will not be the last. This is just the beginning.
If the Conservative Party wishes to contest my seat it can do so at the next General Election.
I have more confidence that I will win my seat than the vast majority of sitting Conservative MPs, so I welcome the challenge should the Prime Minister and Parliamentary Party wish to take it.
Bridgen was accused of antisemitism for agreeing in a tweet with an anonymous heart doctor he quoted that the Covid vaccine rollout was “the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust”.
He has denied the allegation – which we at the Daily Sceptic agree is spurious and an example of a weaponised antisemitism allegation to achieve political ends. This morning Bridgen confirmed that he will be suing ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock for defamation after the Conservative MP tweeted in January that he was spouting “antisemitic, anti-vax, anti-scientific conspiracy theories”.
In a YouTube video Bridgen said he has submitted a “defamation claim to the Royal Court of Justice against Matthew Hancock MP”. The basis of the claim is that Hancock’s accusation of antisemitism is “a false slur to deliberately try and shut down valid concerns raised by me on behalf of constituents and thousands of others around the world about the safety and efficacy of the experimental COVID-19 injections”.
Matt Hancock in the dock: that’s a court case to look forward to.
You can donate to Andrew Bridgen’s legal fund here.
‘Absolutely Reckless’: NIH Allows EcoHealth Alliance to Resume Coronavirus Research
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 10, 2023
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) this week reinstated a controversial federal grant to EcoHealth Alliance to study the risk of bat coronavirus spillover.
EcoHealth is a New York-based nonprofit whose stated mission is to develop “science-based solutions to prevent pandemics and promote conservation.”
In 2014, EcoHealth received $3.7 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to study the risk of bat coronavirus emergence and the potential for outbreaks in human populations — research that included genetically manipulating coronaviruses to make them more infectious to humans.
At the time, Dr. Anthony Fauci was the director of the NIAID, which operates under the NIH.
Nearly $600,000 of the $3.7 million went to EcoHealth’s collaborator, the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
However, in April 2020, under the Trump administration, the NIH terminated EcoHealth’s grant over concerns the organization had violated the grant terms, using U.S. taxpayer money to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
EcoHealth on Monday announced that the NIH reinstated the grant, but with new terms, and that EcoHealth will collaborate with the Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School to study zoonotic coronaviruses “with the aim of being transparent about the study’s goals.”
Peter Daszak, Ph.D. — who secretly collaborated with Ralph Baric, Ph.D., and Fauci to steer the media and scientific community away from questions about whether COVID-19 could have originated in a lab — is EcoHealth’s executive director and principal investigator on the grant.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee that found multiple serious violations by EcoHealth of the contractual terms and conditions of the 2014 NIH grant, said the decision to reinstate the grant was “absolutely reckless,” given the organization’s “negligence and breach of their contract with the NIH on the coronavirus research done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).”
Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., bioweapons expert and professor of international law at the University of Illinois, told The Defender he wasn’t surprised to see the grant reinstated.
“People involved in this, like EcoHealth Alliance, Fauci, the Biden administration, et cetera, know they have crossed the Rubicon and there is no turning back. And they don’t intend to turn back unless and until we stop them. It’s as simple as that,” he added.
Boyle, who authored the Biological Weapons Convention known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 that was approved unanimously by both houses of the U.S. Congress and signed to law by President George Bush Sr., also added:
“Clearly, all this gain-of-function work is offensive biological warfare weapons work in violation of the convention and my biological weapons anti-terrorism act, the penalty for which is life imprisonment.”
In January, the Office of Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a report outlining missed deadlines, confusing protocols and misspent funds in EcoHealth Alliance’s grant management, particularly as it related to the Wuhan lab.
In response, HHS set new terms for the four-year, now-$2.9 million NIAID grant, under which EcoHealth will receive $576,290 this year.
Under the new terms, EcoHealth is barred from conducting any research in China or collecting any new samples from vertebrates and must implement additional oversight of its finances and accounting practices.
The conditions also prevent EcoHealth from doing any work “involving enhanced potential pandemic pathogens,” although the organization can continue to work with “highly pathogenic agents” or “infectious agent[s] or toxin[s]” that may warrant a biocontainment safety level (BSL) of 3 or higher. The Wuhan lab was a BSL-4 lab.
EcoHealth is the recipient of 17 active U.S. government grants totaling more than $50 million, The Epoch Times reported.
Publications like Nature and Science celebrated the reinstatement of the grant. Nature said the research was “essential for preventing the next pandemic.”
Science wrote that the Trump administration called for the cancellation of the grant, “amid unsupported allegations that a lab leak at WIV started the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The origins of the COVID-19 virus continue to be debated, but evidence has emerged over the past several years that the “lab-leak theory” is a plausible hypothesis despite attempts to dismiss it.
Several U.S. agencies, former agency officials and independent scientists have concluded that a Wuhan lab leak most likely caused the COVID-19 pandemic. A U.S. Department of Energy report released in February and a Senate report released in April both arrived at the conclusion that COVID-19 likely stemmed from a lab leak.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
NBC Host Worries No One Will Be Able to “Police” What Tucker Carlson Says if He Moves Show to Twitter
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | May 10, 2023
NBC host Tom Costello is worried that no one will be able to “police” what Tucker Carlson says if he moves his show to Twitter.
Oh no, the absolute horror.
The former Fox News host posted a video to Twitter yesterday announcing that he would move his content to the platform owned by Elon Musk.
“There aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech. The last big one remaining in the world is Twitter,” said Carlson, adding, “You can’t have a free society if people aren’t allowed to say what they think is true.”
The legacy media reacted by panicking that Carlson will go uncensored.
NBC host Costello accused Twitter of peddling “misinformation, disinformation, all out lies” (information that doesn’t fortify regime narratives) before expressing his real fear.
“Will anybody be able to police what Carlson says, or is this the point, it’s just a free for all?” he asked former CNN host Brian Stelter.
Stelter responded by claiming that Tucker’s increased presence on Twitter will cement the platform as a “right-wing website.”
Because God forbid someone be allowed to speak freely without having their activity ‘policed’ by censors – we can’t have that!
Yesterday, CNN faced ridicule for describing Carlson, who at his peak enjoyed a viewership of over 5 million people, as a “right wing extremist.”
Carlson moving full time to Twitter might be a way to circumvent the fact that Fox is trying to keep him locked in a contract until 2025, preventing him from being signed up by other broadcasters and freezing him out of the 2024 election.
Elon Musk responded to the announcement by clarifying that Twitter and Carlson have not signed “a deal of any kind whatsoever,” and that the former Fox host will be supported by user subscriptions and advertising revenue.
Leaked Legal Analysis Of EU’s Private Message Snooping Plans Says It Interferes With “Fundamental Rights”
Undermining the EU’s self-described commitment to privacy
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 10, 2023
There are few things the EU Commission (the EU’s executive arm) would like to present more than the bloc and its institutions speaking with one voice, particularly on controversial topics, such as attempts to destroy encryption.
However, documents leaked from the EU Council Legal Service regarding the legality of a proposal known as “chat control” (formally, Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, CSAR), show that there may be “trouble in paradise.”
As digital rights advocate and European Parliament member (MEP) Patrick Breyer of Germany reports, the Service has warned the Commission that its idea probably runs contrary to the fundamental right to respect for private life – meaning that the European Court of Justice would likely annul it.
Summed up, the “chat control” scheme proposes forcing providers of chat, messaging, phone, and email services to screen all private messages in search for illegal content and then inform the police.
But the problem with this, as the Service has noticed, is that it very easily could be interpreted as general and indiscriminate, as well as permanent surveillance, given that the plan gives “generalized” access to every citizen, including those the analysis says are “not even remotely connected with child sexual exploitation.”
And with the high likelihood that CSAR’s “detection orders” would be considered a violation of the fundamental right to privacy and confidentiality of correspondence, the EU court is also highly likely to squash “chat control” as indiscriminate surveillance, the Service warns.
The analysis also notes that while if the justification for “communications metadata screening” is national security, the court allows it – the drastic measures proposed in the CSAR would probably not be considered proportional to their stated purpose.
There’s also the issue of the EU Commission making the dubious claim that the process, rather than generalized, is somehow “targeted” (it does target everyone – so perhaps that’s the sophistry those behind the CSAR chose to go with.)
But the Legal Service’s analysis fears this is actually a “contradiction” between what the Commission is saying, and what the proposal actually spells out.
The Service’s logical suggestion then is to actually target detection orders so that they apply to people “in respect of whom there are reasonable grounds to believe that they are in some way involved in, committing or have committed a child sexual abuse offense.”
Observers have noted that the analysis of the CSAR – whose UK counterpart is the Online Safety Bill, represents serious criticism of similar, encryption-undermining proposals on both sides of the Atlantic.
New Federal Disinformation Offices Created
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | May 9, 2023
The Intercept recently reported the creation of two new federal offices to combat disinformation. The Pentagon will oversee the “Influence and Perception Management Office,” which is consistent with the fact that “Perception Management” is an old DoD euphemism for psychological warfare and deception. According to the investigative journalist Robert Parry, who covered the Iran-Contra Affair, the Reagan and first Bush Administrations adopted the techniques of “Perception Management” for the objective of overcoming the American public’s “Vietnam Syndrome”—that is, its reluctance to get involved in foreign military adventures that were widely perceived as fruitless and likely to end badly.
Given that the federal government is already a Leviathan of agencies for conducting propaganda, influence, and surveillance operations, one wonders why it is necessary to create new offices for these activities. The new Biden Administration offices are purportedly to keep the homeland and its people safe from dangerous foreign adversaries. More likely they will work round the clock to keep our people insulated from outside sources of information that would serve to counterbalance U.S. government and MSM propaganda.
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TV Drama Review
Japanese drama projects Japan’s wartime atrocities onto Chinese characters
Global Times | October 25, 2026
By portraying Chinese characters as perpetrators of ruthless violence while casting Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) intelligence operatives as defenders, the season 2 of the Japanese drama Vivant has recently drawn criticism from Chinese netizens, who argue that its depiction turns historical reality on its head while ignoring Japan’s wartime atrocities.
The TBS drama series – a spy suspense story in which an alleged unofficial intelligence unit of the SDF operates across the globe — has attracted a passionate fanbase. Its currently airing season 2 opened with a household rating of 18.8 percent, the highest for a TV drama this year, according toa commentary article by Japanese media Toyo Keizai.
What draws attention is the portrayal of the enemies in the series, the article noted. Scenes in which the Chinese organization subjects kidnapped members of the SDF unit to brutal torture are repeated with unrelenting intensity.
It is rare for Japanese TV dramas to explicitly portray a real-life country as the enemy, the article noted.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also made a reference to the drama, saying that she has been recording Vivant and hopes to binge-watch it over the year-end and New Year holidays, according to Japanese media outlets.
China’s CCTV News report on Sunday revealed that the drama features scenes in which Chinese personnel cut off the fingers of and stab Japanese intelligence operatives in the abdomen. Such acts bear striking similarities to the torture inflicted on Chinese nationals by invading Japanese troops during the World War II.
The drama distorts the truth by attributing these atrocities to modern Chinese characters. Beneath the surface, it subtly glorifies Japan’s cross-border overseas operations, blurs the functional boundaries of the SDF and implicitly promotes an expansionist narrative, per CCTV News. … continue
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