The Tories, with the political establishment and mainstream media cheering on in the background, have finally got rid of that irritant MP Andrew Bridgen, who (albeit belatedly) keeps prodding them in the side with truth about Covid vaccine harms.
They have used the expedient of the Holocaust being referenced in a comment he quoted from a doctor: ‘As one consultant cardiologist said to me, this is the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust.’
Chief whip Simon Hart proclaimed: ‘Andrew Bridgen has crossed a line, causing great offence in the process. As a nation we should be very proud of what has been achieved through the vaccine programme. The vaccine is the best defence against Covid that we have. Misinformation about the vaccine causes harm and costs lives. I am therefore removing the whip from Andrew Bridgen with immediate effect, pending a formal investigation.’
Rishi Sunak effectively smeared the North West Leicestershire MP as an anti-Semite in the Chamber of Lies (aka House of Commons): ‘Obviously, it is utterly unacceptable to make linkages and use language like that, and I’m determined that the scourge of anti-Semitism is eradicated. It has absolutely no place in our society. And I know that the previous few years have been challenging for the Jewish community, and I never want them to experience anything like that ever again.’
The establishment knives have found their target, and comments from the likes of John Mann, the government’s independent anti-Semitism adviser, and Andrew Percy, the Conservative MP and vice-chair of the All-Party Group against anti-Semitism, are calling for Bridgen to be barred from standing for the Conservative Party again.
The BBC, Sky News and Guardian have published their hit pieces, as have most other news outlets. Sky News further smeared Bridgen’s vaccine position by stating: ‘About 20million lives were saved by the Covid vaccine in its first year, Imperial College London research published in June last year found. The Imperial research suggests another 600,000 deaths could have been avoided if a World Health Organisation (WHO) target of vaccinating 40 per cent of the global population by the end of 2021 had been met.’
Michael Fabricant MP said of his former colleague: ‘If this deters people from being vaccinated and causes deaths as a direct consequence, he’ll have blood on his hands. His tweets are wholly irresponsible.’
This may come across as a piece of party political revenge, purging the Tories of a renegade MP who questioned one of its star ‘achievements’. But it may have deeper consequences.
It appears that the political establishment has circled its wagons and decided it will make a stand against any and all who voice questions regarding Covid vaccine. No gradual rolling back on vaccine efficacy or safety, but a doubling down on the dishonest propaganda that espouses the importance and essential need for the vaccine and ongoing vigilance, and acceptance of Government as the only source of truth for future emergencies (e.g. catastrophic climate change).
The expulsion of Andrew Bridgen is a shot across the bows of any other MPs who might consider raising their heads above the parapet. The claims of vaccine safety and effectiveness will be amplified, false data re-asserted as truth, and opposition quelled by any means.
This is authoritarianism coming out into the light, ready to use its recently found power over our lives. Over the last three years it has taken control over almost all aspects of our lives, and now it has decided it is going to go on the offensive to cement its position of dominance over the shaping of all our futures, and it will not be forced to relinquish its grip without drastic action by us, the electorate.
Statement by Andrew Bridgen MP
I’m disappointed that the Chief Whip, Simon Hart, with the support of the Prime Minister, has chosen to suspend me as a member of the Conservative Parliamentary Party. My tweet of 11th of January was in no way anti-Semitic. Indeed, it alluded to the Holocaust being the most heinous crime against humanity in living memory. Of course, if anyone is genuinely offended by my use of such imagery, then I apologize for any offence caused.
I wholeheartedly refute any suggestions that I am racist and currently I’m speaking to a legal team who will commence action against those who have led the call suggesting that I am. Indeed, the Israeli doctor I quoted in my tweet has stated that there was nothing at all antisemitic about the statement. The fact that I have been suspended over this matter says much about the current state of our democracy, the right to free speech and the apparent suspension of the scientific method of analysis of medicines being administered to billions of people.
As I’ve consistently maintained, there are very reasonable questions to be asked about the safety and effectiveness of the experimental MRNA vaccines and the risks and benefits of these treatments. There are reasonable questions to ask of a government that is considering extending the use of these experimental vaccines to children as young as six months of age. These, ladies and gentlemen, are babies.
There are reasonable questions about the side effects of MRNA vaccines, especially when we know categorically that the current risk of harm to most of the population, and especially young people, from COVID 19, is minuscule. We have a government who indemnifies vaccine manufacturers from claims against the harms caused by their products, and a government, who, it appears, actively look to remove MPs who raise questions about those harms.
I was saddened to hear yesterday of my suspension, but I’m not downhearted. I’ve received huge support from ordinary people, medical workers, who are too intimidated to speak out and of course from those who’ve experienced vaccine harms themselves or to a loved one. Hopefully the media interest around my suspension will finally get the issue of vaccine harms into the media who have been so reluctant to cover this issue for so long, an issue which is clearly of huge and growing concern to many people across the globe.
Reasonable questions about the safety and effectiveness of MRNA vaccines must continue to be asked, and I will continue to ask them. If I cannot do that as a Conservative member of Parliament, then so be it. Highlighting these important questions. Questions about life, death, serious injury, must override party loyalty. I owe that not only to my constituents in North West Leicestershire, but also to the wider British public and especially to our children and young people who are the very future of our great nation.
Thank you very much for listening to me.
Notes
Andrew’s statement can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/LD2lhNnlDbQ
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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Samizdat – 12.01.2023
WASHINGTON – US government officials and media outlets promoted conspiracies about Russian bot activity on Twitter despite pushback and evidence to the contrary from the social media company, reporter Matt Taibbi said on Thursday in the latest release of the so-called Twitter Files.
In January 2018, Twitter users began posting the hashtag “ReleaseTheMemo” in support of the declassification of a memorandum by then-Congressman Devin Nunes, which detailed flaws in the FBI’s investigation of alleged collusion between former President Donald Trump and Russia.
In response, Democrats denounced the memorandum, claiming it was boosted by Russian “bots” and not an organic social media movement, even after Twitter informed the lawmakers that they found no signs that the movement was affiliated with Russia.
“Twitter warned politicians and media they not only lacked evidence, but had evidence the accounts weren’t Russian – and were roundly ignored,” Taibbi said. “Execs eventually grew frustrated over what they saw as a circular process – presented with claims of Russian activity, even when denied, led to more claims.”
Nevertheless, Twitter went on to follow a pattern of not challenging the claims regarding Russia on the record, Taibbi said. Consequently, a number of US media outlets continued to push the Russian bots narrative despite a lack of evidence, Taibbi added.
The lawmakers contributed to one of the “greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in US history” by spreading the Russian collusion hoax and attempting to discredit Nunes’ memorandum, the congressman said in a statement. The contents of Nunes’ memorandum were verified in a December 2019 report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
The Twitter Files are based on internal information and released in coordination with Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who committed to reforming the social media company after acquiring it last year.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | FBI, United States |
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Last Friday, President Biden held a White House ceremony commemorating the second anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot. Biden showered a dozen Presidential Service Medals on people connected to the 2020 election or the January 6 events. Biden talked of the anniversary as a “day of remembrance”—perhaps echoing the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Many Americans would be happy to never hear about January 6 again. No such luck. Vice President Kamala Harris equated January 6 with 9/11 and threw in Pearl Harbor to score a trifecta. Biden endlessly invoked January 6 in his speeches supporting Democrats in the mid-term congressional elections. In August, Biden denounced Republicans for “semi-fascism.” In September, he claimed that MAGA Republicans (which effortlessly became all Republicans) “embrace political violence.” In a preview of Biden’s speech last week, Politico accurately forecast that Biden will “again put center stage the danger and chaos posed by election deniers… He will link Republicans to the extremists who attempted to forcibly overturn the results of Donald Trump’s defeat.”
Since Biden is running for re-election, he will likely be perpetually flogging January 6 in his speeches between now and November 2024. Thus, it is worthwhile to have a closer analysis of Biden’s speech and the continuing effort to exploit January 6 to vilify political dissent.
In his White House speech last week, Biden repeated his efforts to portray January 6 as a conspiracy to destroy American democracy. Biden declared that “a violent mob of insurrectionists… vandalized sacred halls,” seeking to “overthrow the will of the people and usurp the peaceful transfer of power.” Biden repeatedly slurred his pronunciation of “insurrectionists” and referred to the attacks on “July the sixth” (instead of January the sixth).
Exploiting the boundless historical illiteracy of his audience, Biden declared, “The U.S. Capitol was breached, which had never happened before in the history of the United States of America, even during the Civil War.” Actually, the British Army burned the Capitol down in 1814. But since none of the British were wearing furry horned hats, it would be unfair to compare their soldiers to the January 6 protestors.
Seeking to vivify the viciousness of the protestors, Biden lamented that a police officer he gave an award to “was tased.” Unfortunately, tasing only counts as a human rights abuse when law enforcement is on the voltage receiving end. Biden listed five police who had died (several by suicide) in the wake of January 6 but did not mention Ashli Babbitt, the only person who was gunned down and killed that day. The Capitol policeman who shot Babbitt (who was unarmed) was hailed as a hero.
Biden, staying on script, repeated his claim that the January 6 clash “was fueled by lies about the 2020 election.” And since the protestors were spurred by false claims, Biden was automatically exempted from any obligation for candor. The January 6 protestors magically become collectively guilty for anything bad that happened inside the District of Columbia for the rest of 2021.
Biden declared:
“Today is a ceremony to honor heroes of January 6th, but we also recognize the late U.S. Capitol Police Officer, Billy Evans. Three months after January 6th, while they were still cordoning off the Capitol because threats these—by these sick insurrectionists continued to be profligated on the Internet, again, all of America saw what happened, what Officer Evans was killed defending a checkpoint you had to go through to get up to the Capitol, because of these God-awful, sick threats that continue to move forth. And the whole world saw it.”
The whole world saw what? If someone relied on Biden’s spiel, they would assume some wacko wearing a MAGA hat brutally killed a cop on Capitol Hill. Actually, Evans was killed by Noah Green, a black 25-year-old Nation of Islam zealot who struggled with hallucinations and drug addiction. After Green smashed his car into a checkpoint, he leaped out with a knife and lunged at officers before he was shot and killed. The effort to blame Evans’ death on the January 6 protestors epitomized Biden’s “close enough for government work” demonology.
Biden claimed that the checkpoint was necessary “because of these God-awful, sick threats that continue to move forth.” The media has memory-holed the militarization of Washington that Biden and congressional allies ordered in 2021. More than 10,000 National Guard troops occupied much of Washington the following months and Capitol Hill was surrounded by fences topped with barbed wire. Some skeptics believed that the ominous trappings sought to frighten members of Congress to support sweeping new anti-terrorism legislation to vilify any American who distrusted Washington.
The so-called “Temple of Democracy” looked like a Beirut bunker. Some members of Congress favored permanently turning Capitol Hill into the equivalent of a supermax prison. The American Civil Liberties Union recognized that Congress hiding behind a fence projects “the kind of message that heads of autocratic regimes send by cloistering themselves away from their populaces in armored fortresses.” The closing off of the Capitol illustrated how far politicians would go to exploit one day’s violence for an extended shutdown of the trappings of democracy.
Some January 6 protestors were violent and destructive and deserve to be sent up the river. But the Biden January 6 narrative is bolstered by endless prosecutions of folks who were little more than hapless bystanders to the violence that day. Attorney General Merrick Garland boasted last Wednesday that the January 6 “investigation has resulted in the arrest of more than 950 defendants for their alleged roles in the attack.” The total arrests far exceed the number of violent private citizens at the Capitol that day. A Justice Department press release noted, “860 defendants have been charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds.” Shades of Lee Harvey Oswald!
“Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism” is the Biden standard for prosecuting January 6 defendants. The FBI treats every individual charged with a January 6 offense “as domestic terrorists.” Prosecutors are not formally charging January 6 defendants with terrorism because that unsubstantiated charge would be laughed out of federal courtrooms. But for Biden scoring of January 6 federal triumphs, “parading without a permit” is close enough to terrorism.
While Biden paints all the January 6 arrestees as deadly perils to democracy, federal judges are scoffing at histrionic Justice Department claims. The Washington Post reported last week that “judges in U.S. District Court in Washington… have gone below federal prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations in more than three-quarters of the cases so far.” While the Justice Department boasts of the total number of arrests, “only 69 have been convicted and sentenced so far [for felonies], mostly for assaulting police or obstructing Congress.”
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack conducted many hearings and issued an 845-page report on their findings. At the behest of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the committee’s final report expunged criticism of the failure of law enforcement, enraging Democratic committee staffers. This was a bizarre omission—considering that even the Washington Post condemned “one of the biggest security failures in the nation’s history.” The U.S. Capitol Police have almost 2,000 officers and a budget larger than that of Detroit and St. Louis. However, fewer than 200 Capitol police “were deployed to interior or exterior posts at the US Capitol” January 6 — as if the cops were prepping for the annual visit from the Future Farmers of America.
Nor did the House Select Committee show any interest in the role of federal informants or undercover agents in the Capitol clash. A year ago at a congressional hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked senior FBI official Jill Sanborn: “How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of Jan. 6?” She refused to answer.
Two months ago, it was revealed that the FBI had as many as eight informants inside the Proud Boys, a far right group that has been charged with seditious conspiracy for their January 6 violence. Suspicions have also been spurred by Ray Epps, an Arizona activist who urged people to go inside the Capitol building and boasted that he “orchestrated” January 6 has faced no criminal charges. Epps, a darling witness of the House Select Committee, has been accused of being an informant (which he denies). Nor did the Select Committee push to disclose the thousands of hours of videotape from the Capitol’s cameras that could resolve many of the J6 controversies. According to Darren Beatty, the founder of Revolver News, “Without federal involvement, that rally could not have turned into the riot that it did.” But we have not seen the evidence to confirm or rebut Beatty’s conclusion.
The January 6 prosecutions are part of a growing FBI onslaught against dissent. The FBI crackdown is skewed because “Washington is obsessed with threats to Washington itself,” as a senior government official recently told Newsweek’s William Arkin, one of the best investigative journalists in DC. “We’ve become too prone to labeling anything we don’t like as extremism, and then any extremist as a terrorist,” the official observed. The FBI is expanding its targeting of “Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremists (AGAAVEs),” groups or individuals the feds claim “intend to commit violence or criminal activity.” And how will the FBI know their intentions? Trust thousands of FBI informants to gin up the evidence to keep propelling the prosecution juggernaut. And every anti-government “extremist” who is indicted can be portrayed by politicians as a co-conspirator with the January 6 traitors.
Biden will continue to invoke January 6 (or July 6, depending on how he is doing that day) to portray himself as the only thing standing between America and utter chaos. But the Biden storyline hinges on keeping Americans blindfolded on many details that occurred at the Capitol before, during, and after that day. Biden’s pitch also hinges on Americans acquiescing to federal agencies and prosecutors vilifying ever more dissenters. Unfortunately, there is no reason to presume that the coverups and the demagoguery will cease working any time soon.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | FBI, United States |
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The EU could have availed itself of an opportunity to hold Israel accountable for its violations but, instead it opted for the lesser value of requesting financial reparation for the structures funded by the bloc in the Occupied West Bank and destroyed by the settler-colonial enterprise. Neither is the EU’s request a novelty, since demanding financial compensation from Israel has happened in the past, without any compliance, of course.
Recent focus on Israel’s planned forced displacement of Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta prompted 24 European Parliament members to contact the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic, regarding financial reparation. The bottom line is that, while the EU is within its rights to demand financial compensation, the issue at stake – which is the Palestinian people being forcibly displaced by Israel – is nowhere on the EU’s agenda.
Lenarcic’s response, partially quoted by Haaretz, confirms the EU’s repetitive requests for financial compensation and that “the European Union is continuing to work in this regard through a range of diplomatic and political channels”. Of little to no consequence was Lenarcic’s reminding that EU representatives often visit areas in the Occupied West Bank that are slated for demolition, ostensibly “to warn against”. Yet, besides the opportunistic exploitation, keeping tally of EU-funded destroyed dwellings is more a case in point and futile, too. As Lenarcic stated, “The list of possible steps to ensure compensation from Israel for European financing that went down the drain in demolitions has not yet come up for discussion.”
If holding Israel accountable for something as basic as a financial transaction for damages it caused prompts so much caution in the EU’s official statements, it is safe to say that human rights in the EU’s repertoire, when it comes to Israel, descends into still silence. The EU still has not addressed the fact that, without holding Israel accountable for forcibly displacing Palestinians, its humanitarian projects for Palestinians is also financing Israel’s violations. Yet it is precisely what the humanitarian project which the international community imposed upon Palestinians intended. By investing a fragment of humanitarian aid aimed at alleviating the suffering caused by Israel’s colonial existence and violence, the international community can bypass the actual violations which go against international law.
The EU is no exception to this imposed rule. Advocacy by EU representatives does not work to hold Israel accountable but to extend a permanent contract of silence which, in turn, also silences Palestinians. Despite having political means at their disposal, EU representatives prefer playing the amateur activists when it comes to Palestine. Funds for travelling to the Occupied West Bank, after all, form part of the humanitarian project which Palestinians are forced to fit into. In the same way, EU-funded dwellings play a role in the humanitarian project but fail to sustain Palestinian autonomy. The latest purported concern has nothing to do with Palestinians, and is only marginally related to the EU-funded dwellings that Israel routinely destroys. Detracting from Israel’s settler-colonial expansion and the EU’s role in maintaining it, however, is a major part of what the humanitarian paradigm constitutes.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | European Union, Human rights, Israel, Palestine |
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Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, formerly the leader of the foreign ‘Soldiers of the Caucasus’ group in Syria, and now an official member of Ukraine’s international legion (Photo: Atlas News )
As the prospect of a rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus becomes more imminent, the most extreme elements of Syria’s armed opposition have been feeling a sting of betrayal, accelerating a trend that, over the past year, has seen many jihadists relocate to Ukraine.
This is especially true for foreign militants, particularly those from Central Asia or the Caucasus.
On 12 January, Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that after several months of disappearance, the well-known Chechen extremist and leader of the ‘Soldiers of the Caucasus’ militia, Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, has reappeared in Ukraine as a member of Kiev’s so-called ‘international legion,’ established in order to attract and recruit foreign fighters against Russia.
According to the report, there has recently been news of an increased number of foreign fighters leaving Syria to make their way over to the “new battlefield,” reinforced by “Turkiye’s lack of need for ‘jihadists’ on Syrian soil” and its “definite interest … to get rid of them.” This comes following recent talks aimed at reconciling Damascus and Ankara, over which the opposition has already expressed a great distaste for.
The report also highlights a leading role played by Turkish intelligence in facilitating this cross-country transfer of extremists, “at least during the first months of the Russian-Ukrainian war.” This could have been Ankara’s way of disposing of militants from Syria and clearing the way for a solution to the Syrian war (provided it was serious about reconciliation at the time, and still is). According to Al-Akhbar, Shishani himself passed through Turkiye on his way to the “new land of jihad,” just as he initially had on his way to join the war in Syria.
Syrian officials have also suggested Washington’s role in facilitating these transfers to Ukraine, as the US has been involved in the relocation of extremists between Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan.
On 7 January, the official account of Ukraine’s intelligence agency posted a video on Twitter showing Shishani and a group of fighters engaging in clashes with Russian troops in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. The video essentially serves as propaganda designed specifically to attract extremist militants from Syria to Ukraine.
Shishani’s disappearance coincided with the establishment of recruitment centers in northern Syria designed to send fighters off to Ukraine, as Al-Akhbar reported in March last year.
Soon after the start of the Ukrainian war, hundreds of fighters from ISIS and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly the Al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front, began making their way to Ukraine to take part in a newer, more direct front against Russia.
On 1 March, before these reports began emerging, Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Bashar al-Jaafari, predicted this.
“We, as a state, have evidence that the US military in Syria is transferring terrorists from one place to another, especially members of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra … So, one should not be surprised, and we do not exclude, that tomorrow ISIS terrorists will be sent to Ukraine,” he said.
If the plan for a restoration of ties between Syria and Turkiye is fruitful, and if Ankara chooses to officially abandon Syria’s armed opposition, which the extremists fear has already happened, then it is a likely possibility that the raging battlefield in Ukraine will emerge as a new safe haven for Syria’s jihadist movement.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | ISIS, Syria, Turkiye, Ukraine, United States |
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Sanaa – Doctors and medical experts in Yemen believe that Saudi Arabia and its coalition forces are using biological weapons which are believed to be the reason for the increased cancer and birth defect cases in Yemen. Yousef Mawry has the special story.
Sana is dying. She was born just a few days ago, but because of a rare birth malformation, doctors believe she only has a few days to live.
Sana is one of the thousands of Yemeni babies facing similar fate. Here at the Sabeen Hospital in the Yemeni capital Sana’a doctors say they have been receiving birth defect cases at an alarming rate since 2015. That’s when the Saudi-led coalition launched its war on Yemen. Doctors here are convinced that biological weapons were employed by the Saudis.
Cancer cases are also on the rise. The spokesperson for Yemen’s Ministry of Health says the data and statistics recorded since the war started indicate that biological weapons used by the Saudi-led coalition are the main cause of the steady increase in cancer and birth defects.
We visited the registration office at Yemen’s only oncology center. It was packed with people pushing their way to register for cancer treatment.
According to Yemen’s Ministry of Health, the number of cancer patients increased by more than 50% since the war was launched in 2015.
The Yemeni Ministry of Health says it will form a committee to officially investigate the main cause for the increase in birth defects and cancer cases in the areas that have been hit the most by Saudi airstrikes. Even if it’s evident that prohibited weapons were utilized by Saudi Arabia and its coalition forces, it is unlikely they will face prosecution since most of the weapons used in the war are supplied by the American and British governments.
Doctors and medical experts say the increase in cancer and birth defect cases is rooted in the eight-year Saudi-led war that has polluted Yemen’s air, water and food. They blame the Saudi-led coalition’s use of prohibited weapons such as biological weapons, cluster bombs and toxic gases.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Saudi Arabia, UK, United States, Yemen |
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BUDAPEST – Hungary and Serbia want peace in Ukraine as soon as possible. Above all, they are against the negative effects of the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions on their economies. That is the conclusion of recent talks between Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic. Szijjártó pointed out how the two countries were experiencing the terrible consequences of the war – economically as well as in terms of safety due to their proximity to Ukraine.
Other countries, thousands of kilometers away from the conflict zone, do not have to face the same impact, he argued.
“It may not look so serious to them, but those who promote an escalation or prolong the war are acting against our national interests,” said the Orban minister, alluding to the US and its ongoing massive support for Ukraine. “Neither the Hungarians nor the Serbs are responsible for this war, but both peoples are paying for it. That is why we are interested in ending the armed conflict as soon as possible,” Szijjártó stressed.
Last month, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had warned that the Ukraine crisis would continue as long as the US supported the Kiev regime with money and weapons.
There was a real danger that the Ukraine conflict could drag on for decades and Washington is responsible for the escalation, he said. “Ukraine can only fight as long as the USA supports it with money and weapons. If the Americans want peace, there will be peace,” Orban told the newspaper Magyar Nemzet.
“It is not in our interest to cut off all our economic relations with Russia. We look at these issues through the Hungarian prism and not through that of other countries,” he noted.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism | Hungary, Serbia, Ukraine, United States |
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By Ekaterina Blinova – Samizdat – 12.01.2023
South Africa has criticized Washington over its pressure campaign on African nations for maintaining relations with Russia. Defense and Military Veterans Minister Thandi Modise was quoted as saying that the US threatens African nations over “anything that is even smelling of Russia.”
South African Defense and Military Veterans Minister Thandi Modise’s criticism was sparked by reports concerning a delivery of “unidentified” cargo to the Simon’s Town naval base in December 2022 by an alleged Russia-flagged merchant ship.
In November, when the US learned that the vessel in question was headed toward South Africa, the US Embassy alerted Pretoria that the ship had been subject to Washington’s sanctions since May 2022. In accordance with US laws, Washington can impose restrictions on any entity, person or country that provides services to a sanctioned vessel.
The US press said that the embassy received no response from the South African government, adding that the alleged sanctioned freighter was accepted at the nation’s port in December.
Addressing the issue earlier this week, Defense and Military Veterans Minister Thandi Modise told US media that “whatever contents this vessel was getting were ordered long before COVID,” and lambasted Washington over the unjustified pressure the latter has imposed on African states maintaining ties with Moscow.
Since the beginning of Russia’s special military to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine in February 2022, the US has been trying to isolate Moscow and disrupt its cooperation with the Global South.
Earlier, on April 27, 2022, the US House of Representatives passed the HR 7311 Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act with a bipartisan 419-9 majority. The legislation was aimed at sanctioning African nations over cooperating with Moscow. It was later referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations by the US Senate and appears to be on hold.
Washington’s Tools of Coercion
“One of the leverages is fear of sanctions,” Eguegu Ovigwe, a policy analyst specializing in geopolitics and African affairs at Development Reimagined, told Sputnik. “I think HR 7311 – that is the act where the US secretary of state developed strategies which were submitted to Congress, an implementation plan, of course, to counter the so-called malign influence of Russian activities in African countries. So that really gives a legislative backing or legislative framework to potential sanctions that the African countries may come under if they continue to have a relationship with Russia that the US doesn’t like.”
Washington’s hypocrisy is obvious, according to Ovigwe: on the one hand, the US asserted to African nations that it wouldn’t force developing countries to choose between Russia and China or the United States; on the other hand, US House lawmakers almost unanimously passed legislation aimed at punishing Africans for maintaining ties with Moscow.
“[I]t is not the place of the United States to dictate what supposedly sovereign countries should do,” stressed the analyst. “This is the extraterritorialization of US law. So, if the US passes a law, that’s for the US; it has nothing to do with bilateral relations between two other countries.”
In addition to sanctions, the US could cut African nations off its global economic programs, according to Ovigwe. For instance, the Bill Clinton era’s African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) provides duty-free treatment for goods of designated sub-Saharan African countries (SSAs). Earlier this month, Burkina Faso, a desert landlocked African country located in the Sahel, was officially removed from the program by the US for not meeting the initiative’s requirements. Last year, the Biden administration also terminated the AGOA program for Ethiopia, Mali, and Guinea over what it called “unconstitutional change in governments” and “the gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
Washington may also reduce or nullify foreign direct investment (FDI) to some African countries to twist their arm into halting relations with Moscow, Ovigwe continued.
Still, the scholar does not think that removal from AGOA or lack of US investments could spell doom for the continent. The crux of the matter is that there are enough global players interested in Africa’s growing market and rich natural reserves who are willing to fill Washington’s shoes, according to him.
Africa’s Alternatives & Opportunities
Africa has far more promising development projects than the AGOA: in May 2019, the African Union (AU) kicked off the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which looks to create a single continental market with a population of about 1.3 billion. It could become by far the world’s largest free trade area, bringing together the 55 countries of the African Union (AU) and eight (8) Regional Economic Communities (RECs).
“I don’t think many countries will be losing sleep, fearing that they’re going to be kicked out of AGOA, with the wealth of opportunities which may present themselves,” Ovigwe noted.
Remarkably, the US rushed to embrace the AU’s project in December 2022, with the White House saying that the initiative “present[s] an extraordinary opportunity for the US to invest in Africa’s future.”
The US has long been lagging behind the EU and China in terms of trade with the continent. While the US trade with Africa reached $83.6 billion in 2021, it pales in comparison with the EU’s €288 billion ($306 billion) and China’s $254 billion in the same year.
When it comes to FDIs, China, a US major geopolitical competitor, is currently investing heavily in Africa, noted Mikatekiso Kubayi, researcher at the Institute for Global Dialogue associated with UNISA and research fellow at the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation.
“China continues to be the leading source of FDIs in Africa and has a pipeline of projects, particularly in infrastructure,” Kubayi told Sputnik. “Africa’s relations with China continue to deepen. This relationship can yield great benefits to both parties in joint research and development, manufacturing in Africa, and an African market that is expected to reach 2.5 billion in population by 2050. African wealth in minerals such as rare earths and others are all thoroughly purposefully explored for practical action and development.”
Multipolarity is Answer to Intimidation
Washington’s unipolar approach creates an uneven playing field for developing countries as the US is still communicating with the Global South from a position of force, according to the observers. In contrast, the multipolar vision ensures equality and fair conditions for all players.
“The recent G20 summit reiterated the importance of multilateralism and the United Nations in its declaration,” Mikatekiso Kubayi underscored. “BRICS – which China and Russia are members of – emphasized the need to deepen and improve the practical experience of multilateralism with the United Nations at its center. The changing geopolitical landscape is changing precisely because of the realization that it does not benefit the majority of the world.”
The US attempts to coerce Africa into submission, including through anti-Russia legislation targeting the continent, “do not seem to generate confidence and positivity,” Kubayi warned.
Meanwhile, unlike the Group of Seven (G7) which appears to be a closed club of Western industrialized nations plus Japan, BRICS has the potential to grow and develop by adding new members, according to Ovigwe. Previously, Argentina, Iran, and Saudi Arabia signaled their interest in becoming BRICS members.
“You have emerging multilateral platforms like BRICS, for instance, that have so much momentum, and seem to be more open to emerging powers, more focused on issues that are really important to the majority of the world,” Ovigwe stressed. “One of the trends we might see going forward is countries tilting more towards these new and emerging multilateral platforms because they want it to be accessible to them. G7 is not going to be expanded – it has already contracted from G8 to G7.”
The scholar added that he hopes the global system moves towards more new, open, and more dynamic platforms like BRICS.
A multipolar world is taking shape, offering new alternatives and opportunities to developing states and thwarting attempts to intimidate global players by sanctions and use of force, according to the observers.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Africa, China, Russia, United States |
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Supposedly, we are rapidly on our way toward a zero-carbon, all electric energy future. But has anybody done the arithmetic to see if this adds up?
I’m carving myself out a niche as the guy who does a few simple calculations to check if the grand schemes of our central planners make any sense. So far I’ve taken that approach to the question of energy storage to back up a wind/solar electricity grid, and on that one the schemes of the central planners most definitely do not add up. But the energy storage question, although involving no math beyond basic arithmetic, does have some complexities. How about something somewhat simpler, like: If we convert our entire automobile fleet to all-electric cars, where is the electricity going to come from?
With the big push currently on to get rid of internal combustion vehicles and replace them with electrics, surely someone has done the calculations to be sure that the electricity supply will be ample. Actually, that does not appear to be the case. Once again, the central planners have no idea what they are doing.
A few things in the recent news make this issue highly topical. First, in the days just before Christmas, much of the country experienced a severe cold snap. Severe, that is, but not record-breaking. Almost everywhere that had very cold temperatures during those days had had even colder temperatures in the past, not necessarily every year, but multiple times over the course of decades. Second, several utilities found themselves with insufficient electricity to meet demand, and had to impose rolling blackouts on their customers, even in the face of freezing cold temperatures. Examples of utilities imposing rolling blackouts during the severe cold wave included Duke Energy (covering most of North and South Carolina, and parts of Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky) and TVA (covering all of Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky). Both of those utilities, and many others, have spent the last decade and more shuttering reliable coal power plants, and building lots of wind turbines and solar panels, along with some (but obviously not enough) natural gas plants, as replacements.
As of today, electric vehicles are a tiny fraction of all vehicles (less than 1% in the U.S., says Reuters as of February 2022), particularly in these Midwestern and Southern states. Yet even with only the tiniest level of electricity demand coming from electric vehicles, already major utilities are short of electricity when a not-out-of-the-ordinary cold snap hits.
And now, where are things headed in the near future? The Wall Street Journal had a big piece with a January 1 date (it appeared in the print edition on January 3) about the coming rush of electric vehicles, headline “Shift to EVs Triggers Biggest Auto-Factory Building Boom in Decades.” The gist is that the industry is gearing up to build factories at a breakneck pace for the imminent supply of electric cars for all. Excerpt:
The U.S. auto industry is entering one of its biggest factory-building booms in years, a surge of spending largely driven by the shift to electric vehicles and new federal subsidies aimed at boosting U.S. battery manufacturing. Through November, about $33 billion in new auto-factory investment has been pledged in the U.S., including money for the construction of new assembly plants and battery-making facilities, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit organization based in Michigan. . . . The capital outlays amount to a collective bet by the car industry that buyers will embrace battery-powered models in numbers large enough to support these investments. The global auto industry plans to spend a collective $526 billion on electric vehicles through 2026, according to consulting firm AlixPartners.
Whew! It’s the total transformation of the industry, from internal combustion engines to battery-electric. And if you look at the websites of the manufacturers themselves, they are almost all saying that they are committed to the rapid conversion to electric vehicles, with all internal-combustion manufacturing banished by some early date. Here is GM on its “path to an all-electric future” (by 2035); and here is Ford’s claim that it will “lead America’s shift to electric vehicles” (50% by 2030!). Numerous other manufacturers are making comparable claims.
OK, then, how much electricity is this going to take? I’ll start with this handy (if somewhat complicated) chart from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showing production (by source) and use (by sector) of all energy in the U.S. for the year 2021 (I do not find a chart for 2022 available as of yet.):
Here are a few key number from this chart:
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The total amount of energy consumed in the U.S. in 2021 is given as 73.5 quadrillion Btus.
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Of the 73.5 quadrillion Btus consumed, only 12.9 quadrillion Btus was in the form of electricity. That’s only 17.6% of total energy consumption.
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Almost all of the electricity was consumed in the household, commercial and industrial sectors, and almost none (less than 1%) in the transportation sector.
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The transportation sector consumed 26.9 quadrillion Btus of energy. That’s 37% of total energy consumption — and more than double the entire amount of electricity consumed in all sectors.
OK, but the transportation sector is a lot more than just automobiles. It also includes everything from airplanes to freight trains to ocean shipping. What part of that 26.9 quadrillion Btus of energy in the transportation sector consisted of automobiles and light trucks (like SUVs and pick-ups) which are the things that are supposedly about to get electrified? Looking around, I find something called the Transportation Energy Data Book, put out by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory — another part (like the EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy. Here are two key facts from the introductory “Quick Facts” section: (1) “Petroleum comprised 90% of U.S. transportation energy use in 2020,” and (2) “Cars and light trucks accounted for 62% of U.S. transportation petroleum use in 2018.”
Assuming that those percentages held approximately true for 2021, then cars and light trucks consumed approximately some 26.9 x 0.9 x 0.62 = 15.0 quadrillion Btus in the form of gasoline or diesel in 2021 — well more than the entire amount of energy consumed in the country in that year in the form of electricity.
So have we now shown that converting all cars and light trucks to electric would require more than doubling the size of our electricity generation system? Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. There are a few other factors that need to be taken into account. Unfortunately, these additional factors are not subject to a great deal of precision, and can only be fairly rough approximations:
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Electric vehicles have about 85-90% efficiency in translating the stored energy in the battery into movement of the vehicle. That compares to only about 15-25% efficiency of ICE vehicles. That is a large difference.
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However, two other factors offset that advantage. One is that the batteries of electric vehicles experience an approximate 15% loss of charge in the turnaround between charge and discharge. The other is that the process of producing electricity in a power plant is in the range of 35-50% efficient, depending on the type of power plant. Some of the latest power plants even claim upwards of 50% efficiency, but note that the EIA chart above shows that the overall efficiency of electricity production in the U.S. is 35% (which also includes losses in transmission).
Put these factors together, and here is the calculation:
For an internal combustion vehicle, if you start with 10 Btus of energy in gasoline, you get about 2 Btus of motion from your car.
For an electric vehicle, if you start with the same 10 Btus of fuel, you get 10 x 0.35 = 3.5 Btus of usable electricity, 3.5 x 0.85 = 3.0 Btus of electricity in your battery after charging losses, and 3.0 x 0.87 = 2.6 Btus of motion from your car.
So overall, and remembering that this is approximate, an all-electric car and light truck fleet can run on about three-quarters (2 divided by 2.6) the number of Btus of energy input as can a comparable internal combustion-powered fleet. Instead of the 15 quadrillion Btus annually that we use for our current ICE vehicles, we could theoretically get it down to 11.25 quadrillion Btus, which would produce 11.25 x .35 = 3.93 quadrillion Btus of electricity to run the vehicles.
Recall that the current amount of electricity produced annually in the U.S., from the chart above, is 12.9 quadrillion Btus. So the additional 3.93 quadrillion Btus of electricity would represent approximately a 30.5% addition to the current capacity of our electricity generation system.
Are there any plans afoot for anything like that? Here’s another chart from EIA showing their projections of growth in U.S. electricity generation capacity out to 2050, from their 2022 Annual Energy Outlook:
Basically, after the current rebound from the 2020-21 Covid-induced decline, they project 1% annual increase in consumption as far as the eye can see. The “high economic growth” and “low economic growth” scenarios do not differ meaningfully from the median “reference” case. This growth includes growing demand for everything, including from growing population and every sort of new electric gizmo that might be invented over the period. And note that this projection, at least for the earlier years, is largely based on the plans of utilities to add capacity — or not. And to the extent anyone is adding capacity, it is likely to be wind and solar, which will be completely useless for charging these vehicles on calm nights and lots of other times.
So where is the surge in generation capacity to support a 30% or so additional need for electricity to electrify all cars? It sure doesn’t look to me like it is there. Could it be that nobody really believes that this conversion to electric cars is actually going to occur? That would be my take.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular |
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Informed Consent Action Network (icandecide.org) funded Lead Attorney, Aaron Siri, Esq., to depose and later cross-examine world-leading Vaccinologist, Dr. Kathyrn Edwards in 2020. Within the hours-long cross-examination she gave a shocking answer to the question; “Do childhood vaccine trials support the CDC’s claim that vaccines do not cause autism?” Regardless of your stance on the issue of Vaccines and Autism, her answer is a must-see.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video |
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Trust the Authorities, trust the Experts, and trust the Science, we were told. Public health messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic was only credible if it originated from government health authorities, the World Health Organization, and pharmaceutical companies, as well as scientists who parroted their lines with little critical thinking.
In the name of ‘protecting’ the public, the authorities have gone to great lengths, as described in the recently released Twitter Files (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) that document collusion between the FBI and social media platforms, to create an illusion of consensus about the appropriate response to Covid-19.
They suppressed ‘the truth,’ even when emanating from highly credible scientists, undermining scientific debate and preventing the correction of scientific errors. In fact, an entire bureaucracy of censorship has been created, ostensibly to deal with so-called MDM— misinformation (false information resulting from human error with no intention of harm); disinformation (information intended to mislead and manipulate); malinformation (accurate information intended to harm).
From fact-checkers like NewsGuard, to the European Commission’s Digital Services Act, the UK Online Safety Bill and the BBC Trusted News Initiative, as well as Big Tech and social media, all eyes are on the public to curtail their ‘mis-/dis-information.’
“Whether it’s a threat to our health or a threat to our democracy, there is a human cost to disinformation.” — Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC
But is it possible that ‘trusted’ institutions could pose a far bigger threat to society by disseminating false information?
Although the problem of spreading false information is usually conceived of as emanating from the public, during the Covid-19 pandemic, governments, corporations, supranational organisations and even scientific journals and academic institutions have contributed to a false narrative.
Falsehoods such as ‘Lockdowns save lives’ and ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’ have far-reaching costs in livelihoods and lives. Institutional false information during the pandemic was rampant. Below is just a sample by way of illustration.
The health authorities falsely convinced the public that the Covid-19 vaccines stop infection and transmission when the manufacturers never even tested these outcomes. The CDC changed its definition of vaccination to be more ‘inclusive’ of the novel mRNA technology vaccines. Instead of the vaccines being expected to produce immunity, now it was good enough to produce protection.
The authorities also repeated the mantra (at 16:55) of ‘safe and effective’ throughout the pandemic despite emerging evidence of vaccine harm. The FDA refused the full release of documents they had reviewed in 108 days when granting the vaccines emergency use authorisation. Then in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, it attempted to delay their release for up to 75 years. These documents presented evidence of vaccine adverse events. It’s important to note that between 50 and 96 percent of the funding of drug regulatory agencies around the world comes from Big Pharma in the form of grants or user fees. Can we disregard that it’s difficult to bite the hand that feeds you?
The vaccine manufacturers claimed high levels of vaccine efficacy in terms of relative risk reduction (between 67 and 95 percent). They failed, however, to share with the public the more reliable measure of absolute risk reduction that was only around 1 percent, thereby exaggerating the expected benefit of these vaccines.
They also claimed “no serious safety concerns observed” despite their own post-authorisation safety report revealing multiple serious adverse events, some lethal. The manufacturers also failed to publicly address the immune suppression during the two weeks post-vaccination and the rapidly waning vaccine effectiveness that turns negative at 6 months or the increased risk of infection with each additional booster. Lack of transparency about this vital information denied people their right to informed consent.
They also claimed that natural immunity is not protective enough and that hybrid immunity (a combination of natural immunity and vaccination) is required. This false information was necessary to sell remaining stocks of their products in the face of mounting breakthrough cases (infection despite vaccination).
In reality, although natural immunity may not completely prevent future infection with SARS-CoV-2, it is however effective in preventing severe symptoms and deaths. Thus vaccination post-natural infection is not needed.
The WHO also participated in falsely informing the public. It disregarded its own pre-pandemic plans, and denied that lockdowns and masks are ineffective at saving lives and have a net harm on public health. It also promoted mass vaccination in contradiction to the public health principle of ‘interventions based on individual needs.’
It also went as far as excluding natural immunity from its definition of herd immunity and claimed that only vaccines can help reach this end point. This was later reversed under pressure from the scientific community. Again, at least 20 percent of the WHO’s funding comes from Big Pharma and philanthropists invested in pharmaceuticals. Is this a case of he who pays the piper calls the tune?
The Lancet, a respectable medical journal, published a paper claiming that Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) — a repurposed drug used for the treatment of Covid-19 — was associated with a slight increased risk of death. This led the FDA to ban the use of HCQ to treat Covid-19 patients and the NIH to halt the clinical trials on HCQ as a potential Covid-19 treatment. These were drastic measures taken on the basis of a study that was later retracted due to the emergence of evidence showing that the data used was false.
In another instance, the medical journal Current Problems in Cardiology retracted —without any justification— a paper showing an increased risk of myocarditis in young people following the Covid-19 vaccines, after it was peer-reviewed and published. The authors advocated for the precautionary principle in the vaccination of young people and called for more pharmacovigilance studies to assess the safety of the vaccines. Erasing such findings from the medical literature not only prevents science from taking its natural course, but it also gatekeeps important information from the public.
A similar story took place with Ivermectin, another drug used for the treatment of Covdi-19, this time potentially implicating academia. Andrew Hill stated (at 5:15) that the conclusion of his paper on Ivermectin was influenced by Unitaid which is, coincidentally, the main funder of a new research centre at Hill’s workplace —the University of Liverpool. His meta-analysis showed that Ivermectin reduced mortality with Covid-19 by 75 percent. Instead of supporting Ivermectin use as a Covid-19 treatment, he concluded that further studies were needed.
The suppression of potentially life-saving treatments was instrumental for the emergency use authorization of the Covid-19 vaccines as the absence of a treatment for the disease is a condition for EUA (p.3).
Many media outlets are also guilty of sharing false information. This was in the form of biased reporting, or by accepting to be a platform for public relations (PR) campaigns. PR is an innocuous word for propaganda or the art of sharing information to influence public opinion in the service of special interest groups.
The danger of PR is that it passes for independent journalistic opinion to the untrained eye. PR campaigns aim to sensationalise scientific findings, possibly to increase consumer uptake of a given therapeutic, increase funding for similar research, or to increase stock prices. The pharmaceutical companies spent $6.88 billion on TV advertisements in 2021 in the US alone. Is it possible that this funding influenced media reporting during the Covid-19 pandemic?
Lack of integrity and conflicts of interest have led to an unprecedented institutional false information pandemic. It is up to the public to determine whether the above are instances of mis- or dis-information.
Public trust in the Media has seen its biggest drop over the last five years. Many are also waking up to the widespread institutional false information. The public can no longer trust ‘authoritative’ institutions that were expected to look after their interests. This lesson was learned at great cost. Many lives were lost due to the suppression of early treatment and an unsound vaccination policy; businesses ruined; jobs destroyed; educational achievement regressed; poverty aggravated; and both physical and mental health outcomes worsened. A preventable mass disaster.
We have a choice: either we continue to passively accept institutional false information or we resist. What are the checks and balances that we must put in place to reduce conflicts of interest in public health and research institutions? How can we decentralise the media and academic journals in order to reduce the influence of pharmaceutical advertising on their editorial policy?
As individuals, how can we improve our media literacy to become more critical consumers of information? There is nothing that dispels false narratives better than personal inquiry and critical thinking. So the next time conflicted institutions cry woeful wolf or vicious variant or catastrophic climate, we need to think twice.
Abir Ballan is the co-founder of THiNKTWICE.GLOBAL — Rethink. Reconnect. Reimagine.. She has a Masters in Public Health, a graduate certificate in special needs education and a BA in psychology. She is a children’s author with 27 published books.
January 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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Where did the lab leak theory come from? Who first promoted the idea and why? The answer to this question is surprising – and may be the key to unlocking the mystery of the origin of COVID-19.
The first known mention of the idea that the coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese lab appeared on January 9th 2020 in a report by Radio Free Asia (RFA). This was just days after the virus had first entered public consciousness, and at the time, no deaths had yet been reported and few people were worrying about the virus – including, it seems, the Chinese, who were claiming it wasn’t even clear whether it was spreading between humans.
Seemingly unhappy about the lack of alarm, RFA ran a comment from Ren Ruihong, former head of the medical assistance department at the Chinese Red Cross, who said she was confident it was spreading between humans. She also asserted it was a “new type of mutant coronavirus”, and immediately, without pausing for breath, raised the possibility it was a result of a Chinese biological attack on Hong Kong using a virus developed in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Bear in mind this was before a single person had been reported as dying from the virus, and no solid evidence was presented for the claim. It is the first time the WIV and the idea of a lab origin of the virus are mentioned in the media. The report then implies the WIV is hiding its involvement – though the basis for this insinuation is tenuous, to say the least.
Ren said. “They haven’t made public the genetic sequence, because it is highly contagious. From what I can tell, the patients caught it from other people. I have thought that all along.”
She said the lack of fatalities didn’t indicate that the virus was less deadly than SARS, just that antiviral medications have improved in the past 10 years or so.
Ren said she also regarded the relatively high number of infections in Hong Kong with suspicion, given that there had been no reports of cases anywhere in between the two cities, in the southern province of Guangdong, for example.
“Genetic engineering technology has gotten to such a point now, and Wuhan is home to a viral research center that is under the aegis of the China Academy of Sciences, which is the highest level of research facility in China,” she said.
Repeated calls to various numbers listed for the Wuhan Institute of Virology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences rang unanswered.
However, an employee who identified herself as a senior engineer said she knew nothing about the virus.
“Sorry, I… I don’t know about this,” the employee said.
Over the following two weeks RFA pushed hard on the idea of a Chinese biowarfare lab origin, and its reporting was picked up by the Washington Times on January 24th, which quoted Dany Shoham, an “Israeli biological warfare expert”.
The deadly animal virus epidemic spreading globally may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory linked to China’s covert biological weapons programme, according to an Israeli biological warfare expert.
Radio Free Asia this week rebroadcast a local Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory known [as] the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Radio Free Asia reported.
The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.
Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biowarfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert biological weapons programme.
“Certain laboratories in the institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese [biological weapons] alignment,” Mr. Shoham told the Washington Times.
Why did Radio Free Asia and the Washington Times introduce and promote the idea of Covid as a Chinese bioweapon? RFA appears to have done so in order to counter the Chinese lack of concern about the virus, hence the heading: “Experts Cast Doubts on Chinese Official Claims Around ‘New’ Wuhan Coronavirus.” The Washington Times report indicates at one point it is in response to rumours “circulating on the Chinese Internet claiming the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons”, citing an unnamed “U.S. official”.
One ominous sign, said a U.S. official, is that false rumours since the outbreak began several weeks ago have begun circulating on the Chinese Internet claiming the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons.
That could indicate China is preparing propaganda outlets to counter future charges the new virus escaped from one of Wuhan’s civilian or defence research laboratories.
Why is the report anticipating “future charges” of a lab leak – particularly when it is in the process of making such charges?
The words of the anonymous U.S. official appear to state the Chinese rumours began “several weeks ago”, right back at the beginning of January or end of December; however, oddly, the article was soon updated to delete the words “since the outbreak began several weeks ago”, for reasons that are unclear.
In any case, the really strange thing about these “rumours circulating on the Chinese Internet” is that no evidence of them has ever been produced or found. Indeed, all the places you might expect to mention them do not. For instance, in February 2021 the DFRLab of the Atlantic Council published a lengthy document in conjunction with the Associated Press summarising all the “false rumours” and “hoaxes” regarding the origins of Covid. Its large research team scoured the internet for all rumours connected with Covid origins – yet the section on China doesn’t mention anything about these alleged January rumours of U.S bioweapons.
Another example is Larry Romanoff, an activist who writes on various ‘conspiracy theories’ and who has lived in China for many years. His columns in early 2020 on the Global Research website attacking the American position were tweeted out by senior Chinese figures, but he never mentions anything about these alleged early rumours on the “Chinese Internet”, which he surely would have done.
In addition, the rumours claim has never been repeated by any intelligence sources; this was the only time it was made.
Why then did RFA introduce the lab-engineered virus narrative, even before the first death? Why was it trying to ratchet up alarm? And why did the unnamed U.S. official claim to be responding to Chinese rumours that turned out not to exist?
The plot thickens when you realise that Radio Free Asia is a U.S.-Government-funded media outlet that is essentially a CIA front, once named by the New York Times as a key part in the agency’s “worldwide propaganda network”. As Whitney Webb pointed out right back in January 2020, though RFA is no longer run directly by the CIA, it is managed by the Government-funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which answers directly to the Secretary of State – who, at the outset of the pandemic was Mike Pompeo, whose previous job was as CIA Director.
This means we can see that the Covid lab origin narrative originated with the U.S. Government’s security services, and did so very early, prior to the first death, as part of a deliberate effort to increase alarm in China and elsewhere. It was also designed to counter the anticipated claims, which had not yet been made (though the anonymous U.S. official falsely claimed they had been), that the virus was a U.S. biological attack.
That the U.S. Government would be the source of the lab origin theory is no doubt surprising to many people, given that within weeks the same theory would be dismissed by Government officials as a ‘conspiracy theory’ and forcibly suppressed. In its place, official U.S. channels would endorse the wet market natural origin theory and seek to close down further debate and investigation. So what’s going on?
Here’s one possible explanation, which makes sense of all the known facts – though is admittedly highly disturbing. It may not be correct, but I confess I cannot currently think of a better one. Perhaps someone else can.
The explanation is that the Chinese lab origin narrative was put out by U.S. intelligence in early January as a cover story. A cover story for what? For a U.S. biological attack on China. As a cover story for an attack, it serves four key purposes. First, it preempts allegations of a U.S. attack (and indeed the anonymous U.S. official falsely claimed these had already been made). Second, it anticipates the need to explain the non-natural origin of the virus, which would be expected to be discovered, as a natural origin manifests differently to a non-natural origin – a natural origin should have animal reservoirs, early genetic diversity and evidence of adaptation to humans, which are lacking for SARS-CoV-2. Third, it spreads alarm in China – one of the purposes of the attack. And fourth, it justifies the U.S. and other countries activating biodefence protocols to defend themselves from any blowback – which we know is exactly what they did, and that they treated it as a matter of national security, not public health.
The idea that the U.S. might deliberately release a virus in China might seem far-fetched to some. However, it’s well known that the Pentagon intensified its research into bat-borne viruses in the years approaching the pandemic. Though it said this was solely for defensive purposes given the supposed risk of bats being used as “bioweapons”, scientists have previously warned, in the journal Science, that another supposedly defensive Pentagon programme, DARPA’s “Insect Allies” programme, appeared really to be aimed at creating and delivering a “new class of biological weapon” and that it revealed “an intention to develop a means of delivery of HEGAAs for offensive purposes”. In addition, the Iranian Government was so convinced that its early COVID-19 outbreak in February 2020, which killed a significant number of its senior leaders, was due to a U.S. biological attack that it lodged a formal complaint with the UN. Such allegations don’t prove anything of course. But together these concerns do suggest that such an attack is not outside the realm of possibility and should at least be considered as an explanation for the origin of the virus.
But if the lab leak was the intended cover story, why was it shortly afterwards suppressed as a ‘conspiracy theory’? It is a matter of public record that this occurred largely due to the efforts of Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar and other Western scientists, who organised a scientific cover-up of evidence that might implicate their complicity in the gain-of-function research that they suspected may have created the virus. Did they know about the attack? There’s no evidence they did. Which means they would also have been in the dark about the intended cover story. Indeed, one of the conspirators, Christian Drosten, in one of the disclosed emails directly asks the group where the “conspiracy theory” of a lab origin has come from. Farrar and Fauci, for their part, appear to be genuinely exploring the origin questions in their emails (while clearly aiming for a particular answer).
The fears of this group of scientists about being implicated in the creation of the virus led them to organise a highly effective effort to dismiss and suppress the lab origin theory. This intervention greatly complexified the cover story, with the result that the output from the U.S. intelligence community (IC) became confused and inconsistent. In what follows I enumerate the six main interventions of the U.S. intelligence community during the pandemic and suggest what likely lay behind them. They are:
- The November 2019 secret intelligence report claiming to show a large respiratory outbreak in Wuhan that was used to brief the U.S. Government, NATO and Israel. Importantly, the alleged evidence for this outbreak has never been produced, and what evidence there is suggests that in reality there was no detectable outbreak in Wuhan in November 2019, meaning the report appears to have been largely a work of fiction.
- The January 2020 introduction and promotion of the Chinese lab origin story, as set out above.
- The early April 2020 media briefings from unnamed intelligence sources about the November intelligence reports noted in (1) above. These briefings were particularly odd because by that point the main origin story being pushed by official U.S. channels was the wet market theory, which this information contradicted because it implied a large outbreak (an “out of control” epidemic and “cataclysmic event”) well before the wet market outbreak in December.
- The late April and early May 2020 public endorsement by the U.S. intelligence community of the wet market natural origin theory. This contradicted both the early April anonymous media briefings in (3) and the lab origin story in (2), while at the same time embarrassing Mike Pompeo and President Trump who were at the time strongly pushing the lab leak theory.
- The August 2021 declassified intelligence report on Covid origins, which gave a somewhat mixed picture of how the intelligence community assessed the lab leak theory. What the report was sure to make clear on the first page, however, is that the virus was “not developed as a biological weapon” and it was “not genetically engineered”. The report says that a small number of IC elements thought the virus might have escaped from a lab (though as a natural, not engineered, virus); in particular the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), which was responsible for the November 2019 secret intelligence report and (presumably) the April 2020 anonymous media briefings, endorsed this theory with “moderate confidence”. Note that by this point the lab leak theory was back in play following the WHO origins investigation in February 2021.
- The October 2022 Senate minority report, which for the first time set out the evidence in favour an engineered virus and a lab leak. U.S. biodefence bigwig Robert Kadlec was behind this report and it notably did not mention the November 2019 U.S. intelligence report, which appears to have been entirely ‘forgotten’ (indeed, it has never been officially acknowledged). It also made no reference to the United States’ considerable involvement in bat coronavirus research in the years prior to the pandemic. We should also note that the evidence presented in the report of an alleged safety breach at the WIV in November 2019 was all assembled retrospectively – there is no suggestion that such evidence was known at the time, and the report makes clear that all its information comes from publicly available sources, stating: “This report has reviewed open source, publicly available information relevant to the origins of the virus.”
So here’s what I suggest was really going on with these often curious and clashing IC interventions.
The November 2019 secret intelligence report (1) was intended to forewarn the U.S. Government and its allies of the potential need for epidemic countermeasures given the risk of blowback from the attack. While blowback was probably not expected (after all, SARS and MERS never troubled Europe and America), it was obviously a risk. Note that those responsible for the November 2019 report had to know there wasn’t really any evidence of an outbreak in Wuhan at that time, and thus that their report was based on fabrication. This appears to implicate the NCMI, which produced the report, in the attack.
The early April 2020 anonymous media briefings (3) about the November 2019 intelligence reports were most likely an attempt by the intelligence community (or, rather, the NCMI) to point out that they did try to warn everyone about the virus and the need to prepare. This would explain why they went ahead with the anonymous briefings despite, by that point, those briefings contradicting the new ‘official narrative’ that the virus came from the wet market.
The official endorsement by the intelligence community in late April and early May 2020 of the wet market theory (4) would then have occurred because of a switch amongst most of the intelligence community to the narrative created and endorsed by Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar etc. Those in the IC not involved in the attack (likely the vast majority) had probably figured out what was going on, i.e., the lab leak theory was a cover story put out by reckless colleagues, and would be very aware of the terrible fallout should the truth become known. Hence also the suppression around this time within the U.S. Government of all Covid origins investigations, which a senior Government official said would only “open a can of worms“.
This tension between IC elements then continued with the 2021 declassified intelligence report (5), with most of the IC claiming not to know anything, but the NCMI still believing the lab leak was the best cover story and wanting it back in play.
By the time of the October 2022 Senate report (6) the natural origin theory was clearly collapsing. This report then represents an effort by some within the intelligence community to bring back the lab leak as the cover story, while directing all attention to China and the WIV and away from the U.S.
How plausible is all this? It certainly fits the evidence, though perhaps there is another, more innocent way of explaining it all.
However, those who would like to exclude the possibility of a U.S. biological attack – and indeed, I would like to exclude this – need to answer at least two key questions:
1. Why was the U.S. concerned about and following an outbreak in Wuhan in November 2019 which all the available evidence shows was not detectable at the time? Why did the U.S. falsely claim there was a signal of a large, worrying outbreak and brief allies about it?
2. Why did U.S. security services begin spreading rumours about the virus being engineered in China at the beginning of January, even before the first death had been reported, when they had no evidence of this (at least, they have never explained how they knew it) and no one else was worried about it, and based on the false claim that rumours were already being spread in China about a U.S. bioweapon?
Let’s be honest: it’s not looking good.
January 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | China, Covid-19, Iran, United States |
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