How Britain Started the Vietnam War
By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | September 12, 2024
On September 2nd 1945, within hours of Imperial Japan’s Emperor Hirohito formally signing an instrument of surrender and ending World War II in the Pacific, Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Viet Minh, proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s foundation. Liberally citing passages from the 1776 US Declaration of Independence, Ho pledged that his newly-created state would never again be subject to foreign domination or exploitation, and evermore remain governed solely by and for its people.
Vietnam’s radical post-war euphoria was palpably captured by French photographer Germaine Krull, a French photographer who visited the country mere days later. In her diary, she observed how in Saigon, “all the streets were hung with large banners and all the walls and official buildings” bore revolutionary inscriptions. They declared; “down with French imperialism; down with the colonials; the era of colonization is over; down with slavery.” The Communist-dominated Viet-Minh’s “big red [flag] with the yellow star” could also be seen in profusion.
Japanese soldier hands over his sword to the British, September 1945
This was quite some contrast from the scenes that greeted Krull at Saigon airport. There, “an unusual situation prevailed”:
“It was being serviced entirely by the Japanese. They were doing everything: driving trucks and cars, standing guard, carrying luggage and refuelling. The British were in command of them and kept order… The Japanese performed their duties faultlessly and were perfectly disciplined.”
Krull had flown in on one of several “transport planes carrying British troops,” among them a sizeable detachment of “handsome, impeccable” Gurkhas, along with “their Scotch commanding officer.” Unstated by the photographer, their mission was to comprehensively crush the country’s dreams of independence, and re-establish France’s control over her colonial holding. Under its auspices, the “unusual situation” of Vietnam’s recently vanquished Japanese occupiers taking orders from and working alongside the British, until mere days earlier their sworn adversaries, was not restricted to Saigon airport.
Many decades later, Britain’s immediate post-war intervention in Vietnam remains virtually unknown. Yet, despite lasting just six months, the bitter conflict cost many lives, and effectively ignited the three-decade-long Vietnam War, which ended in embarrassing defeat for Western powers. The impact on the region, and wider world, endures for untold numbers of people today. It is a sordid, secret chapter in London’s recent history, urgently demanding re-evaluation.
That the British meant grave business in Vietnam is amply underscored by their Indian Army’s entire 20th Division’s deployment to the country. As journalist George Rosie reported in 1970, this force had “been at the very heart of the fighting” against Japan over Burma, and in turn control over the whole subcontinent. Across countless brutal battles, its units fought off “ferocious” attacks, “inflicting terrible casualties” on the enemy.
The 20th Division was particularly central to these efforts. By the end of World War II, Rosie recorded, “there was no more skilful, experienced and battle-hardened” unit in Burma. The Division was “probably the best division in one of the best armies in Asia.” Now, its soldiers were to target their well-honed proficiency in the art of killing against the Vietnamese. In all, 26,000 British soldiers along with 2,500 military vehicles were airdropped into Saigon for the purpose.
Three artillery regiments also arrived, while the Royal Air Force was on hand with 14 spitfires and 34 Mosquito fighter bombers in support. Backing this vast invading army were Vichy French and Japanese troops, who were provided with new weapons by their British counterparts. The official objective was to “maintain law and order and ensure internal security” in Vietnam. Still, the British and their conquered underlings were given explicit orders to savagely crush any and all local resistance, even if innocent civilians were killed:
“There is no front in these operations: we would be dealing with bands of guerillas… We may find it difficult to distinguish friend from foe… Also beware of ‘nibbling’ at opposition. Always use the maximum force available to ensure wiping out any hostile we may meet. If one uses too much, no harm is done. If one uses too small a force and it has to be extricated [sic], we will suffer casualties and encourage the enemy.”
Japanese soldiers repair an airfield, while British troops observe
Quickly, the Vietnamese began dying in vast numbers. However, this bloodsoaked incursion initially went entirely unremarked upon in the British media, and parliament, for several months. As such, the public at home remained completely in the dark about their Army waging another grand foreign entanglement, let alone in tandem with its World War II enemies. This conspiracy of silence continued until December 1945, when a joint letter authored by British soldiers in Vietnam, sent to then-Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, was published by The Guardian:
“It appears that we are collaborating with Japanese and French forces against the nationalist forces of Viet Minh. For what purpose is this collaboration? Why are we not disarming the Japanese? We desire the definition of government policy regarding the presence of British troops in Indo-China.”
These bombshell disclosures attracted little interest, and were promptly forgotten. The signatories received a stern talking-to from a senior military official, and no further revelations about Britain’s covert war in Vietnam subsequently emerged. In the meantime, slaughter of innocent civilians continued apace. Much later, one of the signatories to the joint letter recalled of his time in the country:
“We saw homes being burned and hundreds of the local population being kept in compounds. We saw many ambulances, open at the back, carrying mainly – actually, totally – women and children, who were in bandages. I remember it very vividly. All the women and children who lived there would stand outside their homes, all dressed in black, and just grimly stare at us, really with… hatred.”
Come mid-January next year, the Viet Minh had learned lessons from launching large-scale attacks on British-led forces, which frequently ended with significant casualties due to their opponents’ superior firepower, and extensive use of machine guns. Hanoi’s freedom fighters thereafter adopted a raft of guerrilla tactics, including ambushes, assassinations, and hit-and-run raids on enemy patrols. It was the world’s first modern unconventional war. These strategies were devastatingly employed against French and US invaders over the next three decades.
Control of the mission was formally signed over by London to French generals at the end of March 1946, and most of her forces duly left Hanoi. France was emboldened by the perceived success of Britain’s intervention, believing Ho Chi Minh’s forces couldn’t withstand further onslaught from a “civilised”, professional army. This delusion led Paris to launch all-out war against Hanoi again in December that year. It ended in bitter defeat eight years later, and then the Americans stepped in.
For its part, in the post-World War II period, Britain waged a number of comparable, covert wars in every corner of the world, as its financial and military clout rapidly withered. In many cases, the US subsequently stepped in to fill London’s shoes, taking over management of far-flung crises and emergencies, and in the process Britain’s fallen empire. The past 80 years has been a neverending story of American struggle to master the dual legacies of colonialism and partition, bequeathed by its own former imperial overlord.
Ukraine is a Non-Sovereign State Ruled by ‘Political Frankenstein’ Zelensky – Opposition Politician
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 12.09.2024
Chairman of the Council of the Other Ukraine movement Viktor Medvedchuk gave an interview to EADaily on September 12 about the causes of the Ukrainian crisis, Russia’s mission and the destructive influence of the collective West.
“For a long time an independent Ukraine has not been existing politically, economically, or legally,” Ukrainian opposition politician and Chairman of the Council of the Other Ukraine movement Viktor Medvedchuk told EA Daily. “The country is ruled by an illegitimate president who has usurped power, becoming a dictator.”
- The Western-backed Euromaidan coup d’etat of 2014 dealt a heavy blow to Ukrainian sovereignty and legitimate power. For 30 years the West has fuelled anti-Russian sentiment, distorted history and facilitated the rise of Nazism in Ukraine.
- The Minsk agreements of 2015 corresponded to EU interests, but the UK and US, who sought to start a war, deliberately disrupted the settlement process.
- Washington’s plan was “to destabilize the situation on Russia’s borders, and then inside Russia. The first step succeeded, the second did not. The US managed to break Ukraine and Europe, but not Russia.”
- In 2020 Ukraine got a chance to nullify the adverse consequences of the 2014 regime change through democratic means. “Our party ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’ won local elections in 2020, after we were ranked second in the 2019 parliamentary elections, and began to lead in polls across the country,” Medvedchuk said.
- But in February 2021 the Zelensky regime illegally blocked broadcasting of opposition channels, slapped sanctions on Medvedchuk and his wife, groundlessly accused him of treason and arrested him in May 2021. Other Ukrainian opposition politicians were also subjected to persecution.
- The special military operation in Ukraine would not have begun if Zelensky had abandoned the idea of joining NATO.
- The situation in Ukraine and in the world will improve after the West stops pouring billions into propping up Zelensky, who is a “political Frankenstein”.
A Tale of Two Disputes: How China Handles Hanoi and Manila
By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | September 12, 2024
A recent article in the South China Morning Post caught my eye—the topic being why Beijing has taken such an apparently different approach to its territorial disputes with Vietnam versus the similar disputes it has with the Philippines.
Given the now weekly near misses between competing claimants in the South China Sea, the topic is a timely one, and in analyzing Beijing’s contrasting responses to territorial claims by Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea, it becomes clear that China’s strategic calculations are shaped by varying historical, political, and diplomatic dynamics.
Historically, Vietnam’s claims to the South China Sea date back several centuries, although the exact extent and nature of these claims have evolved significantly over time.
Vietnamese records from the Nguyễn Dynasty (1802–1945) suggest that Vietnamese rulers asserted control over certain islands and features in the South China Sea. And references to the Spratly and Paracel Islands appear in historical texts from as early as the seventeenth century. These documents suggest that Vietnamese fishing fleets and merchant vessels regularly visited the islands and considered them within their traditional maritime territory.
When France colonized Vietnam in the late nineteenth century, it began asserting territorial claims on behalf of the Vietnamese protectorate in the South China Sea. In the 1930s, the French government formally claimed both the Paracel and Spratly Islands, citing historical Vietnamese sovereignty. The French established outposts and conducted surveys on some of the islands, mainly driven by the strategic importance of the South China Sea for naval dominance. These colonial claims are crucial because they form part of the modern Vietnamese argument that sovereignty was maintained through continuous occupation, even when the country was under colonial rule.
After the French withdrew in 1954, both North and South Vietnam laid claims to the islands, though South Vietnam maintained physical control over most of the features in the South China Sea. Following the Vietnam War and the reunification of Vietnam in 1975, the unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam continued asserting sovereignty over the islands and expanded its presence in the Spratlys, bolstering its post-colonial efforts to keep the islands under effective control through patrols and the construction of outposts even as China began moving to assert its claims.
The longstanding control of these features is one reason why Beijing has been relatively restrained in responding to Hanoi’s recent expansion activities.
Moreover, Vietnam’s strategy of managing maritime disputes with Beijing “quietly” contrasts sharply with the Philippines’ approach of publicizing clashes and appealing to international forums. Vietnam’s decision to handle disputes internally and seek “friendly consultations” has helped to de-escalate tensions with China, despite the fact that its island-building mirrors China’s own efforts over the past decade.
Indeed, the political relationship between China and Vietnam is arguably the key factor shaping Beijing’s measured response. As the article from the South China Morning Post notes, the overall bilateral relationship is defined by economic cooperation and mutual geopolitical interests, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative. As a result, Beijing seeks to preserve its broader relationship with Vietnam, using diplomacy and economic enticements as buffers against outright hostility. This is in contrast to the Philippines, whose defense ties with Washington have escalated tensions. The longstanding U.S.-Philippine alliance is viewed by Beijing as part of a broader strategy of “containment,” especially in light of the recently revived Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which gives the U.S. military access to more bases close to Taiwan and the South China Sea.
The Philippines has made headlines by consistently publicizing its maritime disputes with China. Videos of Chinese coast guard vessels colliding with Philippine boats and the use of water cannons have garnered international attention, forcing Beijing to defend its actions diplomatically. Furthermore, Manila’s close alignment with Washington, particularly under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has heightened tensions with China. This is exacerbated by joint military exercises between the Philippines, the United States, and other allies like Japan and Australia. For Beijing, this has elevated the Philippines to a higher priority in terms of countering what it perceives (correctly) as a U.S.-led containment effort in the region. Vietnam, by contrast, has avoided such provocative military cooperation with external powers, further explaining why Beijing’s approach has been comparatively restrained.
The American role in the region cannot be understated. Washington’s decision to interpret existing treaty obligations to defend Manila in the event of an armed attack under the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty raises the stakes significantly and decreases the likelihood that Manila will choose to deescalate. This brings into focus the risk of conflict between the United States and China in defense of territorial claims in the South China Sea, which would likely start with a confrontation over the Scarborough Shoal or Spratly Islands. Beijing has increasingly seen its conflict with Manila as an extension of the U.S.-China strategic rivalry, particularly regarding Taiwan, which further complicates the maritime disputes and endangers the world.
At the same time, as Beijing seeks to prevent a collective response from claimant states, recognizing that pushing too hard against Vietnam could drive Hanoi closer to the United States and its allies. While Vietnam has taken advantage of Beijing’s focus on the Philippines to accelerate its island-building activities, Beijing’s restraint towards Vietnam does not rule out future escalations, especially if Vietnam’s militarization of these features intensifies.
While much is uncertain, one thing seems clear: far from being a force for peace in the region, Washington’s intervention, far from America’s own shores, is a clear source of instability and potential danger.
Sowing the Seeds for War Machine’s Next Conflict? US Navy Seals Reportedly Train for Taiwan Conflict
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 12.09.2024
Amid the ongoing violence in the Middle East and the NATO-fueled proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the US military is reportedly eying a new front amid Washington’s attempts to save the unipolar world order.
The US Navy’s elite Seal Team 6 is training for missions to “help” Taiwan if tensions between the island and the PRC go hot.
Sources told the Financial Times that planning and training for a Taiwan escalation has been underway “for more than a year” at Seal Team 6’s Dam Neck, Virginia Beach HQ.
The training, which coincides with increasingly systematized deployments of US special forces in Taiwan, comes amid the US military and intelligence community’s broader refocus on China.
Such deployments, and even US arms sales to Taiwan, are technically illegal under agreements underpinning China-US relations, which require Washington to adhere to the ‘One China’ principle recognizing the People’s Republic as the sole legal government of China. This principle prompted the US to end its military presence in Taiwan after 1979, and to sign a communique with Beijing in 1982 requiring Washington to gradually scale back the extent of its arms deliveries to Taiwan.
The US has reneged on both commitments, with internal Pentagon data released in 2021 revealing that small numbers of US troops have been stationed on Taiwan going back to at least 2008. In March 2024, Taipei confirmed the permanent presence of US troops on islands in the Taiwan Strait for ‘training purposes’, including Green Berets deployed as little as 10 km off the mainland.
“The US is manipulating the Taiwan question in various forms, which is a very dangerous gamble,” China’s Defense Ministry said of US moves in late 2023, after Congress authorized a “comprehensive training, advising and institutionalized capacity-building program” for Taiwan. “We urge the US to fully realize the severe harm of the China-related content in the NDAA, stop arming Taiwan under any excuses and by any means, stop its provocations by using Taiwan to ‘contain China’, and take concrete actions to maintain regional peace and stability,” Beijing urged.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has formally outlined a policy aiming at eventual peaceful reunification with Taiwan under the ‘One China, Two Systems’ principle, reportedly accused Washington of trying to “goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan” during talks with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen in 2023.
Putin issues new warning to NATO
RT | September 12, 2024
Ostensibly removing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons would mean direct involvement of the US and its allies in the conflict with Russia and would be met with an appropriate response, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
The West has sent Ukraine long-range missiles such as Storm Shadows and ATACMS, which Kiev has so far used against Crimea and Donbass.
In the past several days, however, the US and UK have suggested they might allow these weapons to be deployed deep in Russian territory.
“We are not talking about allowing or prohibiting the Kiev regime from striking Russian territory,” Putin said on Thursday. “It is doing so already, with unmanned aerial vehicles and other means.”
Ukraine lacks the capability to use Western-provided long-range systems, Putin added, noting that targeting for such strikes requires intelligence from NATO satellites, while firing solutions can “only be entered by NATO military personnel.”
“This will mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries are fighting against Russia.”
“If this decision is made, it will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the US and European countries, in the conflict in Ukraine,” the Russian president said. “Their direct participation, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict.”
With that in mind, Putin added, Russia will “make the appropriate decisions based on the threats facing us.”
Some limitations on the use of Western-supplied weapons were originally put in place to allow the US and its allies to claim they were not directly involved in the conflict with Russia, while arming Ukraine to the tune of $200 billion. Kiev has been clamoring for the restrictions to be lifted since May.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy have hinted that the restrictions might be lifted this week, citing the alleged delivery of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia as the pretext. Iran has denied sending any missiles to Russia, calling the accusations “psychological warfare” by countries heavily involved in arming Ukraine.
Putin has previously warned NATO members to be aware of “what they are playing with” when discussing plans to allow Kiev to strike deep inside Russian territory using weapons provided by the West. Speaking with major news agencies on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in June, the Russian president said Russia would respond by shooting down the weapons in question and then retaliating against those responsible.
One of the possible responses Putin mentioned at the time was arming Western enemies with long-range precision weapons.
Will ‘Insane’ Biden Provoke World War III Before November Election?
By John Miles – Sputnik – 12.09.2024
The last several years have brought the United States closer to conflict with a nuclear-armed power than any time since the 1960s, one former CIA analyst claimed.
Lasting from the end of World War II until the early 1990s, the Cold War saw the United States and the USSR locked in a global competition for power and influence. Although the two superpowers never went to war directly, the 45-year period was marked by two proxy conflicts in Vietnam and Korea and a constant fear that a third World War was not far away.
Tensions were heightened by the fact that both the United States and the Soviet Union possessed nuclear weapons, dramatically raising the stakes of global conflict.
Both countries nearly saw their worst fears realized during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when it appeared the US and USSR were unwilling to back down over the issue of nuclear missiles being placed just miles from each country’s border in Cuba and Turkey. The incident led to the establishment of a special hotline for US and Soviet leaders to communicate directly, and caused US President John F. Kennedy to remark that tensions between nuclear powers must never again rise to such a level.
For decades, Kennedy’s maxim was dutifully observed as both countries worked to improve relations, finally culminating in the end of the Cold War.
The prospect for nuclear confrontation was avoided until recent years, claimed former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, when the United States rejected Russian overtures for a new European security architecture and stubbornly insisted Ukraine’s coup regime would be granted entry into NATO. The analyst joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Wednesday to consider whether US President Joe Biden is willing to risk global conflict to reverse Kiev’s flagging fortunes on the battlefield.
“They want to provoke Putin [into] doing something really drastic before the election, before the [presidential] election here on November 5th,” suggested McGovern, a critic of neoconservative US foreign policy.
“They’re losing in Kursk [region],” he noted, referring to Ukraine’s stalled incursion into Russian territory. “What were they trying to do? They were trying to get the Russians to react in such a way as to bring the US in with both feet militarily.”
“What’s this business about [Ukraine] begging for longer range missiles?” McGovern continued. “Same objective.”
Ukraine’s Western sponsors have repeatedly escalated the country’s conflict with Russia, gradually providing Kiev with more powerful weapons and granting it permission to strike within Russian territory. This has increasingly culminated in attacks on Russian civilians; perhaps most provocatively a strike on a beach in the city of Sevastopol that injured 124 people, including 27 children, and killed three people, including two children.
Some 500 Russian civilians have been killed by the Ukrainian regime in 2024 alone as the country continues to rely on the support of neo-Nazi formations such as the notorious Azov Battalion*. Kiev’s provocative attacks seem tailor-maid to produce a harsh response, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far sought to avoid any attack likely to draw the United States or Ukraine’s European allies directly into the conflict.
“My fear is that [the United States] will try something really drastic like a false flag attack or maybe even a mini nuke,” said McGovern, concerned that the US could fabricate an episode such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident that drew the country into the Vietnam War. “Let’s see what happens the next couple of weeks. I think Putin is right. It’s only the smart thing to see who wins on the 5th of November. Till then, I’m still holding my breath.”
But McGovern warned that the consequences of the United States’ strategy in Ukraine could fall not on the US itself, but on its European allies.
“It’s really hard to know what Biden and [National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan, who are running things, really think,” he claimed. “Some of my best friends and analysts think they’re insane. And it’s really, really hard to predict what they’re going to do if they’re insane.”
“The Europeans are being told by the Russians, ‘look, if Biden, Blinken and Sullivan opt for a tactical nuclear weapon, for God’s sake, please, please remember we got them too. And where will we use them? We’ll use them in Europe,’” McGovern said, summarizing Russia’s possible response.
“So I think when this is directed at the Europeans, saying, ‘look at what happened to your fellow country in Europe, Ukraine. You want the same thing to happen to you? So, please, rein these guys in.’”
Pentagon orders study of potential nuclear strike in Eastern Europe
RT | September 12, 2024
The US Defense Department has ordered a study which would simulate the impact of a nuclear conflict on global agriculture. According to a solicitation notice posted earlier this week on a government procurement platform, the study would focus on regions “beyond Eastern Europe and Western Russia,” which would appear to be the epicenter of the hypothetical nuclear weapons deployment in the simulation.
The project will be spearheaded by the US Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC).
According to the notice, the ERDC has already chosen Terra Analytics, a Colorado-based company that specializes in advanced data visualization and analyses, as the contractor. However, it states that other potential contractors are invited to share their proposals if they are able to provide similar services.
The notice lists requirements for contractors to fulfill, such as providing personnel, equipment, facilities, supervision, and other items necessary to conduct the study. The contractor would, among other things, need to incorporate aerial mapping in the simulation and model a scenario in which a “non-destructive nuclear event” takes place. The cost of the contract has been set at $34 million.
It is unclear from the notice how the Pentagon intends to use the study. However, the order comes at a time when talk of a potential nuclear war has intensified in light of the Ukraine conflict and the growing discord between the NATO and Russia. Many experts have warned that a direct confrontation between Russia and the US-led bloc could result in a nuclear disaster. According to the Federation of American Scientists, Washington and Moscow control the largest atomic arsenals in the world, with around 5,000 and 5,500 warheads, respectively.
The New York Times reported last month that the US administration had approved a new version of its nuclear strategy. According to the newspaper, the document ordered US forces to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China, and North Korea.
Russia has often warned that the West’s military support of the Ukrainian government could exacerbate the current conflict, turning it into a world war. Russian policymakers have recently been considering making adjustments to the country’s own atomic doctrine to provide for pre-emptive nuclear strikes. Moscow has, however, consistently stated that a nuclear war must never be fought.
Their vaccine injury reports disappeared from VAERS — So they developed a tool for anyone to track their own reports
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 11, 2024
A team of researchers is developing a tool to track reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), so vaccine-injured people can follow what happens to the reports they submit.
As part of a broader effort to hold public health agencies accountable, the tool will also make it possible to audit the VAERS system by identifying what types of reports are deleted, insufficiently updated or contain errors.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which jointly oversee VAERS, have refused to do this work despite multiple appeals by advocates for the vaccine-injured, according to React19, the group leading the initiative.
React19, founded by a small group of medical professionals injured by COVID-19 vaccines, works with institutions and providers to increase understanding and awareness of patients experiencing lasting effects following COVID-19 and/or COVID-19 vaccines.
The group is teaming up with computer programmer Liz Wilner, founder of OpenVAERS — a website that provides tools for more easily accessing and searching VAERS data — and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) to develop the tool.
The idea for developing the automatic VAERS report tracking tool came out of a VAERS audit the group conducted in 2022 to assess how the FDA and CDC were following up on COVID-19 vaccine injury reports.
React19 worked with outside experts to review a sample of 126 VAERS reports filed by some of its members who wanted to know what happened to their reports.
After tracking down each person’s reports and following them through the VAERS system, they “were kind of shocked at how bad it is,” members of React19 told The Defender.
They found that only 61% of the reports filed were correctly logged and published in VAERS. Twenty-two percent of the reports were never issued a permanent ID and are therefore not publicly visible, 12% were deleted and in 5% of the cases, a report couldn’t be filed or their report number remains unknown due to system errors.
That means more than 1 in 3 reports searched couldn’t be found in a database that is meant to be publicly accessible and transparent. It also suggests that problems of “omission of data and underreporting may be even greater than estimated,” according to the audit report.
The group also found that the medical status of the deleted reports, “by and large, had a worse outcome than the ones that were still in the system,” they said. For example, they said, in the public-facing VAERS system, 23% of reports were for permanent disabilities — but in the deleted reports, 53% were for permanent disability.
“One of the more alarming things we found out was that not all death reports are investigated,” Brianne Dressen, React19 founder, told The Defender.
The group brought this to the attention of public health officials in their meetings, sharing examples of reports that had been updated by people’s families when they died, but didn’t show up on the public system.
They also found that many follow-up reports containing updates on worsening symptoms were gone from the system.
At the time, the group was meeting regularly with top officials, including Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, to discuss vaccine injuries and why the agencies were doing nothing to address them.
In those meetings, according to Dressen and React19 member Dr. Joel Wallskog, when they raised the issue that the agencies weren’t following up on VAERS reports, the FDA told them VAERS wasn’t a reliable indicator for vaccine injuries, because anyone could file an injury complaint, including “Mickey Mouse or Michael Jackson.”
“We told them we know thousands of people that have not had any follow-up on their VAERS reports that are not Mickey Mouse, and they’re suffering it every single day waiting for you guys to get back to them to investigate what happened to them,” Dressen said.
“And of course then they never did anything. So we were like, OK, fine. If they’re not going to generate the evidence, then we will ourselves.”
The group submitted their findings to Marks during a meeting with him and his team. Based on their findings they also requested an external audit of the entire VAERS system and posed a series of questions listed on their audit report webpage.
They never heard from the agencies again.
“We were like, really?” Dressen said. “We were having these regular meetings with them every one month or every two months, and then after that, they wouldn’t meet with us anymore.”
Dressen, who was injured in the AstraZeneca clinical trials and whose diagnosis of post-vaccine neuropathy and other vaccine-related disorders was confirmed by the National Institutes of Health, said her own VAERS report is not visible to the public. The agencies haven’t told her why.
More recently, still hoping for accountability from the public health agencies, React19 submitted its audit and complaint to the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The only response they received was an autoresponse confirming receipt of the complaint.
Attempt to ‘bring power back to the people’
In its small pilot audit, React19 found the VAERS system is “obviously broken from top to bottom.” According to Dressen, “One thing we can easily conclude is that the FDA and CDC have no interest in addressing these issues.”
Now, the group is scaling up the project to do a larger audit with more data.
With help from OpenVAERS and CHD, the team built a backend, automated administrative tracking system that eliminates the need to manually search for each report and its journey through VAERS — something the analysts had to do for the first iteration of their audit.
Participants will register on the React19 website and will be invited — if they are interested — to share their stories as part of the organization’s project to collect and publish vaccine injury testimonials.
Users can share any information they have about their VAERS report — their ID number if they have one, or if not, details about their case. Then they will receive a monthly email with the status of their report.
For example, someone who has a user ID and a public-facing report will be informed if their report disappears. In the case of those people who filed a VAERS complaint but never got an ID number, the system will search each month for the record and try to find the ID.
“We’ll be able to track these reports through the system and figure out what happens to them,” Wilner said. “Do they disappear? Do they appear and the person doesn’t get notified? Do they appear incorrectly?”
“So people will be able to track their own reports with less effort and React19 will be able to audit a much larger user base than they initially did.”
Wilner said auditing VAERS in this way also reveals details about how the agencies are “either lying or deliberately obfuscating the process.” In the first audit, it was clear there was no systematic or automated way that, for example, reports were deleted.
The tracker and the audit will provide valuable data that no one else has. Rather than having only the stories, Wilner said, they will have the data backing up those stories. “Now we have a group of injured people that are all talking with one voice.”
“Without more pressure and more discovery,” Wallskog said, “I don’t think we’re ever going to get the truth out. Ultimately, we want to get this information to the masses of people that just don’t know what’s happening, particularly with this data, and that we’ve all been duped.”
Dressen said the project is an attempt to “bring the power back to the people.”
The COVID-19 vaccine produced a large swath of vaccine injuries all at the same time, she said. Auditing the COVID-19 entries in VAERS will provide an opportunity “to show through massive numbers where those problems are, not just with the systems that are supposed to be monitoring vaccine safety, but also the actual harms themselves and what those are, but the government’s not doing their job on that.”
The two faces of VAERS and the problem of accountability
Wilner said Dressen’s injury report, sitting in VAERS limbo, spoke to one of the major issues around claims of transparency in the database — that there are two versions of VAERS, a public-facing database and a private one.
The BMJ reported last year that it investigated the VAERS database and found that the public facing database contains only initial reports. And “a private, back end system containing all updates and corrections — such as a formal diagnosis, recovery, or death.”
The CDC told The BMJ that this was part of patient confidentiality, but the publication found that in the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System, they do update the database — “raising the question of why VAERS can’t do the same.”
And during the React19 audit, the group found that VAERS was sometimes deleting people’s legitimate reports or the more detailed updated reports that some people were submitting.
Another problem, Wilner noted, is that a lot of key information — such as race, pregnancy and report provider — is unnecessarily withheld from public VAERS reports. She also said the agencies sometimes leave reports on there that are clearly false or jokes, which then discredits the database in the public’s eyes.
On the CDC website, Wilner said, “you’re basically looking at a doctored set of books.”
Wallskog said the agencies “try to live on both sides of the fence” with VAERS, presenting it as a key tool for monitoring vaccine injuries. But when it shows a safety signal or an issue with vaccines, they discredit it as a problematic surveillance system with a lot of limitations that can’t be trusted.
“It’s incredibly frustrating for injured people,” he said.
The team working on the new VAERS tracking system and audit said they hope it will raise public awareness and force the public health agencies to take responsibility for the vaccine injuries.
“Rochelle Walensky said the CDC is charged with finding legitimate vaccine injuries and reporting them,” Wilner said. She added:
“If that’s the case, where is that? We don’t have access to the actual database to figure it out so we want to know where is the report from the CDC on the people that were actually injured by the COVID vaccine that the government accepts were legitimately injured? That report doesn’t exist.”
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.
No, New York Times, Climate Change Isn’t Destroying Bridges
By Anthony Watts | Climate Realism | September 6, 2024
The New York Times (NYT) recently published an article titled “Climate Change Can Cause Bridges to ‘Fall Apart Like Tinkertoys,’ Experts Say,” written by Coral Davenport. Multiple lines of evidence and examples not only refute this claim as false but expose the sheer absurdity of the claim.
These sorts of absurdly false claims have been tried before, for instance, when the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis, MN in 2007. An article in 2007 by Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters exposed the claim as false:
A former member of the Clinton administration, and current Senior Fellow at the virtual Clinton think tank the Center for American Progress, claimed Monday that global warming might have played a factor in the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis last week.
I kid you not.
Writing at Climate Progress, the global warming blog of CAP, Joseph Romm – who served as Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy in 1997 and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary from 1995 though 1998 – stated in a piece amazingly entitled “Did Climate Change Contribute To The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse?“
Unsurprisingly, the actual cause had nothing to do with climate change at all but rather an engineering failure that used undersized gusset plates that were too thin for the load of the bridge:
The investigation revealed that photos from a June 2003 inspection of the bridge showed gusset-plate bowing. On November 13, 2008, the NTSB released the findings of its investigation. The primary cause of the collapse was the undersized gusset plates, at 0.5 inches (13 mm) thick. Contributing to that design or construction error was the fact that 2 inches (51 mm) of concrete had been added to the road surface over the years, increasing the static load by 20%. Another factor was the extraordinary weight of construction equipment and material resting on the bridge just above its weakest point at the time of the collapse. That load was estimated at 578,000 pounds (262 tonnes), consisting of sand, water, and vehicles.
So, human error and extra weight, not climate change, was determined to be the cause of the bridge’s failure.
Fast forward to the present. The NYT’s article makes similar claims:
Bridges designed and built decades ago with materials not intended to withstand sharp temperature swings are now rapidly swelling and contracting, leaving them weakened.
“It’s getting so hot that the pieces that hold the concrete and steel, those bridges can literally fall apart like Tinkertoys,” Dr. Chinowsky said.
As temperatures reached the hottest in recorded history this year, much of the nation’s infrastructure, from highways to runways, has suffered. But bridges face particular risks.
Really? The bridges in question weren’t engineered to handle daily temperature swings? A natural event that happens daily across seasons? That sounds like poor planning. Besides the absurdity of that claim, there are two further contradictory points to consider.
First, in the United States, we’ve seen far worse sustained heatwaves before, such as in the 1930s when the July 1936 heatwave hit America’s Midwest, where some places experienced up to 14 days of above 100°F temperatures. This is evidenced by the graph in Figure 1, provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Figure 1. This figure shows the annual values of the U.S. Heat Wave Index, from 1895 to 2020 contiguous 48 states. Environmental Protection Agency.
In the many reports of the heatwaves in the 1930’s, there is no mention of bridge collapse, which suggests that the linkage to “extreme heat aided by climate change” claim is false. Otherwise, such temperatures in the 1930s would have resulted in collapsed bridges. However, there simply are none from that period reportedly linked to heat.
Secondly, the article says “As temperatures reached the hottest in recorded history this year, much of the nation’s infrastructure, from highways to runways, has suffered.” But this isn’t true either. The claim NYT uses is about the global temperature, not the U.S. temperature. As seen in Figure 2 below showing data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), from the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), widely considered to be the most accurate source of surface temperature data, July 2024 was not “the hottest in recorded history.” For example, maximum U.S. temperature was higher in 2012 and 2005 than in July 2024.
Figure 2: NOAA – USCRN Maximum Temperature
Diving deeper into the NYT article, the Times attributes the failure of a railroad bridge connecting Iowa and South Dakota during floods to climate change. Flooding in the rivers and streams across and bordering Iowa and South Dakota have been common for as long as records of such event have been kept back into the mid-1800s. And railroad bridge collapses have happened repeatedly in the United States and around the world, well before climate change ever became an issue. Since data show no increase in the number or severity of flood events across the United States, in general, or in Iowa and South Dakota, in particular, there is no evidence climate change played any role in that particular railroad bridge collapse.
The next claim is that the concrete buckled and broke on a bridge in Lewiston, Maine which NYT blamed on “recent fluctuation in temperature and rain.”
Looking at the weather in Lewiston, ME when the event occurred shows that although high and low temperatures were higher than the normal average for late June, the fluctuations the NYT was so concerned about were less extreme than normal, about a 15 degree change from high to low in June 2024 rather than the historic daily average of about 20 degrees. (See figure 3, below).
Figure 3: Normal average daily fluctuations in temperatures throughout the year for Lewiston Maine. Source: Google
The high temperature for the third week of June was 95℉, above the normal maximum for the date, but it was well below the historic high temperature for the city of 99℉ recorded in 1911, 113 years of global warming ago. Lewiston’s 2024 June high was also 10 degrees lower than the high temperature record for the state as a whole of 105℉ set in North Bridgton, ME, just thirty miles away from Lewiston, also from 1911, when that temperature was hit twice.
Because temperatures in Lewiston didn’t fluctuate wildly and were also not record setting, it is implausible for the bridge’s concrete cracking and buckling to have anything at all to do with climate change. It was likely a result of poor construction or, even more likely, poor maintenance, a problem for many bridges and overpasses in Maine and the U.S. as a whole, combined with increased traffic and load, due to significant population growth in the city and the region, using the bridge.
Literally, it takes two minutes of work on Google search to find this data. Apparently, NYT reporter Coral Davenport couldn’t be troubled to seek out the facts. Or perhaps, she just doesn’t know how. This sort of slapdash reporting containing speculative claims rather than simple facts seems like something out of the old TV series The Twilight Zone.
If such an episode aired today, my suggested title would be “Bogus Maximus.” This story was pure science fiction.
Bill Gates Wants AI-Based Real-Time Censorship for Vaccine “Misinformation”
By Didi Rankovic – Reclaim The Net – September 11, 2024
Microsoft founder Bill Gates continues with his crusade, as part of the mission of the Gates Foundation, to not only proliferate the use of vaccines but find new justifications to in effect, force them onto those skeptical or unwilling.
One of the methods Gates has clearly identified as helpful in achieving this goal is hitching his “vaccine wagon” to the massive, ongoing scaremongering campaign and narrative around “misinformation” and “AI.”
Gates spoke for CNBC to reveal he may be a vaccine absolutist – but not a free-speech one. He also didn’t sound convinced that America’s Constitution and its speech protections are the right way to go when he brought up the need for “boundaries” allowing some new “rules.”
Gates’ argument incorporates all the main talking points against free speech: misinformation, incorrect information (aka, fake news), violence, and online harassment. And, he sneaked in vaccines in there, while making a case for “rules” in the US as well.
“We should have free speech, but if you’re inciting violence, if you’re causing people not to take vaccines, where are those boundaries that even the US should have rules? And then if you have rules, what is it?” Gates is quoted as saying.
He was evasive on who the authority to introduce that might be, but he clearly wants censorship and wants it to act swiftly. “Is there some AI that encodes those rules because you have billions of activity and if you catch it a day later, the harm is done,” he said.
In case somebody happens to not like Gates, and his lecturing the entire world what it should and shouldn’t do, they’re out of luck: he appears to be on a press tour to promote a Netflix “docuseries” that will have no less than five parts, and is called, “What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates.”
But looking back at “the past with Bill Gates” is never a bad idea. We can see Windows, which he now tells CNBC he was allegedly naive about and thought it would only be used for “productive and responsible purposes” as most people would want to have a computer at home.
What they got with Windows, however, is a virus-laden operating system, “a menace to society” in its own way, going decades without proper innovation, while Microsoft was seen by critics as going after open-source competition like a monopolistic, anti-competitive corporate bully.
But here is Gates now, to tell us what our future should look like.
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Oil and the Israel Lobby
Reknowned economist M. Shahid Alam offers this excellent critique of Noam Chomsky’s defective analysis of the relative influence of Oil versus the Israel lobby over US foreign policy: … continue
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