BBC secrets: Leaked files show UK state media engaged in anti-Moscow information warfare ops in E. Europe
By Kit Klarenberg RT | March 11, 2021
New documents raise serious questions about how well-deserved British state broadcaster BBC’s ‘unimpeachable’ reputation is, and also what impact its relationship with the UK government has on its supposedly ‘impartial’ output.
Within a tranche of secret UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) papers, recently leaked by hacktivist collective Anonymous, are files indicating that BBC Media Action (BBCMA) – the outlets ‘charitable’ arm – plays a central role in Whitehall-funded and directed psyops initiatives targeted at Russia.
American journalist Max Blumenthal has comprehensively exposed how, at the FCDO’s behest, BBCMA covertly cultivated Russian journalists, established influence networks within and outside Russia, and promoted pro-Whitehall, anti-Moscow propaganda in Russian-speaking areas.
However, the newly released files reveal BBCMA also offered to lead a dedicated FCDO program, named ‘Independent Media in Eastern Partnership Countries’ and targeted at Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. This endeavor forms part of a wider £100 million ($138.9 million) effort waged by London to demonize, destabilize and isolate Russia, at home and abroad.
A Whitehall tender indicates that under the auspices of the project, set to cost a staggering £9 million ($12.5 million) from 2018 to 2021, participating contractors are charged with crafting “innovative… media interventions” targeting individuals throughout the region, via “radio, independent social media channels, and traditional outlets.”
Further detail was offered by FCDO Counter Disinformation & Media Development (CDMD) chief Andy Pryce at a June 2018 meeting with prospective suppliers.
He made it clear that the effort’s ultimate goal was to “weaken the Russian state’s influence,” via the co-option of journalists and media organizations in target countries via funding, training, and surreptitious production of anti-Russian, pro-Western content. “Girls on HBO… but in Ukraine” was, bizarrely, one suggested example of such activity.
In response, BBCMA submitted extensive proposals, in conjunction with Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), the global newswire’s “non-profit” wing, and since-collapsed veteran FCDO contractor Aktis Strategy.
The project was to be managed and coordinated directly by BBCMA from BBC Broadcasting House headquarters in London, with local support provided by Reuters newswire offices in Kiev and Tbilisi, and Ukraine’s Independent Association of Broadcasters.
A dedicated board, comprised of representatives of the contractors involved, the FCDO’s CDMD program, and British embassies in the target countries, would also meet privately every quarter to discuss the operation’s progress. Publicly, Whitehall’s funding and direction of the vast project was intended to be completely hidden.
The consortium boasted of having an existing “strong profile” in Eastern Partnership countries, and conducting “broad consultations” with a number of major news outlets, media organizations and journalists in the region in advance of its pitch.
For example, the National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine (UA:PBC) had been approached and offered “essential support,” aimed at “improving its existing programs” and “developing new and innovative formats for factual and non-news programs.”
BBCMA was moreover said to be “already” working on building the capacity of Kiev-based Hromadske TV, and wished to use the FCDO program to extend this assistance to “co-productions” and “building support to Hromadske Radio.”
Launched with initial funding from the American and Dutch embassies in Ukraine, Hromadske began broadcasting in November 2013 on the very day Viktor Yanukovich’s administration suspended preparations for the signing of an association agreement with the European Union, and went on to extensively cover the resultant Euromaidan protests, which eventually unseated the government the next year.
It subsequently received support from Pierre Omidyar, billionaire founder of The Intercept, who bankrolled a number of opposition groups in the country prior to the coup. In July 2014, Hromadske anchor Danylo Yanevsky abruptly terminated an interview with a Human Rights Watch representative after she consistently refused to blame Russia for civilian casualties in the Donbas conflict, despite his repeated demands.
Beyond dedicated news platforms, the consortium also pledged to enlist “local” and “hyperlocal” media outlets, as well as “freelancer journalists,” bloggers and “vloggers” for its information warfare efforts.
BBCMA argued “journalism education” locally would be a “long-term investment” – in other words, the identification, cultivation, and grooming of a network of reporters in the countries who could be relied upon to take the Whitehall line in future.
As such, the organization sought to establish a journalism training center in Gagauzia, Moldova in collaboration with NGO Media birlii – Uniunia. The autonomous region, bordered by Ukraine’s Odessa Oblast, was said to be home to “six TV companies, four radio stations, six newspapers and five web portals” potentially ripe for influence and infiltration by BBCMA – and in turn, the FCDO.
In Georgia, BBCMA visited the offices of Adjara TV “to discuss training priorities and possible co-productions.” The station was reportedly interested in developing “youth programming,” which represented “a gap in the market” in the country.
In June 2020, Georgia’s Coalition for Media Advocacy slammed Adjara for its “persecution” of “outspoken journalists expressing dissenting opinions,” after it fired newsroom chief Shorena Glonti.
Strikingly, the Coalition is funded by US regime-change agency, the National Endowment for Democracy, which supports numerous anti-Moscow initiatives worldwide. Perhaps Glonti had been too well-trained in “weakening the Russian state” for the broadcaster’s liking.
The consortium furthermore proposed to tutor and support “independent” online Georgian news outlets, including Batumelebi, iFact, Liberali, Monitor, Netgazeti, and Reginfo.
Estonia’s Digital Communications Network – financed by the US State Department – would be central to these efforts, offering lessons in “building online audiences, innovative business models and reaching out to breakaway regions susceptible to Kremlin narratives.”
The importance of “target audiences in breakaway regions” is outlined in another file, which explicitly states that the consortium would work closely with “independent outlets in proximity of non-government-controlled areas of Donbas in Ukraine, Transnistria in Moldova and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia.”
This undertaking aimed to counter the output of “separatist” media, and thus manipulate “hard-to-reach audiences,” which was “critical to achieving the project’s objectives.”
Any and all support covertly provided under the program was to be thoroughly intimate indeed, with “mentors” from the consortium “embedded” in target organizations, in order to provide “bespoke support across editorial, production and wider management systems and processes as well as on the co-production of content.”
These “mentors” include current and former BBC journalists.
“Our ability to recruit talented and experienced BBC staff is a great asset which will be harnessed for this initiative,” BBCMA promised.
These individuals may have been central to program efforts, if BBCMA’s pitch to the FCDO was accepted. For instance, UA:PBC was said to be “very interested” in receiving help from BBCMA to develop a “new debate show” and “discussion programming” to “enable audiences to think critically about the process and choices,” “counter disinformation” and “dispel rumors.”
Lofty objectives indeed, although commitments to nurturing analytical skills, thinking and debunking propaganda ring rather hollow when one considers the station’s output was perceived to be so overwhelmingly biased in favor of the government, opposition candidate Volodymyr Zelensky boycotted the channel’s official election debate during the 2019 presidential election.
BBCMA also proposed to establish an “independent” news platform in Ukraine, “timed for the run up to the 2019 election,” which would publish “vetted news content” freely syndicated to local and national media.
If the approach in Kiev was “successful,” the consortium would replicate the exercise in Georgia for the country’s 2020 election. Strikingly, the proposal brags of TRF’s experience establishing such platforms elsewhere, for example “the award-winning Aswat Masriya” in Egypt.
Other leaked files indicate the endeavor, founded after the 2011 revolution in Cairo, was secretly funded by the FCDO to the tune of £2 million ($2.8 million) over six years, and run out of Reuters’ Egyptian offices.
Over its lifespan, Aswat Masriya “became Egypt’s leading independent local media organization” and one of the most-visited websites in the country, providing news in English and Arabic, which was syndicated widely the world over. Its true, clandestine purpose seems to have been granting London a degree of narrative control over news coverage as events unfolded in the country, during its difficult and ultimately ill-fated transition to democracy.
That BBCMA likewise intended to use news coverage to influence politics in Eastern Partnership countries is amply underlined in the newly leaked files, with the organization pledging to “encourage” local news outlets to meet with “local stakeholders,” including lawmakers and community leaders, in order to “cement the media as a key governance actor.”
The organization furthermore sought to “foster a debate” in target nations, by producing wide-ranging analysis of the media environment therein. Its “long track record” of comparable efforts in “diverse” countries, including those “experiencing Arab uprisings,” had allegedly “shifted government policy.”
One objective of these lobbying efforts was achieving “a more enabling operating environment” for “independent” media in the target countries – i.e. ensuring regulations in the region were suitably conducive to and protective of the FCDO’s secret army of information warfare agents, to allow them to prosper for the duration of the consortium’s three-year offensive, and “post intervention.”
It’s not yet clear if BBCMA was successful in its pitch, and if so, which BBC journalists contributed to the program and as a result are implicated directly in cloak-and-dagger attempts to shape politics and perceptions in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine for London’s benefit.
It’s also unknown whether their commitment to fulfilling the FCDO’s objective of undermining Moscow, and furthering Whitehall’s interests, truly ends when they return to their day jobs as “objective,” “neutral” purveyors of news.
As BBCMA boasts in its pitch, the BBC is “well-known and highly regarded” in the Eastern Partnership countries, and provides “millions of viewers, listeners and online users in the region with world-class news on a daily basis.” At the very least, the leaked files make clear that neither the British state broadcaster, nor its FCDO paymasters, has any qualms about exploiting that standing and perceived credibility for malign ends.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
Wither Cuomo and the GOP Establishment
By William Stroock | March 2, 2021
In November of 2019, several disgruntled GOP operatives launched the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. The organizations’ directors included Steve Schmidt, director of John McCain’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, Reed Galen, another McCain advisor, Rick Wilson, a GOP political consultant, and John Weaver an advisor to former Republican Ohio governor John Kasich. The group has raised more than $90 million, about a third of which they spent on political television and internet ads, with much of the rest going to their own political consulting firms.
The Lincoln Project has long been popular with the Dems and the media; its directors are regulars on powerhouse morning political shows like Morning Joe. Late last January, The American Conservative reported that John Weaver used his position within the organization to sexually harass and groom young men. Further reporting by The Associated Press showed that Weaver’s actions were an open secret within The Lincoln Project. The rest of the Lincoln Project’s leadership had been informed of Weaver’s behavior in writing last June and members knew of the problem as early as March. John Weaver has resigned as has Steve Schmidt. So far, the Lincoln Project is bravely soldiering on.
As is Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York. Cuomo had once been hailed as ‘America’s Governor’ for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. He won a television Emmy Award for his daily news conferences and published a book extolling his leadership. But a report issued by State Attorney General Letitia James says Cuomo’s administration misrepresented the number of deaths caused by the governor’s policy of putting COVID-19 patients in nursing homes. The Cuomo Administration claimed 8,711 died in nursing homes. But the Attorney General’s report says the true number is over 13,000. Melissa De Rossa, the governor’s secretary, confirmed on a conference call with state Democrats that Cuomo’s administration covered up the true number of COVID-19 related nursing home deaths.
Conservatives and the bereaved have long slammed Cuomo’s nursing home policy, but the issue did not gain traction in the media until now. Cuomo has attacked and berated his critics. State Assemblyman Ron Kim, long a critic of the governor’s nursing home policy, says Cuomo constantly called and verbally harassed him and promised to destroy him. “You have not seen my wrath”, the governor told Kim, “You will be destroyed.” Kim told Cuomo all further communications had to go through his personal attorney. NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio said that kind of bullying behavior is pretty normal for Governor Cuomo.
Sexual harassment may also be normal for the governor. Two young women have come forward and claimed Cuomo made sexual advances toward them with all the tact and charm of a 15-year-old. More will likely follow. Cuomo has called for an independent review of the allegations, but Attorney General James insists she should oversee any investigation. Late Sunday night, Cuomo issued a statement saying, ‘I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended.’ Because a 63-year-old man does not understand he should not make clumsy and lewd sexual advances at women the same age as his daughters. These last few days local news is leading off with Cuomo’s twin scandals, so the governor is definitely in trouble.
While the Democrats got the knives out for Cuomo, the American Conservative Union hosted its annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida. For decades, CPAC has been an important gathering of Republicans and conservatives of all stripes. This year, the GOP Establishment has no place at CPAC. Florida Representative Matt Goetz slammed the establishment and his House colleague and conference chair Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Donald Trump, ‘Speaking of people who ought to lose primaries… if Liz Cheney were on this stage today, she’d get booed off of it,’ Goetz told the assembled.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2024. DeSantis is just as combative as Trump, but lower key. Trumpism without Trump, some say of DeSantis. The governor touched on several issues important to conservative voters; COVID-19 lockdowns, school openings, Big Tech censorship and election integrity. He touted the state’s openness in comparison to closed states. ‘Florida got it right, and the lockdown states, got it wrong,’ DeSatnis declared. He slammed the ‘failed’ Republican Establishment, open borders and military adventurism and even paid tribute to the late Rush Limbaugh.
South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is another rising start within the GOP. Last summer she hosted a pro-American rally with President Trump at Mount Rushmore. This year she gave a 20 plus minute speech on conservative principles and her sate’s handling of COVID-19. Noem touted the fact that at no time did she order a quarantine or require masks. Noem related, ‘Now Dr. Faucci, he told me that on my worst day I’d have 10,000 patients in the hospital. On our worst day, we had a little over 600. I don’t know if you agree with me, but Dr. Fauci is wrong a lot.’ The crowd roared.
President Trump’s Sunday afternoon speech was the highlight of the CPAC gathering. He brought red meat for rabid CPAC attendees. Trump slammed Biden, ‘In just one short month we went from America first to America last.’ Trump’s speech was a long stemwinder typical of the man. ‘I am not starting a new party’ he said unequivocally. Who knows? I may even decide to beat them for a third time, ok?’
Last week Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who has won three tough, close races in his home state and chairs the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee said, ‘The Democratic Party, it is a socialist party now, so the Republicans’ civil war is actually cancelled.’ Scott is certainly a member of the loathed Establishment but sees things other members don’t. With the Lincoln Project imploding, calls form the House caucus for Liz Cheney’s resignation renewed, and the Trump wing of the party rocking in Orlando, the Establishment has already lost.
Illinois’ Latest Use Of Taxpayer Money As Political Club
By Mark Glennon – Wirepoints – February 25, 2021
Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs and a group of 29 other state financial officials recently sent letters to six of the nation’s largest private sector money managers in a transparently partisan attempt to bully them out of supporting Republicans.
The effort is a misuse of the power that adheres to managing billions of dollars of taxpayer money and sets a dangerous precedent that might well invite retaliation in the same form by Republicans holding similar offices or from a Republican successor to Frerichs. It’s an attempt by incumbent officeholders to control much of the money that controls politics.
Unfortunately, the effort got no scrutiny and only a few news articles in the national media, including these in The Washington Post and Bloomberg.
Treasurer Michael Frerichs
Frerichs oversees the investment of some $35 billion of Illinoisan’s money. Together with the other treasurers, public fiduciaries and pension trustees who signed the letter, over a trillion dollars of public money is represented.
Their letter went in substantially identical form, one of which is here, to BlackRock Inc., Vanguard Group, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Fidelity Investments, State Street Corp. and Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
The letter purports to be mainly about transparency and political contributions to members of Congress who voted against certification of election results that came in from the states. On January 6, 147 Congressional Republicans voted against certification, which was well over half of the Republican members of Congress.
That, the letter says, made its writers worried about returns on their investments. “A functioning democracy is foundational to a stable economy,” the letter says, “and we rely on economic and political stability in order to generate consistent investment returns on behalf of our beneficiaries.”
Nothing political at all, the officials are claiming, they are just doing their best to maximize financial returns.
Take a closer look to see if that’s believable.
One implicit threat about contributions to those candidates is clear in the first sentence of the letters. “[With] assets under management of over $1 trillion,” Frerichs and the others wrote, “we are frequently asked to evaluate asset allocations to asset managers.”
And they ask in the letter, “Will [you] forswear corporate political spending (direct or indirect) to the 147 members of Congress who voted to overturn the results of a free and fair democratic election on January 6th, 2021?”
In other words, change your political contributions or, well, they didn’t need to spell it out.
There’s much more to it. The letters are a broad attempt to bully the money managers into partisan changes in their political activity.
You can’t even get past the letterhead, shown here, to see that broader, partisan agenda. It’s brazen, carrying the names of Service Employees International Union and Majority Action.
It’s so brazen you have to wonder what they were thinking.
SEIU is one of the largest public unions in the nation and huge Democratic benefactor. It is listed among Frerichs’ ten biggest campaign contributors in 2018, the last time he ran.
Majority Action, which spearheaded the effort behind the letter, is a progressive outfit focused on publicly shaming corporations into supporting like-minded causes, particularly on global warming.
Why are SEIU and Majority Action on the letterhead if not to signal general support for them as well?
As you would expect, it’s an entirely partisan group that signed the letter. Every one of the elected officials who signed it are Democrats. And each of the unelected officials who signed it are, from all I could find, active progressives and presumably also Democrats.
Are the letter writers sincere when claiming they are only concerned about their investment returns and election certification?
Objections to presidential vote certifications are not uncommon. Democrats have objected to all three certifications of Republican wins since 2000 – Donald Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. When Sen. Barbara Boxer objected to certification of Bush’s Ohio certification in 2004, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said on the Senate floor, “I thank her for doing that because it gives members an opportunity once again on a bipartisan basis to look at a challenge that we face not just in the last election in one State but in many States.”
Durbin’s point was fair, and Democrats had every right to make those objections. The letter writers undoubtedly didn’t object, nor are we aware of any objections they had to any of countless elected officials who stood silent and sometimes encouraged the political violence we saw over the summer.
There’s another oddity about the letter. Among its signers is Aaron Ammons as trustee of SURS, one of Illinois’ pensions, the State University Retirement System.
SURS, like most Illinois pensions, is among the walking dead in actuarial terms, being only 39% funded. Does anybody really think that saving democracy from insurrectionists is what SURS trustees should be focused on?
SURS Trustee Aaron Amons
Ammons, too, is a progressive Democrat. He’s a former chapter president of SEIU. Appointed by Gov. JB Pritzker, he was elected Champaign County Clerk in 2018 and co-founded the Champaign Urbana Citizens for Peace & Justice. He is married to Democratic State Representative Carol Ammons.
The letter isn’t entirely focused on campaign contributions to those who voted against the vote certification. It addresses campaign donations in general and asks what broader reforms the letter’s recipients will undertake to rigorously reassess their “corporate political spending and evaluate whether payments serve to advance the company’s business objectives and a stable democracy.”
But that’s an entirely political judgement that neither Frerichs, Ammons nor the other signers are charged with imposing. Even if they are sincere in their claims about what’s good for rates of return in the long run, suffice it to say that opinions vary.
Those broader topics and questions belie the letter’s real purpose, which is to tell the big money folks to toe the party line — or else. From the letterhead down, its recipients would be fools to miss that full message. It’s not about maximizing returns, it’s about telling them where to use their financial clout politically.
We are fortunate that, at least so far, public officials with different political views than the letter writers haven’t tried the same tactic. They well might, as might a Republican successor to Frerichs.
A bad precedent has been set. Money, unfortunately, already controls much of government. But if this precedent is followed, we would have incumbent politicians effectively controlling much of the money that controls politics, pushing and pulling in different directions.
The letter is the most recent on a list of ways Frerichs has misused the public’s money for partisan purposes. Those stories and some on Frerichs’ other doings are in our articles linked below.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
- Pure genius: Illinois Treasurer Frerichs takes money from charities to make grants to charities January 29, 2021
- As markets tank, Illinois prioritizes social justice for investing public money March 9, 2020
- Success For Illinois’ Secure Choice Program? Better Check The Numbers November 25, 2019
- Illinois Treasurer playing activist shareholder again with stock not his; wants new Facebook chairman April 16, 2018
- Illinois Treasurer Shoots Self In Foot Defending Activist Social Investing January 15, 2018
- Illinois Treasurer Frerichs Playing Activist Shareholder With College Savers’ Money January 8, 2018
- Illinois Treasurer Shoots Self In Foot Defending Activist Social Investing January 15, 2018
- In Depth: $13 Billion Still Languishes With Illinois Treasurer, Misuse Mounts October 22, 2017
- Why that municipal bond purchase by Illinois Treasurer makes me nervous September 15, 2017
- Illinois Treasurer Churns $12.5 Billion Portfolio Every 3 – 4 days — $1 Trillion Per Year October 12, 2016
- Illinois Treasurer Will Punish Taxpayers, Blameless Shareholders and Employees for Wells Fargo Scandal October 3, 2016
African governments are crushing opposition using Israeli spyware
By Suraya Dadoo | MEMO | February 24, 2021
As internet penetration and smartphone usage increases across Africa, digital spaces have become increasingly important for organising political uprisings and opposition movements. In response, several of the continent’s regimes have shut down the internet or blocked social media apps. To sidestep the economic costs and global criticism that these online shutdowns incur, governments have turned to digital surveillance technology as a shrewder way to crush all opposition.
In a recently-released report titled “Running in Circles: Uncovering the Clients of Cyberespionage Firm, Circles”, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab — which investigates digital espionage against civil society — details how government agencies in Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe are using the surveillance technology developed by Israeli telecom company Circles to snoop on the personal communications of opposition politicians, human rights activists and journalists. These seven African countries are among 25 around the world using Circles, which is affiliated with the notorious NSO Group whose invasive Pegasus spyware has been used to target human rights defenders and journalists around the world.
How does it work?
Circles technology is sold to nation states only, and intercepts data from 3G networks, allowing the infiltrator to read messages and emails, and listen to phone calls in real time. Using only the telephone number, a Circles platform can identify the location of a phone anywhere in the world within seconds.
Circles exploits flaws in Signalling System No.7 (SS7), the set of protocols that allows networks to exchange calls and text messages between each other. This allows government agencies to track individuals across borders without a warrant, bypassing international conventions.
In 2019, 3G became the leading mobile technology in Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for over 45 per cent of all connections. With the faster — and possibly more secure — 4G networks being at least five years away from becoming the standard for mobile connectivity on the continent, Circles’ 3G-manipulating technology is ideal for power-hungry African leaders looking to cling to power by spying on critics.
The spying revelations came as African governments — including some named in the Citizen Lab report — are cracking down brutally on protestors and opposition groups.
Nigeria
Recent #EndSARS protests triggered a deadly response from Nigeria’s state security apparatus, with the government able to infiltrate the movement’s organisational structures successfully.
Citizen Lab identified two Circles systems in Nigeria that both began operating in June 2015. One of them was being used by the Nigerian Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). In 2016, the governors of Delta and Bayelsa states also purchased Circles systems to spy on political opponents and critics. The presence of Circles products in Nigeria goes back more than a decade, when former Rivers state governor, Rotimi Amaechi, became the first Nigerian politician to use the surveillance technology in 2010.
Circles’ government clients in Nigeria have a long history of abusing surveillance technologies to conduct mass surveillance of citizens’ telecommunications. Femi Adeyeye, a Lagos-based political activist who has been detained several times for criticising the Nigerian government, is not surprised that Muhammadu Buhari’s regime is using the invasive spying technology.
Adeyeye cited several cases where Nigerians were swiftly traced, arrested and detained after criticising the government. These include journalists Omoyele Sowore, Abubakar Idris Dadiyata and Stephen Kefas. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has also reported numerous cases of the Nigerian authorities abusing phone surveillance by targeting journalists’ phones to reveal and track sources for stories investigating government corruption.
“We are already in the worst stage of dictatorship,” warns Adeyeye. “Freedom of expression, media, and political association have been further weakened by this spying technology.”
He says that Nigerian political analysts now self-censor when commenting on national political issues, after witnessing the government’s infiltration of #EndSARS. “They have seen how people have been traced, their passports seized and bank accounts frozen, and how they have been forced to go into exile.”
Zimbabwe
In Zimbabwe — which has witnessed intense anti-government protests recently — Citizen Lab detected three Circles platforms, with one dating back to 2013. A second platform was activated in March 2018 and is still operating.
As in Nigeria, there has been a government crackdown on anyone exposing corruption. Investigative journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, and Jacob Ngarivhume, the leader of the opposition group Transform Zimbabwe, were detained ahead of anti-government protests last year. Circles technology is facilitating this suppression.
Equatorial Guinea
A Circles surveillance system was also found in Equatorial Guinea, where dictator Tedoro Obiang has ruled for 40 years in a climate of torture, extra-judicial executions, arbitrary arrests and the persecution of political activists and human rights defenders. Obiang has crushed protests violently and ignored demands for electoral reforms and limits on terms of office.
Morocco
Morocco’s Ministry of the Interior has been a Circles client since 2018. Rabat has a history of leveraging digital technology to unlawfully target Moroccan human rights activists.
Eroding democracy in Botswana
It’s not just countries such as these facing protests, or those with a dismal record of human rights abuses, that are spying on their citizens. Even supposed democracies are involved. Botswana is hailed widely as one of Africa’s most stable democracies. Yet, the country’s Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) was linked to two Circles surveillance systems dating back to 2015. The targets were journalists investigating corruption by politicians.
According to Moeti Mohwasa, spokesperson for the opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), Israeli companies have been selling spyware to the Botswana government for years. Mohwasa says that some of this equipment has been used to eavesdrop on opposition politicians and union leaders in the country.
Enabling authoritarianism in Kenya
Citizen Lab also reported a Circles system in Kenya. While the East African nation is often lauded as a strong democracy, critics accuse the Uhuru Kenyatta administration of being an authoritarian regime.
“In Kenya, freedom of expression and media freedoms are under constant threat,” says Suhayl Omar, a policing, surveillance and militarism researcher from Nairobi. “The Kenyatta regime has waged a war against constitutionalism and any form of opposition in Kenya.”
Omar believes that the Kenyan government relies heavily on surveillance of its citizens to crack down on any form of opposition. “For this, they look to undemocratic and violent states — like Israel — to fund, equip and train their agents and armies for these unconstitutional missions.”
Zambia
Zambia is also a Circles client. In 2019, the Zambian authorities reportedly used a cyber-surveillance unit in the offices of Zambia’s telecommunications regulator to pinpoint the location of a group of bloggers who ran an opposition news site. They were duly arrested, with the authorities in constant contact with the police units on the ground throughout the operation. Given its capabilities, it is likely that a Circles system was used to do this.
Should the Israeli government be held accountable?
African governments will justify spying by claiming that it is a matter of national security. The Israeli government, meanwhile, has distanced itself from these anti-democracy purges. Israeli Minister Zeev Elkin denied any government involvement, telling Israeli radio, “Everyone understands that this is not about the state of Israel.” But it is.
The Israeli government, through its Ministry of Defence, implicitly sanctions such activities by providing tech firms with export licences. In January 2020, Amnesty International filed a lawsuit in Israel calling for the ministry to ban the export of invasive spying software, as it was being used to attack human rights activists by the governments purchasing them. Last July, an Israeli court denied Amnesty’s request.
“The Israeli regime has actively enabled the authoritarianism of Uhuru Kenyatta,” explains Suhayl Omar, commenting on the situation in Kenya. Moeti Mohwasa in Botswana agrees about official Israeli involvement. “In recent years, the Botswana government has increasingly been eroding civil rights, and becoming intolerant of political dissent. Israel is aiding these dangerous trends.”
Friends with benefits
Although developed by private companies, the spying equipment is also a key part of the Israeli government’s diplomatic charm offensive in Africa. By helping African governments cling to power through arming them with the weapons to wage cyber-warfare on their citizens, Tel Aviv is hoping to make more African friends. The aim is to dissolve African solidarity with Palestine, and capture African votes at the UN and so defeat resolutions that are critical of Israel’s brutal military occupation. Israel is also trying to find partners to lobby the African Union to grant the occupation state observer status.
In his book War Against the People, Jeff Halper writes that Israel is exporting its expertise in population control gained through its occupation of Palestine, and leading the “global pacification” industry, assisting state security agencies around the world. The danger, Halper warns, is that gradually we will all become like Palestinians, fearful of being tracked and detained for organising a protest, defending human rights or trying to hold the powerful to account.
As repressive African governments continue looking to Israel to help them shrink the safe space for human rights defenders even further, the danger is that Abuja, Nairobi, Gaborone and other capitals across the continent may end up under digital occupation just like Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Gaza City.
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What to Do About Israel?
Here are some suggestions
By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | February 23, 2021
Critics of U.S. policy with and about Israel like myself have been relatively successful in describing the considerable downside in the bilateral status quo. We have demonstrated that the lopsided relationship supports absolutely no U.S. interest and that, on the contrary, considerable damage is done to the American people, to include involvement in armed conflict in the Middle East which serves no purpose beyond “protecting Israel.”
Israel benefits from billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars annually in a $3.8 billion lump sum for “military aid” plus hundreds of millions more in special procurements and projects that are together considered untouchable in Washington. Add to that the quasi legal “charitable” tax exempt contributions from wealthy American Jews and groups that fuel apartheid policies in Palestine and pay for the illegal settlements. Many of those same groups are themselves tax exempt and they exploit that status to actively lobby on behalf of the Jewish state, successfully shielding it from any consequences for its war crimes and human rights violations. They also avoid registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, even though many of them collude directly with the Israeli government through its embassy in Washington and are directed by the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu government. In fact, no Israel Lobby component among the six hundred or so Jewish groups that have been protecting Israel as part of their agenda has ever been required to register as a foreign agent.
Under President Donald Trump, one Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson contributed as much as $300 million to GOP coffers, money which had with it a quid pro quo, that Trump should do a series of favors for Israel, which he did. The Democrats have their own counterpart in Israeli film producer Haim Saban, who has said that he is a “one issue guy and his issue is Israel.” Neither major party can be counted upon to resist Israeli pressure on foreign policy or even on domestic issues that might limit the “aid” that the Jewish state receives.
The money coming from the Israel Lobby has corrupted American government all the way down to the local level and special preferences for Israeli businesses in states like Florida and Virginia have added even more to the cash flow that goes in only one direction. Ironically, Israel does not really need the money. It is a socialist state that has a European level standard of living, to include free health care and university education, benefits that Americans do not possess.
Add to that Israel’s deplorable human rights record, which Washington is required to defend in international fora, as well as Israel’s record of persistent and highly damaging spying against the United States. It all means that little more need to be said, apart from restating the fact that it is a very bad deal for the American people. And it has also brought with it collateral damage to include attacks on fundamental rights like Freedom of Speech and Assembly. As the politicians in both major parties are bribed or otherwise coerced into continuing to behave the way that they do, count on things getting even worse, with criminalizing of any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism currently making the rounds of pending legislation.
All of that said, when I and others lay out the laundry list of Israel’s crimes against America, some sympathizers inevitably respond: “Okay, so what are you going to do about it?” So now I am going to address some of the things that can be done by ordinary Americans and by groups that are correctly appalled by Washington’s wag the dog relationship with the Jewish state.
First of all, demand from our elected officials that American law be enforced on Israel. There are several areas where that is relevant. First, as mentioned above, is the failure of the Justice and Treasury Departments to enforce registration of pro-Israel lobbying groups. Registration would force groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) to open their books regarding the money they receive and spend and could also require them to reveal details of their lobbying activity.
Another area where the law is not being enforced is regarding Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which was created by stealing both technology and enriched uranium from the U.S. The Symington Amendment on foreign relations forbids giving aid to any country that is either a nuclear proliferator or is in possession of undeclared nuclear weapons. Demand that it be enforced fully now and end all aid to Israel.
U.S. Israel-centric charities or foundations should also have their tax exemptions strictly enforced. Humanitarian aid is fine, but if they are funding the illegal West Bank settlements, which many of them are, they should have their exemptions revoked. And finally, Israelis caught spying or Americans who are assisting in the theft of U.S. classified or sensitive information should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to include use of the Espionage Act. Currently, such individuals are almost always given a pass. If [proclaimed] President Joe Biden can continue the persecution of legitimate journalist Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, he can certainly do the same vis-à-vis Israel’s spies.
Second, call for the end of Citizens United, which enables the Zionist oligarchs to dictate U.S. policy in the Middle East through their PACs and direct political donations. Beyond that, make your voice heard more generally. Sure, calling or writing to a congressional office is most often a waste of time but Capitol Hill staffers have told me many times that if a congressman gets multiple complaints about a certain policy or issue, he or she will begin to pay attention. That is not to say that they will give a damn about their actual constituents versus the powerful Israel Lobby but the background noise might make them just a bit more sensitive on the issue.
Likewise, with the mainstream media and the entertainment industry, which are Jewish/Israel dominated. When one reads an article or watches a documentary that is heavily slanted towards the Jewish state, make an online comment or write a letter to the editor or producer saying that the bias is evident. As in the case with congress, if newspaper or television editors begin to see a lot of commentary hostile to their spin they just might begin to be more cautious for fear of losing readers, viewers or advertising dollars. And just a little bit of loosening of the Israeli grip in the media will mean that the public will begin to appreciate that the “news stories” that have been promoted for so many years are nothing but a tissue of lies.
Third, support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement as well as organizations that are actively critical of Israel. BDS is non-violent and increasingly effective, particularly on college campuses. Always remember that Israel and its friends do not have a grip on Congress, the White House and the media because they are wonderful warm people that others find to be sympathetic. It is difficult even to imagine a scintillating conversation with a malignant toad like former casino magnate Sheldon Adelson or with congressional slime balls like Senators Chuck Schumer and Ben Cardin.
Israel’s ability to corrupt and misdirect is all based on Jewish money, a well-established process whereby Zionist oligarchs buy their way to power and access. So to restore the relationship to something more like the normal interaction between countries the solution is to hit back where it really hurts – boycott Israel and Israeli products or services and do the same for the companies that are the sources of income for those American Jews who are the principal supporters of the Zionist project. If you want to visit Las Vegas, by all means go, but don’t patronize the casinos and hotels now owned by Sheldon Adelson’s Israeli wife Miriam, which include The Venetian and Sands Resort.
Democratic party major donor Haim Saban, meanwhile, is a producer of Hollywood children’s entertainment, including the lucrative Power Rangers. You can stop your children from watching his violent programming and tell the network’s advertisers why you are doing so. And then there are businessmen including Bernard Marcus, who is a co-founder of Home Depot and a major supporter of Israel, and Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots. No one really has to spend $1000 to go to a football game, particularly if the owner is a good friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, and if you need something for your home or are seeking entertainment, choose to spend your dollars somewhere else. Readers can do the homework for the businesses and services that they normally patronize. If outspoken advocates for Israel own the company, take your dollars elsewhere.
Also put direct pressure on the mostly high-tech U.S. companies that invest in Israel, which are particularly vulnerable because they are thereby sending American jobs overseas, particularly as they country they are sending them to will steal the technology as likely as not. Make Israel’s cash-rich supporters pay a price for promotion of an apartheid/racist regime that is contemptuous of Americans even as it robs us blind, in the process doing terrible damage to the United States.
I am confident that readers will come up with other ideas regarding what might be done to counter Israel and all its works right here in the United States. If we lapse into apathy and think that nothing can be done to oppose the Israeli juggernaut, we will all lose. And, to be sure, the Israelis and their friends in America and Europe have one huge weakness. It is their hubris. They think that they are invulnerable because of their money and political power, but they fail to understand that in history the rich and powerful have inevitably gone too far and have finally received their comeuppance. Perhaps the “gone too far” moment has finally arrived.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
The Trump Energy Resilience Plan which Could have Saved Texas
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | February 20, 2021
Has Trump derangement syndrome cost Texan lives? Back in 2017, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry proposed paying Coal and Nuclear Power Stations to keep at least 90 days worth of coal onsite, for disaster resilience.
At the time the resilience proposal was widely criticised as being a thinly disguised Trump scheme to pump government money into the coal and nuclear industries. But in hindsight, a bit more resilience might have saved Texas from days of painful electricity blackouts.
From 2017;
Rick Perry: DOE’s Coal, Nuclear Proposal Is ‘Rebalancing the Market’
Perry doubles down on arguments that the NOPR will protect Americans.
LACEY JOHNSON NOVEMBER 02, 2017
Energy Secretary Rick Perry said a proposed rule to subsidize coal and nuclear plants is “rebalancing the market” to correct for the Obama administration’s support of renewable energy.
They “clearly had their thumb on the scale toward the renewable side,” said Perry, who spoke about his energy policy priorities with Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd and Axios CEO Jim VandeHei at an event in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.
The DOE’s request to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) would upend decades of energy market policy by guaranteeing cost recovery for power plants with 90 days of fuel supply on-site — something that only nuclear power, a few hydropower sites, and some larger coal power plants can provide.
“If you can guarantee me that the wind is going to blow tomorrow, if you can guarantee me that the sun’s going to get to the solar panels…then I’ll buy into that. But you can’t,” said Perry.
The notice of public rulemaking, or NOPR, implies that there is a looming threat to grid reliability due to coal and nuclear power plant retirements. Its conclusions are largely based on an incomplete analysis of the 2014 polar vortex, which could have led to blackouts had several coal-fired plants now slated for closure not been available to serve the load.
The move has been widely criticized by clean energy advocates as politically motivated and factually unproven, and has drawn a backlash from major sectors of the energy industry.
…
Federal regulators rejected the plan, on the grounds that Rick Perry failed to provide enough evidence that retiring coal and nuclear plants was undermining grid stability. The plan was eventually dropped, after vigorous lobbying from gas and renewable energy groups.
Now that the scenario Rick Perry predicted has actually happened in Texas, it seems pretty obvious the Rick Perry was right about the risks. Nuclear power plants and fossil fuel plants which had access to adequate fuel supplies mostly stayed fully operational.
Why is government intervention required to ensure grid resilience?
Keeping several months worth of fuel onsite is a cost which does not contribute to company profits. The cost of all that reserve fuel represents money which could instead have been used to pay down capital debts, or pay out dividends to shareholders. Power companies which choose to wear this kind of expense are at a competitive disadvantage compared to power companies which run leaner operations, by running their reserves down to the bare minimum. The expense of keeping fuel in reserve impacts market share and company growth; consumers frequently flock to the lowest price energy service, without considering the long term consequences.
Rick Perry’s plan would have eliminated the financial penalty for keeping a fuel reserve onsite, by compensating power companies for the cost of maintaining substantial fuel reserves.
Given resilience payments seem to be a workable solution, will President Biden or Texas Governor Greg Abbott implement the 2017 Trump / Perry energy resilience plan, to ensure nothing like the Texas power outage disaster ever happens again?
The Modelling-paper Mafiosi
The Pandemic Modellers Have a Conflict of Interest Problem from Rosemary Frei on Vimeo.
By Rosemary Frei, MSc | February 11, 2021
John Edmunds is on top of the world. He’s one of the modelling-paper mafiosi. The London, U.K., professor is a key government advisor on COVID-19-related policies.
Edmunds also was a co-author of one of the primary modelling papers that have been used to convince the masses that vigilance against Variant of Concern (VOC) B.1.1.7 should be their top priority.
And Edmunds co-wrote an influential January 21, 2021 report that concluded:
There is a realistic possibility that VOC B.1.1.7 is associated with an increased risk of death compared to non-VOC viruses.”
In addition, he speaks often to reporters about the deadliness of the new variant. Edmunds tells them, for example, that a “disaster” would ensue if lockdowns are eased too soon, because what first must be done is to “vaccinate much, much, much more widely than the elderly.”
FOLLOW THE FUNDS
Edmunds also happens to be the spouse of someone who, at least until April 2020, was an employee of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and held shares in the company. (Edmunds doesn’t disclose this in any of his media interviews that I’ve read and watched. He also doesn’t disclose his own stock holdings.)
According to an April 2020 Daily Telegraph article, Edmunds’s wife is Jeanne Pimenta and she works for GSK. The Daily Telegraph article states Edmunds asserted his partner had recently resigned from GSK. So it’s unclear whether Pimenta currently works there or not.
I did a little digging and found that the only Jeanne Pimenta LinkedIn profile indicates she’s currently director of epidemiology at GSK, while Jeanne Pimenta’s ResearchGate profile says she’s an epidemiologist at BioMarin Pharmaceutical. (I’ll have a bit more about Edmunds being married to a present or former Glaxo employee later in this article.)
In any case, GSK’s financial success is skyrocketing. On February 3 the company announced it’s collaborating with mRNA-vaccine company CureVac to spend 150 million Euros — approx $180 million — to make vaccines for the new variants. That effectively gives them first-entrant advantage in vaccines for the new variants. And that same Feb. 3 news release touts the new-variant vaccines as also able to serve as ‘booster’ shots after the initial rounds of vaccination.
In addition, GSK joined forces with CureVac to pump out, later this year, 100 million doses of CureVac’s ‘first-generation’ COVID-19 vaccine called ‘CvnCoV.’
Not only that: this fall GSK together with another international pharmaceutical firm, Sanofi, are scheduled to start producing what could turn out to be up to one billion doses of their COVID-19 vaccine annually. GSK’s understated Feb. 3 announcement of its Q4 2020 financial results said it will “continue to expect meaningful improvement in revenues and margins” because they are “building a high-value biopharma pipeline.”
Note that GSK and other pharma companies like Moderna and Pfizer are not responsible for damage and compensation payments to people seriously injured and killed by COVID-19 vaccines. Governments will pay instead – that is, if those injured and killed and their loved ones are able to beat the long odds and get any compensation at all.
And a remarkable February 8, 2021, investigative report in the German news outlet Welt Am Sonntag (which translates to World on Sunday) reveals another impetus for the wildly inaccurate modelling governments use to keep populations in a state of fear and control.
The German article shows that in March 2020 government officials enlisted [emphasis added]:
leading scientists from several research institutes and universities. Together, they were to produce a [mathematical-modelling] paper that would serve as legitimization for further tough political measures.”
These scientists obediently wrote a modelling paper tailored to the government’s instructions. The then-secret paper asserted that if lockdown measures were lifted immediately, up to one million Germans would die from COVID-19, some “agonizingly at home, gasping for breath,” after being turned away from overflowing hospitals.
EDMUNDS IS DEEPLY INVESTED IN THE VACCINE WORLD
There’s still more to the web of money and influence surrounding Edmunds and other modelling-paper mafiosi, including Neil Ferguson (information on Ferguson is in the section below titled More Modelling Mafiosi).
The first new-variant modelling paper Edmunds co-wrote, which I mention in the second paragraph of this article, was posted on December 23, 2020. Edmunds co-authored it with his fellow members of the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). People in the centre’s COVID-19 Working Group also contributed.
The modelling paper was posted on the e-journal Medrχiv, which publishes only non-peer-reviewed papers. The journal is the creation of an organization headed by Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. I discuss Medrχiv and the Zuckerberg connection in my Feb. 3 article on the baselessness for the modelling papers that claim the new variants are very dangerous.
Edmunds also is dean of the LSHTM’s Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health. I contacted the institution’s media-relations department to request an interview with one of the Dec. 23, 2020, modelling paper’s authors. I didn’t receive a response.
In a Feb. 2017 video interview, Edmunds enthused that the LSHTM specializes in every aspect of vaccine development, from basic science to large-scale clinical trials. In the video he also touts using mathematical modelling as a good way to show that vaccines protect individuals and society. (And among other things he describes his group’s efforts in giving children flu vaccines and — in conjunction with Public Health England — promoting human papillomavirus [HPV] vaccines for girls and boys.)
In addition, Edmunds is a key member of the UK Vaccine Network (which until recently was known as the UK Vaccines Network – the URL for the organization has ‘UK Vaccines Network‘ in it).
And he’s a member of the U.K. government’s Science Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), which provides Covid-measure advice — much of it related to the push for an unprecedently forceful push for mass vaccination — to U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson and his cabinet.
On top of that, Edmunds is a member of the U.K. government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG). It works hand in hand with SAGE, and it also heavily promotes vaccination.
And as mentioned earlier, Edmunds is married to a current or former GSK employee. A 2015 article that Edmunds co-authored states under ‘Competing interests’ for Edmunds that “My partner works for GSK.” Similarly, on the NERVTAG website’s conflict-disclosure pages – which for some reason haven’t been updated since Oct. 2017 – it reveals that Edmunds’s spouse works for GSK.
As a quick other note, the ‘Author Contributions and Acknowledgements’ section of the PDF of the December 23 modelling analysis of B.1.1.7 (pages 15 and 16) shows that almost all of the paper’s authors and members of the modelling centre’s COVID-19 Working Group receive funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and/or Wellcome Trust. (By the way, a search for Wellcome Trust yields the Wellcome website.)
And there’s more to the Edmunds story. Among other of my finds: he’s also on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Coalition for Epidemic Innovations (CEPI). CEPI was created primarily by the BMGF, the World Economic Forum and the major pharma company Wellcome. CEPI’s website states it was:
launched in Davos [at the meeting of the World Economic Forum in January] 2017 to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics. Our mission is to accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and enable equitable access to these vaccines for people during outbreaks.”
Investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley last year wrote a must-read two-part analysis of the ties between the key individuals, institutions, companies and funders of the UK’s Covid-19 response. She mentioned that GSK is working with CEPI to develop COVID-19 vaccines. This alliance is still going strong today.
Note also that the LSHTM’s Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, which Edmunds heads, is primarily funded by the BMGF and the Gavi alliance.
Gavi promotes mass vaccination of people around the world — including by quarterbacking the COVAX program. Gavi’s biggest funders include the BMGF. Doctors Without Borders has criticized GAVI for being:
aimed more at supporting drug-industry desires to promote new products than at finding the most efficient and sustainable means for fighting the diseases of poverty.”
BMGF funding for the LSHTM’s Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health is growing very fast. For example, BMGF’s new grants to the faculty rose from $4.9 million USD in 2013-2014 (see page 14 [p. 9 in the PDF] of the LSHTM’s 2014 annual report) to $13.19 USD in 2015-2016 (see page 14 [p. 9 in the PDF] of the LSHTM’s 2016 annual report) (top new research grants to each faculty at the LSHTM stopped being reported in the annual reports after 2017). Funding from the BMGF to the LSHTM as a whole was 30.2 million pounds ($40.2 USD) in 2017-2018 (see page 9 [p. 6 in the PDF] in the school’s 2018 annual report).
By the way, the LSHTM also has a Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre. It develops, tests and commercializes vaccines. (I couldn’t find any information on where the vaccines centre’s funding comes from.)
The vaccines centre also performs affiliated activities like combating ‘vaccine hesitancy.’ The latter includes the Vaccine Confidence Project. The project’s stated purpose is, among other things:
to provide analysis and guidance for early response and engagement with the public to ensure sustained confidence in vaccines and immunisation.”
The Vaccine Confidence Project’s director is LSHTM professor Heidi Larson. For more than a decade she’s been researching how to combat vaccine hesitancy. LSHTM underpins the project, which also is a member of the WHO’s Vaccine Safety Net.
MORE MODELLING MAFIOSI
Here’s information about two other members of this club:
Public Health England (PHE) issued its first detailed report on the new variant in late December 2020 and continues to provide updates. None of their reports are peer-reviewed. One of the highest-profile co-authors of the PHE reports is PHE director Susan Hopkins. She’s also a professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College London.
The college receives tens of millions of dollars a year from the BMGF. See for example this grant, this one, this one and this one.
(I emailed PHE media relations to request an interview about PHE’s new-variants reports. PHE communications person Zahra Vindhani responded, “Dr. Hopkins won’t have the capacity for this in the upcoming weeks, and we aren’t able to confirm anyone else for this either.)
PHE is guided in its approach to vaccination by PHE’s “Strategic Priority 1” for combating infections diseases in 2020-2025. It is to “Optimise vaccine provision and reduce vaccine preventable diseases in England” (see p. 9 of PHE’s Infectious Disease Strategy 2020-2025).
Neil Ferguson is a co-author of the PHE reports and also of a widely quoted December 31 modelling paper on the dangerousness of B.1.1.7. He’s Acting Director of the Imperial College London-based Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium.
Ferguson’s modelling has been extremely faulty again over the years. This has been thoroughly documented.
For example, as investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley wrote in Part One of a two-part investigative report in April-May 2020, Ferguson’s modelling over-estimated by about three million-fold the death toll from the bird flu, also known as H5N1. As a result, a lot of money was made by bird-flu-vaccine manufacturers, ranging from Roche (for its now-infamous, ineffective Tamiflu) to Sanofi, and they were used widely.
Ferguson also grossly overestimated the effects of swine flu, or H1N1. As a result, millions of people were needlessly given GSK’s Pandemrix. It caused brain damage, primarily narcolepsy and cataplexy, in hundreds if not thousands of vaccine recipients, mostly children. The pharma giant was granted no fault in any damage claims. Therefore the British government paid more than 60 million pounds (approx. $80 million USD at 2017 conversion rates) to victims.
And as mentioned earlier in this article, GSK and other pharma companies are similarly protected from having to pay damages to people injured or killed by their COVID-19 vaccines.
Ferguson also is a member, together with Edmunds and others, of SAGE.
Another group he’s a member of is the highly influential NERVTAG. It’s the group that issued the January 21, 2021 warning, mentioned earlier in this article, that B.1.1.7 is deadly.
Ferguson is a NERVTAG member even though he was reported to have resigned last spring after being caught visiting with his married lover when everyone in England was supposed to only be having contact with members of their own households (based in large part on Ferguson’s modelling and his urging the government to lock the country down).
Ferguson also is a member of the UK Vaccines Network, along with Edmunds and others such as the Network chair Chris Whitty, who’s also the UK government’s top Covid-19 adviser Chris Whitty. The network’s focus, according to its website:
to support the [U.K.] government to identify and shortlist targeted investment opportunities for the most promising vaccines and vaccine technologies that will help combat infectious diseases with epidemic potential, and to address structural issues related to the UK’s broader vaccine infrastructure.”
These ties bind Edmunds, Ferguson and Hopkins – along with the rest of the modelling-paper Mafiosi — to the bidding of governments, Big Pharma, Bill Gates and other powerful players.
They present an image of being fully devoted to the public good, while in fact actively helping to destroy it.
Bolivia’s Central Bank Returns Añez’s Requested Loan To IMF
teleSUR | February 17, 2021
Bolivia’s Central Bank announced on Wednesday that it had returned US$346.7 million to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a loan irregularly managed by the de facto government of Jeanine Añez.
“This loan, in addition to being irregular and onerous due to its financial conditions, generated additional and millionaire economic costs to the Bolivian State, which as of February 2021 amount to US$24.3 million of which US$19.6 million are due to exchange rate fluctuations 19.6 million for exchange variation and 4.7 million for commissions and interest,” the institution explained in a statement.
The Central Bank denounced that the IMF jeopardized the “country’s sovereignty and economic interests” through its Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI), which conditioned the funds to fiscal, financial, exchange rate monetary duties, which violate the Bolivian legal framework.
Moreover, authorities explain that they would start an investigation to prosecute all officials involved in the IMF’s illegal arrangement.
America’s future is in the hands of inept cretins while creativity and innovation are needed more than ever
By Helen Buyniski | RT | February 16, 2021
The US’ future looks grim indeed in the face of a ‘Great Reset’ proposed by the same powers that steered it into a deadly economic quagmire. Why are Americans allowing those who broke their world the privilege of ‘fixing’ it?
Americans with more power and connections than sense have rushed forward over the last year, attempting to seize the right to ‘fix’ a society broken by shockingly stupid responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Entire generations are being rendered suicidally depressed, unemployable, hopelessly alienated, and worse, while the likelihood that the current generation of children will mature into functional adults is rapidly shrinking. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for such a heterogenous population, and this moment calls for an unprecedented degree of creativity and imagination if we are to survive as a society.
So why are those most victimized by this system running into the arms of the same crew of unimaginative, solipsistic sociopaths who have repeatedly wrecked society in the first place? Whether it’s the ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks who asset-stripped the American middle class in 2008, overloading the country’s already fragile social safety net and driving a stake through the heart of the once-achievable American Dream, or the World Economic Forum, a breeding ground for selfish and self-interested corporate hacks who just want to fly their private jets in peace with the option to lecture the ground-bound hoi polloi on their carbon usage, those who’ve put themselves in charge are precisely the wrong ones for the job.
Indeed, the WEF – whose conveniently-timed book Covid 19: The Great Reset surfaced just in time to be seized upon by world governments as a supposedly better-than-nothing playbook for lifting humanity out of a mess even its writers admitted wasn’t nearly as disastrous as it seemed – was the first to claim experimental sovereignty over the poor unfortunates its leaders consigned to misery. Acknowledging they were putting humanity through the largest psychological experiment in history, one which technically violates the Geneva Convention and Nuremberg Code given that informed consent from its experimental test subjects was never obtained, is perhaps the worst possible messiah substitute to lead humanity into a brighter future.
Certainly, no one elected the WEF to guide Americans through the troubled times its members have largely created. The US is trapped in an identity crisis, crushed between the media establishment’s portrait of Our Democracy™ having narrowly escaped orange-tinted fascism and a newly-inaugurated administration that literally admitted to stealing the election on the front cover of Time Magazine. Joe Biden’s administration has claimed for itself the right to ‘Build Back Better’, its plagiarism-prone president once again ripping off his battle cry, this time from the World Economic Forum itself. A scriptwriter who submitted such an on-the-nose screenplay to their producer would be fired on the spot, yet Americans are expected to live with it.
Far from ushering in a golden age of democracy, Biden and his henchmen have held the reins of power in Washington for decades, bringing nothing but suffering to the American people. Despite his cabinet’s swaddling the iron fist of neoliberalism in warm fuzzy buzzwords like “inclusion” and “sustainability,” Biden himself is in large part responsible for the Patriot Act, which stripped American citizens of their most important constitutional rights. He also authored the 1994 crime bill that set up mandatory minimum sentencing for minor drug infractions, funneling tens of thousands of mostly black men into lifetime prison sentences. While he’s finally admitted the latter was a “mistake,” he nevertheless tried to dodge responsibility for having written the disastrous legislation by blaming individual states for how they implemented it. Expecting him to lead Americans into a bright new future is like expecting immaculate table manners from a starving grizzly bear.
Barely unable to keep from gibbering and squealing about a proposed new plan to tackle “domestic extremism,” Biden and his diversity all-stars – whose diversity stops at skin level as they march in ideological lockstep – are as much a menace to American society as the WEF member corporations pulling their strings behind the scenes. Americans seem helplessly caught in the vicious cycle of an abusive relationship, unable to flee the “devils they know” despite full awareness they will come away from their next encounter with a black eye (or an empty bank account, or utter social collapse). Embracing the WEF’s ‘Great Reset’ – a future of “fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity,” according to the organization’s founder Klaus Schwab, who further clarified this involves technology that can “intrude into the hitherto private space of our minds, reading our thoughts and influencing our behavior” – is perhaps the worst possible future humanity could enter. Yet we are sleepwalking into precisely this outcome, unaware that we have any other options.
Even as Americans emerge from the fear-based fog that has consumed them for the better part of a year, they’re still – whether they know it or not – following the directions of the same class of authority figures that led them into this mess in the first place. But these figures have no idea what they’re doing any more than those who are merely following their “leaders” out of habit. Why, having suffered so under the leadership of these utterly worthless figures, would they continue to follow? There is no precedent among the current generation for the economic collapse that has seized the US and no evidence that the WEF, or a wildly incompetent presidential administration, or corona czar and resounding failure Dr. Anthony Fauci, have any idea what to do about it.
At this point, diverging from the dysfunctional and downright deadly paths forged by these repulsive figures is not even a matter of making the right choice – it is a matter of survival.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Telegram.
`We Don’t Debate with Anti-Vaxxers – Whether They’re Right or Wrong’ – Says BBC
Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc FRSA | February 12, 2021
At the beginning of what I started off calling the coronavirus hoax, but which I now prefer to refer to as the covid fraud, I expected to see some fairly active debate about the importance of what seemed to me to be a rather over-marketed disease.
The forecasts upon which governments were basing their decisions were clearly over-dramatic and the main forecaster, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, has a terrible track record – having already been seriously wrong about a great many things.
In 2001, the Imperial team did the modelling on foot and mouth disease which led to a cull of six million sheep, pigs and cattle. The cost to the UK was around £10 billion. The Imperial’s work on this has been described as `severely flawed’. In 2002, Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people would die from mad cow disease. He said that could rise to 150,000 if sheep were involved. In the UK the death total was 177.
In 2005, Ferguson said that up to 200 million people could be killed by bird flu. The total number of deaths was 282 worldwide so he was out by 199 million 999 thousand seven hundred and eighteen. If Ferguson designed a mug he’d put the handle on the inside.
In 2009, Ferguson and his chums at Imperial advised the Government again, and they then warned that swine flu would kill 65,000 people in the UK. In the end swine flu killed 457 people in the UK.
Finally, Ferguson is said to have admitted that his model of the covid-19 is based on undocumented 13-year-old computer code that was intended for use with an influenza epidemic.
And it has been reported that early modelling which helped guide the British Government’s approach in 2020, used Wikipedia – which is edited by all sorts of saddos, wierdos and freaks as well as by people with very particular political agendas to pursue. Read what co- founder Larry Sanger has to say about Wikipedia.
So those of us with some experience in these matters decided that the Government had got it wrong again.
And then on March 19th 2020, the public health bodies in the UK, and the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens, decided to downgrade the coronavirus to flu level. The proof of this is on my website.
Naively, I thought that would be that.
Sadly, I was wrong.
Around the world governments have continued to lie, to deceive and to create fear and the media has aided and abetted the lies. All debate has been suppressed and the many doctors and other practitioners who have spoken up and tried to share the truth have been abused and demonised and had their careers ruthlessly destroyed.
The result is that the millions who doubt the Government’s propaganda and who question the safety and efficacy of the jabs have been disenfranchised by the media.
No media organisation has, in my view, been more egregiously dishonest than the BBC which has exhibited staggering ignorance mixed with prejudice and has forgotten that its job is to report the news not to bend it.
I am tired of them ignoring the science, avoiding debate and demonising those of us speaking the truth. I am convinced they believe that by demonising us they can silence us and more easily sustain the fraud and perpetuate the hoax.
They also seem to believe that they are immune to the consequences of this fraud. Do they think they and their relatives will escape the dangers of these lethal jabs?
The tragedy is that the BBC, funded with public money, deliberately suppresses valuable information that could help its viewers and listeners.
Speaking last autumn a BBC presenter called, Emma Barnett, said `we actually don’t, as a matter of editorial policy, we don’t debate with anti-vaxxers, whether they’re right or wrong. We actually don’t do that.’
There’s the proof of the BBC’s one-sided, corrupt approach to the biggest fraud in history. Right or wrong the BBC suppresses the truth.
Why does the unjustifiably arrogant BBC think it knows better than the science? Who told them that vaccines are so good that there is no need to debate their value, their safety or their effectiveness? Is it a stretch to fear that there’s drug company influence lurking somewhere.
And it’s no stretch to conclude that the BBC won’t allow me live on air to counter its misinformation because I can prove that vaccines kill and injure and often don’t work at all, and that would upset Bill Gates and the Government.
The BBC won’t let me discuss covid-19 because I can prove that masks kill and don’t work, that social distancing and lockdowns do far more harm than good, that the Government policy is arguably responsible for more deaths than covid-19 and that the experimental jabs being so heavily promoted are already killing and maiming thousands of people who have been denied informed consent.
Could it be that the bean counters at the BBC are frightened that the truth might upset the BBC’s cosy relationship with arch pro-vaxxers the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Gates, remember, has boasted that putting money into vaccines was the best investment he’s ever made.
Why do the BBC staff allow this to happen? Whatever happened to editorial integrity and independence?
I’m not what the BBC would call an anti-vaxxer, I am simply interested in facts and scientific truths, but I can prove that some of the companies making vaccines have over the years been found guilty of fraud and I can prove that billions of dollars have been paid out in compensation to people injured by vaccines.
The BBC isn’t interested in any of those uncomfortable truths. When faced with scores of scientific papers proving that face masks are dangerous, they dig out a scientist who will follow the party line – and then claim that a few quotes trump the inconvenient scientific truths.
Decent broadcasters and journalists would walk away from an organisation which has such oppressive policies – out of tune with an obligation to the public – but they stay for the big salaries and the power and the modest and ethereal fame.
The BBC seems to me to be a propaganda department for, among others, the powerful, rich and fraudulent vaccine industry. They don’t seem to care how many people die as long as they get their fat salaries, fat pensions and a chance to get their picture in the papers occasionally.
Lord Reith would weep.
Many BBC presenters probably don’t know who the hell he was. But he’d weep. He is identified with the BBC’s aims to educate, inform and entertain.
In my view if you deliberately suppress scientific truths that would be inconvenient to one of your financial partners then you deserve all the opprobrium that is available.
Could the BBC and its vast army of reporters and presenters be legally responsible when people who have been denied the truth, fall ill?
I believe so.
The BBC has a legal responsibility to provide both sides of a scientific discussion with a voice but it has deliberately chosen to provide only one point of view.
The BBC is a self-confessed biased organisation and I don’t think it is a stretch to describe it as corrupt. It is, after all, helping Gates get ever richer by silencing, libelling, trashing and attempting to humiliate those trying to reveal the science behind this scam.
The BBC refuses to allow presenters to discuss the downside of vaccination. It is deliberately and knowingly refusing to allow any debate on an issue which affects the health, and possibly the life, of everyone.
Let us not forget, too, that the BBC has financial links with the world’s arch pro-vaxxers – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has interests in a number of vaccine makers – including Pfizer.
In the US the National Vaccine Information Center has so far reported 501 deaths and 10,748 other injuries following the covid-19 jab.
That was before the end of January so I expect its higher now. And don’t forget that in America, as in the UK and elsewhere, they admit that they only receive details of a tiny proportion of the problems after vaccination.
Sadly, the figures from the UK are also horrifying. Officially, more than a third of those having the jab have a reaction. But it’s the serious adverse events that worry me.
UK Government figures show that the Pfizer jab in the UK is already responsible for 107 deaths and 49,472 people injured. In the first few weeks.
If you want to see the horrifying details of the UK government figures they are on my website. Press the health button and the figures are there, near the top in an article entitled `How many are the vaccines killing?’. (Note: Since this video was recorded, there has been an update on the UK Pfizer deaths and injuries. There are now 143 deaths)
This isn’t a vaccination programme. It’s genocide, supported, defended and protected by the BBC. Still, some people are happy. The UK Government is delighted. It will save £600 million in pension payments because of all the old people who’ve been murdered in the last twelve months. And the Financial Times reports that covid-19 deaths, and presumably the jab deaths, will cut £60 billion from corporate pension costs. I have no doubt that the BBC is aware of these figures. After all the Government has appointed, as the new chairman of the BBC, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker – a money man. Goldman Sachs, in my opinion, one of the most corrupt companies in the world has rightly been described as a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity. I’m guessing that the BBC might have welcomed Goebbels as their new chairman if he’d been alive.
Instead the BBC got an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who was appointed by the conservative party and who has allegedly given more than £400,000 to the conservative party. He’s being paid a huge salary and will doubtless get a peerage or a knighthood in due course.
Don’t the coincidences just keep mounting up. You couldn’t make this up. You couldn’t satirise it.
The BBC’s financial partner, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has financial links to The Guardian, and since BBC job ads often appear in The Guardian, advertising provides a constant source of new, hubristic pseudo journalists. And, of course, the Gates have a huge shareholding in the Pfizer vaccine. Oh what a simple web these conspirators have woven. Whenever the BBC is involved the stench of corruption seems to me to be nauseating.
Bill and Melinda will no doubt be delighted to hear that Pfizer expects to generate $15 billion, or a quarter of its total revenue, from sales of its experimental covid-19 jab. Moreover Pfizer say they expect there to be a long lasting need for covid-19 vaccines to combat new variants and boost waning immune responses.
As far as I know the BBC has failed to tell the public that both the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority and Public Health England have received huge sums of money from Gates.
Is there not one person at the BBC with the integrity, the wisdom, the decency, the self- respect to be ashamed that the corporation has allied itself to one of the most reviled men in modern history, and that in doing so they have betrayed themselves, their families and their viewers, listeners and readers?
Corruption, remember, is fraudulent conduct by those in power – often involving money.
If you lay down all the lies the Government has told in the last twelve months they would go round the world twice and end up on the steps outside Broadcasting House. If you give money to the BBC you are buying the bullets to kill your family. There appears to be no end to the lack of integrity at the BBC. Without talent, without honour and without self-respect – that’s the BBC in 2021.
I haven’t seen the BBC warning that the second dose of the jab may well cause worse problems than the first dose. I doubt if you have either.
Nor have I seen them warn that people who are receiving the jab are going to be in real trouble when they next come into contact with a coronavirus. There will be a problem called a cytokine storm or pathogenic priming, their immune systems will overreact and that’s likely to be when there are lots of deaths. Details can be found on my website and in the International Journal of Clinical Practice for October 2020. If there is someone at the BBC who can read they might like to take a look.
The BBC deliberately and cold-bloodedly suppresses the truth about vaccines (because the pro-vaxxers aren’t going to tell you about the dangers) and has financial links with people promoting vaccines.
Is that corruption?
The BBC derides the truth-tellers as conspiracy theorists.
But the BBC itself is now part of a huge conspiracy and a conspiracy which is practice – not theory. Hundreds of BBC staff are involved in a self-aggrandising, self-enriching betrayal of duty. Every truly independent scientist knows that the covid jabs are experimental and hugely dangerous.
Lord Haw Haw and Tokyo Rose would be welcomed into the bosom of the BBC.
The sooner we get rid of this wretched, treacherous organisation the safer and healthier we will all be.
We can easily judge if the BBC has a shred of honesty left. Here is a simple challenge, a chance for the BBC to redeem itself and show that it is prepared to allow debate of the most important health issue in modern times.
I am prepared to debate the fraud, and the vaccination programme, with any combination of Dr Whitty and Dr Vallance and Mr Hancock live on BBC television. I will try to avoid mentioning that Dr Vallance has shares in his former employer vaccine manufacturer and that Dr Whitty has loose financial links with Bill Gates. I will point out that informed doctors know that the death totals for covid-19 have been grossly exaggerated. Indeed, I’m convinced that in the long run the lockdowns will kill far more people than covid-19.
I also suspect that the vaccines may eventually kill as many as covid-19 – though the vaccine deaths will be wrongly blamed on covid-19. And the side effects will be blamed on mutant strains of the virus or the so-called long covid.
One stipulation: the programme must be live.
I doubt if am alone in not trusting the BBC to edit a programme fairly and without bias. I’ll hire a couple of guys to bring a few thousand scientific papers with me as evidence.
Unlike the BBC which too often relies on a quote from an isolated government approved scientist, I prefer to use scientific papers from reputable journals.
Why should they debate with me? Well, I’m medically qualified and I’ve been writing about medicine and drug companies and vaccines for over 50 years. In 1975 my book, The Medicine Men exposed the way the drug industry had bought control of the medical establishment. Ironically, the BBC made a film about that book.
Today, my books sell around the world and have been bestsellers for years. This is no time for false modesty – I have for many years been the world’s leading medical author. My campaigning has in the past changed government policy.
If the BBC prefers someone else for the live debate then that’s absolutely fine with me. I have, in the past, presented scores of programmes for the BBC but I have now absolutely no personal interest in ever going into a BBC studio again.
If the BBC is to salvage anything from its shattered reputation it has to arrange a debate – otherwise everyone will know that what they have long suspected is true: the BBC is a propaganda machine which is paid for by the British public but which has sold its allegiance to the Government and, quite possibly, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and their massive commercial interest in vaccines. The BBC gleefully defends the medically and scientifically indefensible – preferring, it seems to me, to deceive rather than inform.
They know as well as I do that the debate I have proposed would produce huge ratings. It’s the debate people want to see.
But I doubt if the BBC, or indeed Whitty, Vallance or Hancock, will accept my challenge. It is no idle boast when I say that they are rightly afraid that I will destroy all their arguments and expose the fraud. I have facts and scientific truths on my side.
If they had confidence they would jump at the chance to debate with me but they know they’ll lose and so they’ll ignore the challenge.
However, if they don’t accept the challenge everyone in Britain will know the truth: the BBC and the Government are frightened that their paper thin deceits will not stand up to scrutiny.
What reason, other than cowardice, could there possibly be for rejecting the debate?
Finally, I leave you with these thoughts.
First, through ignorance or a lack of integrity the BBC has suppressed the truth, and silenced and sneered at the truth-tellers. The only things it seems to do well these days is, it seems to me, to lie and cheat.
Second, the Government’s programme has undeniably resulted in huge numbers of deaths from the lockdowns and from the jabs. There will be thousands more deaths from these indefensible policies.
I believe the BBC staff who are guilty of suppressing the truth are responsible for many of these deaths.
Third, of course, the BBC has close links to vaccine company investors.
Remember, John Reith, the BBC’s first director general originally demanded that the BBC inform and educate – as well as entertain.
Current BBC staff have failed miserably to inform and educate or to represent the huge part of the country which has serious doubts about government policies. The BBC has become a crude propaganda machine, with a vast army of squalid and overpaid pseudo journalists spewing out a never ending stream of lies, deceptions and half-truths and sneering at passionate, caring health practitioners who have spoken out, not for money or prestige, but because they believe it is their duty to share the truth even when doing so costs them dearly – leaving their reputations dishonestly trashed by hundreds of scummy, crooked pseudo-journalists.
It has been well-known for years that the BBC is unreliable and dishonest. The BBC’s biased support of the EU and opposition to Brexit was outrageous. But the BBC’s role as a ruthless propaganda tool, fear creator and disinformation medium has become embarrassingly apparent in recent months. When the BBC opens its mouth it’s the voice of Bill Gates which we hear.
We should work together to demand that the BBC licence fee is stopped. Meanwhile, we should all look for legal ways to stop paying it.
As I have shown in precise detail in previous videos there is no doubt whatsoever that the BBC is our mortal enemy.
Don’t watch any of their programmes. Don’t listen to any of their lies. Shun anyone who works there. The BBC has chosen to side with the enemy of the people, to suppress the truth and to distort the news. Ignore their wretched website. If you care about the truth, and about the lives of those around you, then you must fight to see the BBC abolished. The BBC today seems to me to be all about money and power – and oppressing and deceiving the licence fee payers. The BBC, seems to me to specialise in disinformation.
Meanwhile, ask the BBC why they won’t organise the debate I’ve suggested. And avoid paying the BBC licence fee – legally, of course. Share this video with everyone you know wherever in the world they may live. Warn them about the BBC – in my view it is the world’s most scurrilous, most dishonourable media organisation.
Vernon Coleman’s bestselling medical books include `Coleman’s Laws’, `Bodypower’ and `How to stop your doctor killing you’. These are all available on Amazon as paperbacks and eBooks.
Copyright Vernon Coleman February 12th 2021
The Great Vaccine Scam
By Vasko Kohlmayer | Lew Rockwell | February 13, 2021
“South Africa suspends Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine rollout after researchers report minimal protection against variant” announces the headline of a recent Washington Post report.
The article’s opening sentence reads as follows:
“South Africa will suspend use of the coronavirus vaccine being developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca after researchers found that it provided ‘minimal protection’ against mild to moderate coronavirus infections caused by the new variant first detected in that country.”
The information conveyed by the above exposes the gargantuan fraud that has been perpetrated upon humanity in the name of COVID-19.
Even though many people will be deeply disappointed and disheartened by what happened in South Africa, the news should not have come as a surprise to anyone, since the vaccine failure was completely predictable and inevitable.
Here is the truth: It is not possible to devise an effective vaccine for the type of virus that causes COVID-19. Why? For the very reason that AstraZeneca’s vaccine has failed in South Africa and will fail elsewhere as well.
Coronavirus is a type of virus that mutates widely and because of that it is impossible to come up with a vaccination protocol that would stop its spread.
Every bona fide virologist knows this. And yet the public has not been advised of this. Quite to the contrary, this crucial information has been actively suppressed.
Rather than being told the truth, we were commanded to hunker down in lengthy lockdowns and ordered to wait until the vaccine was found. Once that happened, they told us, we would be able to prevail over the virus and get our lives back. Until quite recently, this was the official narrative propagated by the governing elites around the world.
Consequently, billions of people pinned their hopes on the vaccine and desperately waited for its deliverance. At the same time, governments channeled billions of dollars into the development of these fake concoctions and a number of pharma executives and scientists became billionaires on the news of “progress” and “successful” trials.
While some were getting fabulously wealthy, the frightened and gullible public was kept in the dark about the racket. Sadly, most people apparently lack the will and independence of mind to go beyond the propaganda and do their own research. It does not help, of course, that the establishment has done its best to censor and suppress the information that goes against its official narrative.
The first news that showed that all was not well came when the Chinese vaccine Sinovac was found to be only fifty percent effective in Brazil. Bad as it was, we can be sure that even the paltry fifty percent figure was tweaked upwards by a joint effort of the Brazilian authorities who purchased the vaccine and the vaccine’s Chinese manufacturer. They lied because it is in the interest of both parties to do so. The government authorities needed to cover for their incompetence of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a bad product while the manufacturer wants to protect his profits. The likely truth is that the Chinese vaccine is for all practical purposes useless and possibly dangerous due to potential side effects for which it has not been adequately tested in the extremely short time frame in which it was developed.
Tellingly, the Chinese manufacturer of the shoddy Sinovac vaccine initially claimed an effectiveness of nearly one hundred percent. Their claims were in line with those of western manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines. We can be sure – given the mutating nature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus – that the vaccines developed by western pharma companies are equally as useless as that of their Chinese counterpart. We have already seen clear evidence of it from South Africa. In the aforementioned piece by the Washington Post we learn that when in South Africa the new “variant became dominant in the country in November, the vaccine [by Oxford-AstraZeneca] provided no significant protection against illness…” South African researchers estimated that the effectiveness of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is ten percent.
Think about it: The vaccine is ten percent effective! And this likely is still an exaggeration as all the parties involved try to save face.
But even at ten percent the vaccine would be worse than useless, because while it offers virtually no protection it potentially carries serious side effects for which it has not been adequately tested.
Because of the potential dangers inherent in this kind of medical product, it normally takes around six years to develop a vaccine that ban be considered reasonably safe. According to Business Insider “vaccines often take years, and sometimes even decades, to develop, test, and approve for public use.”
It was only in April of last year that CNN claimed that a year and a half timeframe of producing a vaccine would raise safety concerns:
“Eighteen months might sound like a long time, but in vaccine years, it’s a blink. That’s the long end of the Trump administration’s time window for developing a coronavirus vaccine, and some leaders in the field say this is too fast – and could come at the expense of safety.”
This was one of those rare occasions on which CNN said something that was actually true. The piece goes on to quote real experts in the field like Dr. Peter Hotez, an expert on infectious disease and vaccine development at Baylor College of Medicine who said: “Tony Fauci is saying a year to 18 months – I think that’s optimistic. Maybe if all the stars align, but probably longer.”
Dr. Paul Offit, the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, had this to say: “When Dr. Fauci said 12 to 18 months, I thought that was ridiculously optimistic. And I’m sure he did, too.”
To rush, therefore, COVID vaccines on the market after mere nine months of development is beyond irresponsible. To do this with “vaccines” that their manufacturers know cannot be ultimately effective is outright criminal.
Being part of the establishment, the vaccines manufacturers will not get called out and punished for their misdeeds. Their face (and their business model) will be saved. The data showing the ineffectiveness of their products will be tweaked and shown in the best light possible. They will then offer to devise boosters for different variants, which will be as ineffective in stopping COVID-19 as their original vaccine was. But never mind this: it will be excellent for their business, since each new variant represents more than seven billion potential customers. Western pharma conglomerates are known to be among the greatest scam artists within the system, and they will exploit the COVID scam to line their pockets in a big way.
While the effectiveness of the vaccines to protect against COVID is questionable at best, there is no doubt that they have already produced some serious side effects. One of these side effects happens to be death. In a number of countries hundreds of elderly people died after having received their shots. This side effect became so troublesome that some governments – Norway, for instance – issued new advisories and guidelines concerning vaccinations for older individuals. They did this even though the elderly were initially the first group targeted for this treatment. But rather then benefiting from it, many seniors were killed by the very thing they were told would protect their lives.
Given that it was never possible to stop a highly mutating virus by vaccination – which was something that has been well known – the whole COVID vaccine enterprise was fraud from the beginning and a dangerous one at that. The best we can hope for is that that these fake vaccines being peddled by the unscrupulous governments and greedy pharma companies are ineffective. Being administered on the order of millions of doses a day, we can only pray that the potential side effects of these untested concoctions hastily cobbled together by ruthless profiteers will not produce the greatest man-made medical calamity in history.
Vasko Kohlmayer [email] was born and grew up in former communist Czechoslovakia. He is the author of The West in Crisis: Civilizations and Their Death Drives.
Copyright © Vasko Kohlmayer
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Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda
Dr. Joseph Mercola | July 9, 2022
“Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda,” is the fourth vaccine-related documentary by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. It tells the story of an intentional infertility vaccine program conducted on African women, without their knowledge or consent.
While it’s been brushed off as a loony conspiracy theory for years, there’s compelling evidence showing it did, in fact, happen, and there’s nothing to prevent it from happening again. … continue
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