Corruption « Aletho News

Update on the OPCW’s investigation of the Douma incident

Paul McKeigue, David Miller, Piers Robinson

Members of Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media

1 Summary

As we noted in April 2019, there were defects in the published interim and final Reports of the Fact-Finding Mechanism on the Douma incident that indicated that evidence had been withheld or distorted.
From comparing the original Interim Report drafted in June 2018, the modified report that was intended to be substituted for it, and the published Final Report, it is clear that this was not simply a divergence of opinions between experts. The misrepresentation of evidence in the published Final Report can reasonably be described as fraudulent. Specifically, the following points can be identified:
- Quantitative results on the levels of chlorinated organic compounds were suppressed. A false assertion about “high levels” of these compounds had been added to the modified report.
- An assessment based on the epidemiology of chlorine release incidents was omitted from the modified report and the Final Report.
- On-site assessments that the observations were incompatible with aerial delivery of the cylinders were omitted from the modified report and the Final Report.
- The testimony of opposition-linked witnesses interviewed in Turkey was rewritten in the Final Report so as to obscure inconsistencies about the distribution of bodies at Location 2 that would have cast doubt on the reliability of their testimony.
- The result of the consultation with medical experts in June 2018, indicating that the victims had not been killed by chlorine, was suppressed and omitted from the timeline of the investigation published in the Final Report.
- The internal engineering assessment was excluded from the published Final Report.
- In violation of Article VIII of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Chief of Cabinet allowed US officials to attempt to influence the inspectors in July 2018.
The evidence of fraud in the published report of the Douma investigation means that all other published reports from FFM Team Alpha, including the FFM reports on the alleged chlorine attacks in 2015 and the alleged sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun in 2017, must also be disregarded as unreliable and possibly fraudulent.
The OPCW’s report on 6 February 2020 of what was purported to be an investigation into the leak of the engineering assessment to the Working Group was used instead to smear two of the organization’s most experienced and highly-rated inspectors with false and misleading statements.
It is now clear that the Director-General’s statements on 28 May and 6 June 2019 that the FFM had “examined, weighed and deliberated”, “considered” and “analysed” the engineering assessment were unequivocally false: the Team Leader and Head of the FFM had refused to accept the document in February 2019.
The Douma investigation has been passed to the Identification and Inspection Team (IIT). A brief examination of the careers of the investigators and analysts appointed to the IIT shows that all four of them have serious conflicts of interest. This calls into question their ability to resist pressure to come up with the answers that the influential delegations of the US, UK and France want.

2 Irregularities in the published reports of the Fact-Finding Mechanism

In a briefing note posted on 11 April 2019, we drew attention to defects in the published FFM reports that indicated, to anyone who examined these reports closely, that evidence had been withheld or distorted. We review this material briefly before examining what new information has been provided by documents and briefings released from May 2019 onwards.

2.1 No comparison with epidemiology or toxicology of chlorine release incidents

The reports did not assess whether the alleged chemical attack was consistent with the epidemiology of chlorine release incidents, which typically have low case fatality rate.

The analysis of the images of victims stated that “this type of rapid collapse is indicative of an agent capable of quickly killing or immobilising” but did not explain how this opinion was compatible with release of chlorine from an intact gas cylinder on the balcony, or with the presence of foamy pulmonary edema that would take time to develop.

2.2 Withholding of quantitative results of chemical analyses

Quantitative results of lab analyses were withheld. The lack of concordance between labs suggested that chlorinated organic compounds were present only at trace levels, close to the lower limit of detection.

The reports did not make clear that trace levels of these compounds are ubiquitous in environments where industrial or household products are present.

The Final Report emphasized correctly that testing for exposure to chlorine depends on comparison with control samples, but inexplicably did not report results for the control samples that were taken.

Although molecular chlorine is not naturally present in the environment, chloride ions and many chlorinated organic derivatives exist in the natural background. For that reason it was important to gather control samples, wherever feasible, at locations not expected to have been exposed to chlorine gas.

In Table A9.3 two specimens are described as control samples:

Control sample: debris 20 meters west of the building entry (level 0): 2018.04.21_1909_04

Concrete dust scraping at pillar 51: 2018.05.01_1779_05

From the Evidence Reference Numbers listed in Table A5.1 we can deduce that these two control samples relate to Location 2 (numbers prefixed 2018.04.21_1909) and the hospital (numbers prefixed 2018.05.01 1779).

Results for these samples are not given.

This should have raised questions about the conduct of the investigation. If rigorous procedures had been followed, with control samples included in the same batches as putatively exposed samples and laboratory staff blinded to exposure status, the omission of control samples from analysis or reporting could only have been deliberate.

We emphasize that the issue here is not whether chlorine was released, but that the withholding of quantitative results and failure to report results on control samples is strong evidence of scientific misconduct.

2.3 Delay in initiating engineering / ballistics studies, inadequate reporting

Three engineering/ballistics consultations are mentioned in the final report: but the figures show screenshots from what appears to be only a single study using a software package for finite-element analysis, These are barely legible screenshots, not of the professional standard one would expect from experts preparing a report for an international agency. Figures 10 and A7.6 show a simulation of the impact at Location 4 with a cylinder without harness or valve, though the cylinder found on the bed had a harness and an intact valve. The barely legible graphs based on the simulation assume improbably low drop heights for a helicopter flying over defended territory. Figure 12 shows the cylinder at Location 4 bouncing off the floor at 2 m/s, which would not have allowed it to reach the bed more than 3 metres away.

There was no explanation for why, if the FFM had considered it necessary to obtain expert opinions on the possible trajectories of the cylinders found at Locations 2 and 4, they did not request on-site examinations while the FFM was deployed in Damascus in April/May, rather than six months later when inspection of the sites and cylinders was no longer possible.

2.4 Ignoring evidence of staging in images uploaded by opposition-linked media

An analysis of images uploaded on the night of 7 April showed that bodies had been rearranged between photo sessions: infants first shown separated from adults were subsequently placed on the bodies of adult women. The opposition cameramen attempted for the first few days to represent the cylinder at Location 4 as the cause of the deaths at Location 2.

2.5 Blending of witness interviews and exclusion of testimony that the hospital scene had been staged

Information obtained from interviews was summarized in the Final Report without any distinction between information obtained from witnesses in Damascus and those interviewed in Turkey (who would have been opposition supporters who had relocated to Idlib under the evacuation agreement), and without any effort to establish whether the presence of each witness at the scene was corroborated by other evidence. The report was written to make it appear as if the witnesses who reported that the hospital dousing scene had been staged were never formally interviewed by the FFM, downgrading their testimony to “other open-source video material”.

2.6 Conduct of the investigation

The Team Leader had left Damascus for unexplained “information gathering activities” in Turkey three days after arriving, before on-site inspections had begun. All evidence other than the lab results was withheld from the Interim Report released in July 2018, even though most of the evidence – witness interviews, one-site assessment of the cylinder and craters, analysis of uploaded images of victims – had already been collected. There was an unexplained delay in the investigation between June and September 2018. Both the interim and final reports were unsigned, though previous FFM reports had been signed by the Team Leader.

In summary, it was possible by April 2019 for anyone with a scientific grounding who read the published reports closely to infer, as we did, that something was wrong with the published reports of the FFM on the Douma incident. We listed most of the points above in our briefing note posted in April 2018, but missed one of the most interesting clues: that results on control samples were not reported even though these samples had been collected. From [reports] that a Russian proposal for all members of the FFM team to give a briefing on the Final Report had been voted down by the OPCW Executive Council on 14 March 2019, it was evident that there was dissent among members of the FFM team.

3 What we now know about misconduct in the Douma investigation

During 2019 more information about the Douma investigation reached the public domain. This began with the release of the engineering assessment in May 2019, continued with the briefing of a panel convened by the Courage Foundation in October 2019 and the release of more internal documents including the original draft of the interim report in December 2019, and finally the release of a written statement provided to the UN Security Council.

3.1 Attempt to substitute a modified report for the original interim report

We now know that the published Interim Report, which reported only lab results, was the result of a stand-off between the Team Leader Sami Barrek and the other inspectors. In June 2019 a secretly-prepared modified report had been substituted for the original interim report.

This original interim report had stated that “Although the cylinders might have been the sources of the suspected chemical release, there is insufficient evidence to affirm this”. The modified report asserted instead that there was “sufficient evidence at this time to determine that chlorine, or another reactive chlorine-containing chemical, was likely released from cylinders.” The section on the epidemiology of chlorine release incidents in the original interim report, which had noted that in such incidents most of those exposed manage to escape, was omitted from the modified report.

The original interim report had noted that preliminary observations on the cylinders and the impact sites raised doubts about the story that the cylinders had been dropped from the air:

The FFM team is unable to provide satisfactory explanations for the relatively moderate damage to the cylinders allegedly dropped from an unknown height, compared to the destruction caused to the rebar-reinforced concrete roofs. In the case of Location 4, how the cylinder ended up on the bed, given the point at which it allegedly penetrated the room, remains unclear. The team considers that further studies by specialists in metallurgy and structural engineering or mechanics are required to provide an authoritative assessment of the team’s observations.

In the modified report this passage was removed, and the question of “how the cylinder ended up on the bed” at Location 4 was replaced by assessing “the trajectory of the cylinder”, implicitly excluding the possibility of manual placement.

The team considers that further analysis would need to be conducted by suitable experts, possibly in metallurgy and structural or mechanical engineering, to provide an assessment of the trajectory of the cylinder, in addition to the damage caused to the bed, the roof and the cylinder itself.

3.2 Suppression of quantitative lab results

The modified report asserted that “high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives” were present in organic samples. These chlorinated organic compounds were present mostly at levels of only a few parts per billion, not above the background levels that would be expected in an environment where industrial products were present. The quantitative results were withheld from the inspectors who had deployed to Damascus. The inspectors protested about the withholding of quantitative results, and were assured that they would be included in the interim report, only to find that they were withheld from the published version.

3.3 Suppression of inconsistencies in the eyewitness testimony

The original interim report clearly separated the eyewitness accounts obtained in Damascus from those obtained in Turkey (referred to as “Country X”). It also noted inconsistencies between the statements of witnesses that raised questions about their credibility:

There were variations (see table and footnotes below) in the numbers of bodies and their distribution throughout Location 2 as observed in video footage and photos, compared to the numbers provided by various witnesses who were interviewed. According to statements from witnesses, “many people they presumed dead, were lying on the floor of the basement”. The FFM did not obtain any video footage or photos of dead casualties lying in the basement of Location 2 or being removed from there.

The table showed that of seven witnesses who reported the distribution of bodies at Location 2, two reported bodies in basement only, one reported bodies at ground level and above only, and four reported bodies both in basement and above ground level. The videos had not shown any bodies in the basement.

3.4 Suppression of the consultation with medical experts in June 2018

It is now clear that the vague and contradictory account of expert opinions about the cause of death of the victims in the Final Report is explained by suppression of the consultation with medical experts that took place on 6 June 2018 at the Bundeswehr Research Institute for Protective Technologies and NBC Protection (WIS) in Munster. The “chief expert” can be identified as Colonel Dr Franz Worek, the leading medical expert on chemical defence in the Bundeswehr.

His argument, reconstructed from the original interim report written in June 2018 and the minutes written two months later, was as follows:

Pulmonary edema is a delayed effect of “choking agents” such as chlorine which cause acute inhalation injury. If the victims of exposure to such an agent had had lived long enough for their airways to be filled with foamy edema fluid, they would have been able to escape and would not have collapsed “gathered in piles” on the spot.
Massive exposure to chlorine can cause laryngospasm leading to immediate asphyxiation, but in this situation there would not be time for foamy pulmonary edema to develop
Cholinesterase inhibitors (nerve agents) [or opiates, we would add] could have caused instant collapse and also rapid onset of pulmonary edema, but known agents were ruled out by the negative lab tests.

The OPCW participants agreed that the conclusions were clear: whatever killed the victims, it was not chlorine. This consultation does not appear in the timeline of the final Report of the Fact-Finding Mission: the first toxicology consultations are dated to September 2018.

3.5 Concealing the date and rationale for the decision not to proceed with exhumations

The original interim report recorded that plans for exhumations were halted when the first lab results were received on 22 May 2018:

When the analytical results of the first round of environmental and biological samples were received and no nerve agents or their degradation products were identified in either environmental or biological samples, the plans for exhumations were halted as the risk of not finding substantive evidence of the alleged attack was now considered high and proceeding with the exhumations presented a risk to benefit ratio that was no longer acceptable.

The Interim Report released on 6 July 2018 stated that the intention to exhume bodies from mass graves was “communicated to the Syrian Arab Republic in Note Verbale NV/ODG/214827/18” without indicating that plans for exhumation had been halted two months earlier. The Final Report omits the date and the rationale for the decision not to proceed with exhumations, and insinuates that the Syrian Arab Republic was responsible for delaying exhumations until they would no longer be informative:

The Syrian Arab Republic replied in Note Verbale No. 45 on 4 May 2018 and enumerated the conditions to be met in order to conduct the exhumation. With due consideration of the time elapsed since the alleged incident, the possibility was eventually not explored any further.

3.6 Attempt by US officials to influence the inspectors

In the first week of July 2018 all FFM team members were summoned by the Chief of Cabinet, Robert Fairweather, to a meeting with three US officials who asserted that their findings proved that there had been a chlorine attack. This attempt to influence the inspectors violated Article VIII Part D of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which stipulates that:

In the performance of their duties, the Director-General, the inspectors and the other members of the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any Government or from any other source external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any action that might reflect on their positions as international officers responsible only to the Conference and the Executive Council.

Each State Party shall respect the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Director-General, the inspectors and the other members of the staff and not seek to influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities.

3.7 Unreviewed report prepared by unknown authors presented as “the Report of the Fact-Finding Mechanism”

FFM team members who had deployed to Douma were excluded from preparation of the final report, and were not even kept informed of its status or expected date of publication. No technical peer review of the final report was conducted. In particular the only organic chemist and the only chemical engineer on the team were excluded from drafting and reviewing the report. A briefing to States Parties was given on 5 March 2019 by Boban Cekovic, a former inspector who could not have contributed to the investigation before December 2018 when he rejoined the OPCW.

3.8 Suppression of the engineering assessment

It is now clear that the absence of an on-site engineering opinion in the Final Report is explained by deliberate suppression. Ian Henderson had been tasked with the Location and Munition (cylinder) study in the work plan issued by the Team Leader on 26 June 2018. He was excluded from external consultations held later that year. The Team Leader and the FFM Leader refused to accept Henderson’s engineering report on 26 February 2019. The Chief of Cabinet, Sebastien Braha, attempted to have all copies of the Engineering Assessment destroyed and also ordered that the log of the Document Registration Archive be altered to erase “all traces, if any, of [the document’s] delivery/storage/whatever in DRA”.

We have noted previously that the OPCW has come up with three contradictory explanations of why Ian Henderson’s Engineering Assessment was excluded from the Final Report of the FFM:

1E1: the document was “not part of any of the material produced by the FFM”.
2E2: the document was “analysed, it was part of the investigation” but rebutted by the reports of “three external experts commissioned by the FFM”.
3E3: the document “pointed at possible attribution which is outside of the mandate of the FFM” and Henderson was therefore advised to submit his assessment to the IIT.

Arias has on two occasions asserted that the Engineering Assessment was considered by the FFM. In a briefing on 28 May 2019 he stated that:

The document produced by this staff member pointed at possible attribution, which is outside of the mandate of the FFM with regard to the formulation of its findings. Therefore, I instructed that, beyond the copy that would exclusively be kept by the FFM, the staff member be advised to submit his assessment to the IIT, which he did, so that this document could later be used by the IIT. As is the case with all FFM investigations, the Secretariat encourages serious and professional debates within, so all views, analysis, information and opinions are considered. This is what the FFM did with the information included in the publicly disclosed document [the Engineering Assessment]; all available information was examined, weighed and deliberated.

In a panel discussion on 6 June 2019 Arias stated that

This information [the Engineering Assessment] was considered and it was analysed, it was part of the investigation and this information has already been given to the Investigation and Identification Team in charge of attributing responsibilities because this information you referred to is more focussing, is more targeted to to establish responsibility than to focus to the facts.

These statements by Arias are unequivocally false. Henderson’s statement to the UN Security Council makes clear that his Engineering Assessment was never considered by the FFM: the Team Leader and the head of the FFM had refused to accept it.

In Arias’s latest briefing, his widely ridiculed explanation 3E3 that the Engineering Assessment had been excluded from the FFM report because it “pointed at possible attribution” which was “outside the mandate of the FFM” was abandoned. Instead he reverted to explanation 1E1:

Inspector A’s assessment purports to be an official OPCW FFM report on the Douma incident. Instead it is a personal document created with incomplete information and without authorisation.

He conceded that “In the interest of transparency and completeness, Inspector A’s assessment has been transmitted to the IIT and will be examined by it in due course.”

3.9 The three external engineering/ballistics consultancies supposedly obtained by the FFM

The Final Report, without mentioning that an internal engineering assessment had been excluded, stated that engineering/ballistics assessments had been obtained from three external experts, and described the results of the assessments of the cylinder at Location 4 as follows:

The results of these assessments indicated that the shape of the aperture produced in the modulation matched the shape and damage observed by the team. The assessments further indicated that, after passing through the ceiling and impacting the floor at lower speed, the cylinder continued altered trajectory, until reaching the position in which it was found.

In the light of other irregularities in the Final Report, we may reasonably be suspicious of the Final Report’s assertion that reports from three independent experts supported the explanation that the cylinders at Locations 2 and 4 reached their positions as a result of being dropped from the air.

If these three assessments exist, and their conclusions were as described in the Final Report, it should have been straightforward to document this. We have been informed that one report was obtained from a European institute with expertise in impact engineering, and that this group assessed that it was “very unlikely” that the cylinder at Location 4 had reached its position as a result of being dropped from the sky.

At a press conference in The Hague on 12 July 2019, Alexander Shulgin, the Russian envoy to the OPCW, stated that:

We would like to review the reports of the three independent experts that made a conclusion that these canisters were dropped from high altitude. You are free not to name them. We already know the name of one of the experts and we highly doubt that they are indeed unbiased.

In an interview in November 2019, Shulgin expressed doubts about the existence of three reports: “The refusal of the Technical Secretariat to unveil the reports of these anonymous outside experts makes us question whether these reports ever existed.” He added that the expert whose name he knows “has a rather dubious reputation in terms of his impartiality, and he is anything but a specialist in ballistics”.

4 The OPCW’s investigation into “Possible Breaches of Confidentiality”

This investigation was originally set up to investigate the leak of the Engineering Assessment to the Working Group in May 2019. However the report of the investigation, the briefing from the Director-General, Fernando Arias, and the accompanying press release were used instead to smear two of the organization’s most experienced and highly-rated inspectors.

The smears include unequivocally false statements – for instance that Inspector A “was not a member of the FFM” – and misleading statements whose only purpose is to denigrate: for instance that Inspectors A and B were “rehired at a lower grade” without explaining that the P-5 grade had been merged with the P-4 grade.

One notably false assertion is that “The majority of the FFM’s work occurred after Inspector B’s separation, and during the last seven months of the FFM’s investigation (August 2018 through February 2019).”

The timeline in the published report shows that the additional information gathered during this period consisted only of interviews with an additional five witnesses in Turkey (October 2018), toxicology consultations (September-October 2018), engineering/ballistics reports purportedly obtained from three external experts (October-December 2018), and lab analyses of a second batch of samples (received February 2019).

Comparison of the original interim report with the Final Report shows that most of the text and figures in the Final Report had already been prepared by June 2018. The only substantive new material that appears in the Final Report consists of figures generated from one of these engineering consultations.

The delay from June 2018 to September 2018 in resuming the investigation is explicable by the necessity to wait until Inspector B had left the organization at the end of his contract.

The OPCW management’s denunciation of Inspectors A and B for “unauthorised disclosure of highly protected information to individuals who did not have a need to know such information.” is unintentionally revealing.

This makes clear that the preparation of the report of the FFM was organized like a covert operation, with information shared on the basis of “need to know”, rather than as a scientific investigation in which material is shared for internal review before submission for external peer review.

There was no basis for the engineering analysis of the Douma cylinders to be classified as “highly protected information”: it did not contain personal data, nor did it include confidential information provided by a State Party.

Syrian officials had told the inspectors who deployed to investigate the Douma incident that the information they gathered was not confidential as far as the Syrian Arab Republic was concerned.

The Verification Annex Part II of the Chemical Weapons Convention specifies in the section on reports that “Differing observations made by inspectors may be attached to the report” and that “The provisions of this Part shall apply to all inspections conducted pursuant to this Convention”. In accordance with this provision, the template for reporting “Other Chemical Production Facility” inspections includes a section for “Differing observations made by inspectors”, implying that the report is not complete unless this section is filled in.

This clause can thus be read as guaranteeing a right to attach “differing observations” that has been denied to inspectors in the Fact-Finding Mission.

5 The Investigation and Identification Team (IIT)

The remit “to identify the perpetrators of the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic”, adopted by the Conference of the States Parties on 27 June 2018 was assigned to an Investigation and Identification Team (IIT). On 28 June 2019 the IIT published a list of nine incidents, including the Douma incident, on which it would focus its investigative work:

Three alleged chlorine attacks in 2014: Al-Tamanah 12 April, Kafr-Zita 18 April, Al-Tamanah 18 April examined in the Third Report of the FFM then led by Malik Ellahi.
An alleged attack in Marea on 1 September 2015, examined in an FFM report that confirmed that victims had been exposed to sulfur mustard. This incident has been widely attributed to ISIS .
Two alleged chemical attacks in Ltamenah on 24 and 25 March 2017, examined in the Report on Alleged incidents in Ltamenah, released 13 June 2018. This unsigned report concluded that sarin on 24 March and chlorine on 25 March were “very likely used”.
An alleged chemical attack in Ltamenah on 30 March 2017, examined in a separate report
An alleged chemcial attack in Saraqib on 4 February 2018. An unsigned report concluded chlorine was “likely used”, but was unable to explain the presence of sarin breakdown products in the environment and in wipes from the chlorine cylinder.
The Douma incident of 7 April 2018.

In the light of the evidence of fraud in FFM Team Alpha’s report on the Douma incident, all earlier reports from this team, including their reports on the incidents above, should now be considered unreliable. In an earlier briefing note we noted irregularities in the Fact-Finding Mission’s investigations of these earlier incidents.

5.1 Alleged chlorine attacks in 2014

We noted that information for the FFM’s investigation of the alleged chlorine attacks in April to May 2014 was provided by the CBRN Task Force set up by Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, who revealed also that during 2013 he had been undertaking covert activities for an agency that can only have been MI6.

Videos of an alleged impact site in Talmenes, provided by de Bretton-Gordon to the FFM, were later examined for the Joint Investigative Mechanism by a forensic expert, who identified “inconsistencies” that were unmistakable evidence of staging. This calls into question all other evidence from the CBRN Task Force.

5.2 Alleged chemical attacks in Ltamenah in 2017 and Saraqib in 2018

We discussed the anomalous findings of the FFM report on the alleged incident in Ltamenah on 24 March 2017, from which there were no contemporaneous reports but samples purportedly recovered from the alleged impact site after a long delay were reported to contain intact sarin.

Another commentator has noted anomalies in the published report of the FFM on the alleged incident in Ltamenah on 30 March 2017: no explanation was given for the detection of sarin in samples of gravel provided by the White Helmets that were purportedly recovered from a “crater” containing no munition fragments some 200 metres south of the alleged impact point.

In the report on the alleged incident in Saraqib on 4 February 2018, where the alleged munition was a chlorine cylinder and the FFM determined that “chlorine, released from cylinders through mechanical impact, was likely used as a chemical weapon”, no explanation was given for the positive tests for sarin breakdown products in environmental samples from this cylinder.

5.3 Management and staffing of the IIT

As we have noted previously, the director, Santiago Oñate, is employed as a consultant and cannot be a line manager. This implies that the staff of the IIT report to the Chief of Cabinet.

For reports of investigations to be credible, a requirement in science and in legal proceedings is that the names of the investigators are disclosed so that possible conflicts of interest can be examined and so that these investigators have to put their reputations on the line as guarantors of the report that bears their names.

The names of the two investigators and two analysts hired for the IIT have not been publicly disclosed. A brief examination of their careers shows that all four of them have serious conflicts of interest.

Of the two investigators, one is an employee of the Canadian security service and foreign ministry, and the other is an employee of the Netherlands Ministry of Justice. Of the two analysts, one is a former NATO intelligence officer and the other is the spouse of a consultant to the Netherlands Ministry of the Interior.

In noting these conflicts of interest we are not casting doubt on the personal integrity of these individuals, but we are calling into question whether the IIT can produce an impartial report if – as is to be expected – its team is under pressure to come up with a result that will vindicate the governments of France, UK and the US.

It has been reported to us that other individuals, whose independence is even more doubtful, have been brought in to help prepare the report.

OPCW staff members who have information about misconduct or fraud in investigations of alleged chemical attacks are welcome to contact us. For those who are under pressure to collude with or cover up such misconduct, we can arrange expert legal advice. As always, we guarantee to protect the identities of our sources. Emails from a ProtonMail address to wgspm@protonmail.com are secure.

March 13, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | OPCW | Leave a comment

Fourth OPCW whistleblower: Staff ‘frightened into silence’, watchdog brought into ‘shameful disrepute’ over Douma probe

RT | March 13, 2020

A fourth whistleblower has come forward to defend two senior OPCW inspectors who revealed the watchdog tried to cover up evidence in the Douma chemical weapons probe, saying that other employees were “frightened into silence.”

In a statement to the Grayzone, the latest whistleblower said they were “horrified” but “unsurprised” by recent events within the organization, describing the “mistreatment” of “two highly regarded and accomplished professionals” as “abhorrent.”

The employee wrote that he is “one of many who were stunned and frightened into silence by the reality how the organization operates,” and that the “threat of personal harm” to those who speak out is “not an illusion.”

The fourth whistleblower emerged after the OPCW leadership attempted to smear and discredit veteran inspector Ian Henderson and an individual known as ‘Alex’ who challenged the organization’s narrative on the alleged Syrian government attack on Douma in 2018. A third whistleblower has also previously defended the integrity of the first two who spoke out and expressed concern for the safety and security of those who dissent from the official narrative.

The Grayzone said it had independently verified the identity of the fourth whistleblower and their position at the OPCW, but granted them anonymity “to protect them from potential retaliation.”

Last week, Henderson and ‘Alex’ both wrote to OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias, accusing the organization of trying to “smear” their reputations and questioning why two top inspectors with “impeccable records” would suddenly “go rogue.” The letters followed an effort by the chemical weapons watchdog to discredit them, rubbish their serious concerns, and frame them merely as two disgruntled former employees.

“I fully support their endeavors, in that it is for the greater good and not for personal gain or in the name of any political agenda,” the fourth whistleblower wrote, adding that the inspectors are “trying to protect the integrity of the organization which has been hijacked and brought into shameful disrepute.”

After a detailed study, Henderson, who led the probe on the ground in Douma, concluded that gas cylinders found at the scene had likely been manually placed, which suggests the attack may have been a false flag staged by anti-government militants. The incident, however, was swiftly used to justify US, UK and French airstrikes on Syria before OPCW investigators had even arrived at the scene.

Yet, the OPCW disregarded Henderson’s evidence without explanation and in its official report implied that the gas cylinders were dropped by Syrian military planes – allegedly after “unacceptable pressure” was applied by the US government.

March 13, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | OPCW, United States | Leave a comment

Call for retraction of EU-funded G-TwYST study on GM maize

Study claiming no adverse effects from a GM maize is unreliable, writes Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini in a new peer-reviewed analysis

Report by Claire Robinson | GM Watch | March 7, 2020

Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen has published a peer-reviewed paper criticising the EU-funded 2-year feeding study on GM maize that claimed to show no adverse effects from the GM diet.

The EU-funded study was published in 2019 by Pablo Steinberg and colleagues and reported the results of the 2-year rat feeding study, called G-TwYST, on a GM Roundup-tolerant maize, NK603. The published paper claimed that there were “no adverse effects” related to the feeding of the GM maize cultivated with or without Roundup spraying and that no further long-term studies with GMOs were justified.

This was in spite of the fact that the male rats in this study that were fed NK603 maize sprayed with Roundup had a significantly increased mortality rate compared with controls. The main cause of death was pituitary tumours, followed by kidney disease.

The Steinberg study was carried out to follow up the study led by Prof Séralini, which was initially published in 2012. The Séralini study had found serious adverse effects in rats fed NK603 maize and very low doses of Roundup fed both separately and together with the maize. Effects in most treatment groups strongly paralleled the findings of Steinberg’s team, including severe kidney disease and increased mortality. The pituitary gland was the second most tumour-affected organ in females after the mammary gland.

Now Prof Séralini has responded to the Steinberg study in a new peer-reviewed publication. Séralini draws attention to the differences between his own team’s and Steinberg and colleagues’ study, as follows.

* Steinberg and colleagues used a rat strain that was not sensitive to tumour-causing substances:

Steinberg and colleagues used a rat strain, the Wistar, that was less sensitive to substances causing tumours than the Sprague-Dawley rat used by Séralini (and Monsanto in its shorter study). In GMWatch’s view this is only understandable on the basis that they were actively trying not to find tumorigenic and carcinogenic effects from the GM maize tested. The Sprague-Dawley rat is one of the most commonly used models for human breast cancer risk. In other words, the Sprague-Dawley rat is about as sensitive to substances causing mammary tumours as humans and thus a suitable model for a study intended to look at carcinogenic effects.

* Steinberg and colleagues didn’t study Roundup or glyphosate alone:

Long-term effects of Roundup alone at environmentally relevant levels (0.1 ppb) on a diet without pesticides were not tested by Steinberg and colleagues, unlike Séralini’s team. Séralini’s team found severe health effects from this low dose of Roundup, including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which was confirmed by separate research carried out by a different group of researchers at a later date.

* Heavy contamination of diets in Steinberg and colleagues’ study meant effects of the GMO could be masked:

Glyphosate-based residues were present at high levels in the diets in Steinberg and colleagues’ study, including the control diets, even though the aim was to study a glyphosate-tolerant GMO. The levels of glyphosate found corresponded to 300–1400 times more glyphosate than was present in the dose of Roundup found to be toxic in the Séralini study.

Steinberg and colleagues also found many other contaminants in the analysis of their feeds. The authors considered a priori that all the feed contaminations would have no effect. But Séralini comments, “This is only their subjective opinion, and many indications that we have cited can prove the contrary.” The bottom line is that the effects of such mixtures have not been properly tested for, so it is not valid to claim that they have no effect.

This heavy contamination of the feeds, Séralini suggests in the new paper, increased the background level of serious diseases in the controls, preventing many observable effects of the GMO treatment on animals. He writes that such contamination would have prompted him to abandon the experiment before it began: “Given such neglect of the contamination issue, we would have stopped there instead of drawing scientifically inadequate conclusions.”

The probable reason for the differences in contamination levels was that in the Séralini study, the crops were grown specially using organic methods. Thus pesticide residues were so low as to be undetectable – at least, by the detection methods available at the time, which were less sensitive than those available now. Therefore the researchers were able to highlight any effects from the GMO and/or the Roundup.

Given the low-to-non-existent pesticide and GMO contamination of the base and control diets in the Séralini team’s experiment, it is perhaps not surprising that they found 5–8 times fewer tumours and diseases in their control rats than did Steinberg and colleagues. Separate research led by Séralini showed that laboratory rat feeds are routinely contaminated by many pollutants, including GMOs, heavy metals, dioxins, and pesticides.

* High mortality rates in males fed GM NK603 corn dismissed by Steinberg and colleagues:

Séralini writes, “In spite of the many weaknesses of the study design, Steinberg et al. still found significant differences, most notably in male mortality, which was higher in the animals fed the GM corn sprayed with Roundup for 2 years. In addition, increased incidence of pituitary neoplasia, and disorders of the sex hormones estradiol and thyroid in females were also noticed.”

GMWatch has also drawn attention to these dramatic findings. But bafflingly, not a single mainstream media outlet has reported on them, even though they will be clearly evident to anyone who reads the full paper rather than just the abstract and the press statements put out by the G-TwYST researchers.

As Séralini points out in the new paper, these findings in Steinberg and colleagues’ experiment were the same as those observed in the earlier Séralini study. But Steinberg and colleagues dismissed these effects as “not… adverse”, due to the lack of histopathological alterations in the estrogen-sensitive tissues and organs. However, Séralini counters, “Lesions can be missed in the histopathological sectioning, and/or some functional alterations that have biological effects on the organism may not result in histopathological changes. It is not the place of Steinberg et al. to dismiss such changes based on assumptions, like EFSA or industry conclude, particularly in a research study conducted with the aim of revealing any health risk to humans.”

* Steinberg and colleagues haven’t published their histopathology slides:

This brings us to an important omission in Steinberg and colleagues’ paper. As Séralini writes, the histopathological sections are not shown even in supplementary data, and thus cannot be analysed by others to confirm or refute the interpretation of Steinberg and colleagues that there were no adverse effects from the GM maize.

Moreover, on closer examination of the Steinberg and colleagues’ publication, GMWatch has noticed that they did not conduct their histology (microscopic analysis of tissues) and histopathology (microscopic analysis of tissues with the aim of studying development of disease) blinded. They justify this highly unusual move on the grounds of saving time and money. However, the issue with this is that absence of blinding allows bias to creep in. They also state that they didn’t look at tissues from all the animals – but only the control and high dose group animals. The problem with that is that they could easily have missed important effects in the lower dose groups.

* Steinberg and colleagues dismiss differences in GM-fed animals for invalid reasons:

Steinberg and colleagues dismissed some statistically significant differences in treatment groups as not biologically relevant since they are “small” or “not dose-related”, the latter meaning there should be an effect proportional to the dose of the GMO. But as Séralini writes, “Such assertions are not scientifically justifiable. A dose-related observation begins with three doses and not two according to OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sets protocols for industry experiments conducted for regulatory purposes]. Moreover, an effect that is statistically significant should not be dismissed as ‘small’ and the effects of hormone disruptors are often not proportional to the dose.”

* Steinberg and colleagues misuse historical control data to dismiss differences:

In order to dismiss the differences in GM-fed animals, Steinberg and colleagues compare the effects observed in this experiment with the “historical control data” obtained from previous feeding trials. Séralini points out that this use of unrelated historical control data violates the Test Guidelines of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the conduct and design of chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity studies [30] — guidelines that Steinberg and colleagues cite in their paper. The OECD states, “the concurrent control group is always the most important consideration” when considering the effects of the test substance.

Séralini writes that he finds it surprising that the authors conclude from their findings that “we should no longer bother to conduct long-term studies on agricultural GMOs in general”. This, he states, “is contrary to the spirit of scientific inquiry and (more importantly) is not supported by the concerning results that were found in spite of the methodological weakness of the study”.

Séralini continues by pointing out the many conflicts of interest of Pablo Steinberg, which were not declared in the G-TwYST study publication. For example, elsewhere Steinberg noted that he was an expert for the International Life Science Institute (ILSI), an industry lobby group funded by the likes of Monsanto and Syngenta, which has worked to weaken regulation and testing, including of GMOs and pesticides, and supports their use.

Séralini concludes that the results of Steinberg and colleagues’ paper are “unreliable” and that the paper “should be retracted, and the results deleted from regulatory appraisals and risk assessments”.

Update on long-term toxicity of agricultural GMOs tolerant to Roundup

Gilles-Eric Seralini

Environmental Sciences Europe volume 32, Article number: 18 (2020)

https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-020-0296-8

Abstract

Agricultural genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are plants obtained by gene transfer or more recently by gene-editing. Their major common phenotypic trait for which 99% have been modified is that these are designed to be grown with pesticides, which may bioaccumulate in the plants and/or the consumer, and/or express insecticides in their cells. Examples of both types are Roundup-tolerant soy and corn and Bt insecticidal plants. Recently, Steinberg et al. concluded that there were no adverse effects in rats from consumption of a GM corn tolerant to Roundup, called NK603, and that no other long-term studies are justified. This contradicts several of our in vivo studies on the short- and long-term toxicological effects of either the same GMO, other GMOs, or the pesticide Roundup itself. Our results were attributed in particular to the long-term in vivo effects of Roundup residues, which also present toxic and endocrine-disrupting effects in vitro. These effects were clearly linked to the formulants of the pesticide, such as petroleum residues and heavy metals, and not to glyphosate alone. In fact, the treated rats in Steinberg et al.’s experiment showed many adverse effects, some of which, including increased mortality in males fed GM corn + Roundup, were statistically significant. Other adverse effects affected both treated and control groups. The latter trend may be due to contamination of the feed of the control animals by many carcinogenic pollutants, including pesticides, but also by Roundup residues and Roundup-tolerant GMOs. For instance, glyphosate contained in Roundup was found to be 300–1400 times more elevated in their control feed than in our treated group. In conclusion, Steinberg et al.’s study is invalidated by the contaminated feed, biased interpretations, and major undeclared conflicts of interest.

March 13, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | European Union | Leave a comment

US Army Cites Cybersecurity Concerns In Scrapping Planned Purchase of Israeli Military Tech

By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | March 11, 2020

After spending $373 million to buy two batteries of the Israeli-made Iron Dome missile defense system, the U.S. Army has announced that it is unable to integrate the batteries it purchased with its other air defense systems because Israel has refused to provide the Army with the source code. The Army asserted that without the source code, the system could not be integrated without causing grave cybersecurity vulnerabilities. As a result, the Army has now scrapped its plans to purchase an additional $600 million worth of Iron Dome components.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the Iron Dome system itself was largely financed by U.S. taxpayers after Congress authorized over $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds to be used by Israel for the development and production of the Iron Dome system, which has suffered from a series of embarrassing failures since it entered the market.

It remains to be seen if the other countries that have signed deals with Israel to purchase Iron Dome, including Azerbaijan and India, will take notice of the U.S. Army’s decision and similarly scrap those plans given Israel’s apparent refusal to provide the source code to even its closest military ally following purchase.

News of the Army’s decision was made public last Thursday when Gen. Mike Murray, commander of Army Futures Command, spoke to the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. “We believe we cannot integrate them into our air-defense system based upon some interoperability challenges, some cyber[security] challenges and some other challenges. So what we ended up having is two stand-alone batteries that will be very capable, but they cannot be integrated,” Murray told the subcommittee.

Murray further stated that it would prove “exceptionally difficult to integrate Iron Dome into our layered air-defense architecture [and] to get Iron Dome to talk to other systems [and] other radars, specifically the Sentinel radar.” “What you’re probably – almost certainly – going to see is two stand-alone systems. And if the best we can do is stand-alone systems, we do not want to buy another two batteries,” Murray added.

If future international purchases of Iron Dome are to be impacted by the U.S. Army’s decision, it will not only be a setback for Israel’s defense industry, but also that of the United States, given that U.S. weapons manufacturer Raytheon produces some of the system’s components and markets the systems within the United States. Notably, current U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is a former lobbyist for Raytheon, a company that closely collaborates with Israel’s defense industry on other systems as well, such as “David’s Sling.”

Esper’s history may be a factor in a potential reversal of the Army’s recent decision, which was urged by Israel’s Defense Ministry following Gen. Murray’s statements before Congress. Israel’s Defense Ministry asked the Army to reconsider their decision to halt future purchases and overlook the existing cybersecurity hurdles in integrating those already purchased “as it would express confidence and recognition of the system’s ‘exceptional capabilities’ and the quality of Israel’s defense industries,” the Jerusalem Post reported.

Israel’s decision to not reveal the source code of a system the U.S. helped finance and subsequently purchased is striking, particularly given that their refusal to do so has resulted in the loss of considerable revenue and the potential collapse of future international sales of the system. Israel’s history of using backdoors in software for intelligence and military purposes, including at sensitive U.S. government facilities, raise obvious concerns about the motive for such a decision.

Yet, while the U.S. Army has raised cybersecurity concerns about the lack of transparency regarding Iron Dome’s source code, the same company that creates Iron Dome’s software has its software running on critical infrastructure systems throughout the United States. Indeed, Iron Dome’s software was created by mPrest, whose largest stakeholder is Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which in turn is a state-owned company. Rafael is also the principal developer of the Iron Dome system.

In just the past few years, mPrest has become a major provider of software to U.S. utility companies across the country — from California to New York — and has also entered the European and Australian markets. It remains to be seen if the scrutiny over mPrest’s code for the Iron Dome system and the motives behind it will lead to scrutiny of the software that is being used at critical points of the U.S. power grid, particularly at a time when government officials and private companies (including Israeli-American cybersecurity comp any Cybereason) are warning that “foreign actors” are targeting the U.S. power grid with malicious intent.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

March 11, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, United States | Leave a comment

Haiti petition challenges foreign policy apparatus

By Yves Engler · March 8, 2020

While it may seem to be a simple call to release documents, Solidarité Québec-Haïti’s House of Commons petition is an indictment of Canada’s entire foreign policy/media apparatus.

In my research about Canadian foreign policy I have come across no equivalent to the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti”. In early 2003 the federal government organized a private meeting of US, French and Organization of American States officials to discuss replacing Haiti’s elected government, putting the country under UN trusteeship and re-establishing its army. In what was likely a government-organized trial balloon, a prominent journalist working for Québec’s top news magazine reported on it at the time. A year later what was reported/discussed largely transpired.

Nonetheless, after the February 29, 2004, coup the dominant media refused to investigate the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” and barely mentioned the meeting. A Canadian Newsstand search found not one single English language report about the meeting (except two opinion pieces by me and another solidarity activist that mentioned it). La Presse may be the only corporate newspaper to have reported on the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” in the 15 years after the coup. In that case progressive journalist Jooned Khan used space made available during Haiti’s February 2006 election upheaval to briefly mention the gathering on two occasions.

Recently a major media outlet looked back on the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti”. In a 45-minute report tied to the 10^thanniversary of the 2010 earthquake Radio-Canada’s flagship news program “Enquête” reported on it. They interviewed Denis Paradis, the Liberal minister responsible for organizing the meeting, who admitted no Haitian officials were invited to discuss their own country’s future during the get together in 2003. They also interviewed Solidarité Québec-Haïti member Jean Saint-Vil who offered a critical perspective.

In a bid to build on this media breakthrough, Solidarité Québec-Haïti has launched a House of Commons petition referencing Enquête’s report and calling on the government to “Publish all documents relating to the ‘Ottawa Initiative on Haiti’” and to “Hold a hearing of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development to learn everything there is to know about the ‘Ottawa Initiative on Haiti,’ including its link to the “Core Group.” Bloc Québecois MP Mario Beaulieu has sponsored it.

Just after the coup then NDP MP Svend Robinson requested minutes of the private meeting be made available. Subsequently, researcher Anthony Fenton placed an Access to Information request for all documents related to the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti”. What he received was heavily redacted. In Haiti Betrayed, a powerful new documentary about Canadian imperialism, Elaine Brière notes that the government refused to release documents related to the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti.

The meeting remains politically relevant. Enquête suggested the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti led to the creation of the “Core Group,” an alliance of foreign ambassadors that largely determines Haitian affairs. Solidarité Québec-Haïti is using the petition to pressure Ottawa to withdraw from the “Core Group”, which is the real power behind corrupt, repressive and illegitimate president Jovenel Moïse.

The petition requires 175 more signatures to be presented in the House of Commons, which will force the government to formally respond. If you are a citizen or permanent resident of Canada please sign it.

March 8, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception | Bloc Québecois, Canada, Haiti | Leave a comment

Will Joe Kick It Away Again?

By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • March 6, 2020

A week ago, the candidacy of Joe Biden was at death’s door.

On a taping of “The McLaughlin Group,” this writer suggested it might be time to “call the rectory” and have the monsignor come render last rites.

Today, Biden’s candidacy is not only alive. He is first in votes, victories and delegates, and is favored to win the nomination and, by most polls, to defeat Donald Trump in November.

“The World Turned Upside Down” was a song the British army band is said to have played at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. That title applies to what happened in the U.S. political world in the five days from Feb. 29 to March 4.

Going into South Carolina on Feb. 29, Joe Biden had run a miserable and losing campaign.

Starting as the odds-on favorite for the nomination, he finished fourth in the Iowa caucuses, fifth in New Hampshire and then was routed by Bernie Sanders in the Nevada caucuses. His fundraising was anemic. His debate performances ranged from tolerable to terrible.

On the eve of South Carolina, his proclaimed “firewall,” the media conceded he might win but wrote him off as a probable fatality on Super Tuesday when 14 states went to the polls.

Then came South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden, which solidified and energized the African American vote in the Palmetto State and led to a Biden blowout in Saturday’s primary.

The nonstop free and favorable publicity Biden gained from the victory created a momentum that Mike Bloomberg’s billions could not buy. Over that weekend came the withdrawal of Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar and endorsements by both of Biden as the party’s best hope against Donald Trump.

Came then Biden’s sweep of 10 of the 14 states holding primaries on Super Tuesday. Wednesday saw the withdrawal of Bloomberg, who endorsed Biden and pledged his vast fortune to help Joe and the party defeat Trump in November.Moreover, for Trump, as Claudius observed in “Hamlet,” “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”

For 10 days, the Dow Jones average has gyrated wildly, wiping out trillions of dollars in wealth, while the coronavirus slowly claimed victims and dominated the world’s media. Predictions of a pandemic, a global economic downturn and a national recession were everywhere.

All in all, a triumphal week for Biden, who racked up 11 state primary victories. Before last Saturday, he had not won a single primary in three presidential campaigns.

But if earlier reports of the demise of Joe Biden were premature, so, too, are today’s confident predictions of a Biden sweep this November, marching over the political corpse of Trump and bringing in a Democratic Senate and Democratic House.

As Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Bernie Sanders’ “Revolution” remains unreconciled to a Beltway-Biden restoration, against which many of the Democratic candidates railed before dropping out, including Elizabeth Warren.

Sanders, for whom this is the last hurrah, must decide whether he wants to go down fighting for his cause or stack arms and march into Biden’s camp.

If Sanders chooses to fight, he can, even in near-certain defeat, be victorious in history if his “movement” one day captures the national party as it has captured a plurality of the party’s young.

If Sanders goes into the coming debates and forces Biden to defend his votes — for George Bush’s war in Iraq and for NAFTA and WTO trade concessions to Communist China — he may still be crushed.

But Sanders is a true believer. And, for such as these, it is better to die on the hill you have lived and fought on than to march into camp to be patted on the head by an establishment that secretly detests you.

Then there is Biden’s vulnerability.

He may be hailed by a fickle media as a conquering hero today. But after the cheering stops, Biden is going to be, for the next eight months, the same candidate he has been for the last eight months. Here is a description of that candidate by The New York Times the day after his Super Tuesday triumph:

“Any suggestion that Mr. Biden is now a risk-free option would appear to contradict the available evidence. He is no safer with a microphone, no likelier to complete a thought without exaggeration or bewildering detour.

“He has not, as a 77-year-old man proudly set in his ways, acquired new powers of persuasion or management in the 72 hours since the first primary state victory of his three presidential campaigns.

“Mr. Biden has blundered this chance before — the establishment front-runner; the last, best hope for moderates — fumbling his initial 2020 advantages in a hail of disappointing fund-raising, feeble campaign organization and staggering underperformance.”

It ain’t over till it’s over.

Copyright 2020 Creators.com.

March 6, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption | United States | Leave a comment

CIA conducts cyber-espionage on China for 11 years

By Lucas Leiroz | March 6, 2020

The Chinese cybersecurity company Qihoo 360 published a note stating that the CIA has been conducting cyber espionage in strategic sectors of China for 11 years. The allegations come from a survey conducted by the company based on the “Vault7” series of documents, published by WikiLeaks, detailing a wide range of activities conducted by the CIA in electronic surveillance and cyber warfare.

On its website, the Chinese company claims that Chinese industrial sectors are being spied on by a criminal group of hackers called APT-C-39, which is known to belong to the CIA. Among the areas victimized by illegal CIA surveillance are aviation, scientific research, oil industry, internet companies and government agencies. The attacks were traced back to 2008. The regions most affected by espionage are Beijing, Guangdong, Zhejiang.

In the survey, cyber weapons found to be used exclusively by the CIA, such as Fluxwire and Grasshopper, were detected, leading to the possibility of a hacking organization at state level. The survey was also able to locate the working hours of the spies, which, interestingly, coincides with the American workday.

In the company’s website we can read: “Qihoo 360 data have shown that the cyber-weapons used by the organization and the cyber weapons described in the CIA Vault 7 project are almost identical. The CIA Vault 7 weapons show from the side that the United States has built the world’s largest cyber weapons arsenal. It has not only brought serious threat to the global network security, but also demonstrate the APT organization’s high technical capabilities and professional standards (…) In addition, considering the uniqueness and time span of the use of the APT-C-39 cyber weapon, Qihoo 360 gave the conclusion that the group’s attack was initiated by the state-level hacking organization”.

However, the results achieved by the research are even more accurate. The Chinese company managed to track down the person individually responsible for using these cyber weapons, an American hacker named Joshua Adam Schulte. The data suggest that Joshua created, developed and applied these cybernetic weapons. At the time of the attacks, Joshua was a member of the National Clandestine Service (NCS) – a unit that belongs to the CIA – working on the Science and Technology Directorate. (DS&T); today, he is serving time for espionage in the USA. The hacker’s active participation in American cyber war projects poses him as a significant threat with international dimensions, in addition to raising questions about the true nature of his arrest.

The reflections we can draw from reading this news are very interesting. Cyber space was recognized a few years ago as a battleground for modern warfare – as important or more than land, sea and air; in this intangible zone, entire nations face each other through attacks, espionage and constant surveillance, using true hidden armies, unknown to the general public, and very powerful weapons, which are capable of causing real problems in the material world. The most curious thing is that all of this takes place in a lawless area, where absolutely everything is allowed, without any legal or moral boundaries.

Countries such as China, Russia and North Korea have long been criticized in the West for undertaking projects to create and develop “intranets”, that is, national computer networks, unplugged from the world network. In the West, false experts claim that such projects have a “dictatorial” content, being a form of censorship. However, cases like this remind us of the importance of such projects and the need for legal status for the cyber world.

If the cyber world is a war zone, international law must provide basic rules so that the coexistence between nations in this new battlefield takes place in a peaceful, simple and ethical way, with mutual respect between the belligerents. The absence of such legal delimitations legitimizes that absolutely any act of war or espionage involving the cyber world is carried out – mainly by the prevailing hegemonic power. However, such absence of mechanisms in the international sphere also justifies the establishment of intranets and unplugged networks, since, in the absence of a relevant international treaty, the merit remains for the decision of local governments, according to their interests.

The United States is seeking to assert itself as a global cyber police; it wants to assert in the virtual world the same hegemony that they have at sea. To this end, they undertake spy, attack and information theft projects, institutionalizing criminal hacking networks as secret units of this hidden war. China is certainly not the only target. The discovery of hacker invasion in the networks of the main industrial sectors in this country is just a sign of something much bigger and deeper. Not only great military and economic potencies have their internal information stolen, but also less developed countries are victimized by the American global cyber police, who quietly and perversely acts to gain control over the entire world.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

March 6, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, Economics | China, CIA, Joshua Adam Schulte, United States | Leave a comment

Coronavirus: People are left alone in the face of a rapidly growing virus pandemic – some thoughts out of Germany

By Roman Baudzus | Institute For Political Economy | March 3, 2020

Germany’s Federal Minister of Health, Jens Spahn (CDU), is a professional politician and a bureaucrat, so it can be assumed that Spahn may have learned a lot from Jean-Claude Juncker, who recently resigned as the EU´s Commission President.

“When things get serious, you have to lie,” Juncker once blatantly said in public when looking back at the euro crisis in the year 2011. It is easy to understand that, in addition to statements like these, it is the adapting behavior patterns of bureaucrats and professional politicians that have led to a steady decline in trust among citiziens in their European institutions over the past few years.

The fact that Jens Spahn seemed to be using the motto of Jean-Claude Juncker on the evening of January 31st was probably noticed by anyone who, based on good observation skills, developed a feeling for making an assessment for himself or herself of when and whether someone is lying.

This impression came to viewers on the evening of a TV program called “Maybrit Illner”, which is broadcast once a week on the Second German Television (ZDF), during which the discussions among the invited guests was the “novel Coronavirus” and its possibly associated dangers and risks for the German population.

According to data officially reported by the National Health Department of China (NHS), it should be noted that the number of novel Coronavirus infections in mainland China had – at this point of time – already exceeded the SARS infections registered in 2002 and 2003 over a period of nine months.

The city of Wuhan and the province of Hubei were already under lockdown enforced by the members of the People’s Liberation Army. At the same time, first cases of infection became known in Germany in the free state of Bavaria, where a Chinese woman infected at least four employees of the Bavarian automotive supplier Webasto with the new corona virus.

The afore mentioned TV program developed into a clash between Federal Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, look for yourself at the tense impression the guy made during the program, and Dr. Johannes Wimmer. Statements and warnings from Dr. Wimmer, according to whom the prospect of an aggravation of the situation in Germany should also be expected and a possibly deteriorating mood among the population, was answered by Spahn with occassional aggressive rejections.

The official narrative of the German federal government at this very early point in time was that only a handful of infection cases with the novel Coronavirus or SARS-CoV-2 had been identified in Germany, whereas in the course of a seasonal flu, far more people were statistically at risk from contagion and / or could find death. The Coronavirus would be more harmless than a normal flu. At this time, there was no reason for scaremongering, according to Spahn. And it would be counterproductive.

Spahn also pointed out that the German health care system was well prepared if there was an increase in the number of infections in the country, whereas according to his statement at the time, five of the people suffering from the novel Coronavirus were already doing well and were cheerfully happy.

Not just Dr. Johannes Wimmer, but also other German doctors and virologists see the statements made by Spahn in a contrary way. Spahn was often faced with the illusion that Germany’s hospitals were well prepared for such a crisis.

Many people who work in German hospitals or care facilities have complained for years that there is a lack of personnel and important resources in this area. At this point in time, doctors and nursing staff are completely overwhelmed with their daily amount of patients.

As a result, it cannot be ruled out that, in the event of a pandemic and a massive increase in the number of affected patients, the German health system could collapse due to a lack of staff and permanent austerity measures – if it got really bad like in China.

In the face of a drastically worsening situation in mainland China following this television discussion, the Chinese government, whose officially transmitted infection data cannot be believed for a variety of reasons, Chinese travelers – despite many demands from various associations – were not refused entry to Germany by the German government.

Infection clusters were also growing in other regions of the world, particularly in Thailand, Iran, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia. From the point of view of the German federal government, this also gave no reason to protect the country’s home airports from travelers from the most affected countries by simply banning them from entry.

What was done was to introduce the taking of temperatures at German airports and set up various information boards to alert arriving travelers from all over the world to the dangers associated with the new coronavirus.

Since it had long been established at the time based on the results of a study that people infected with the novel Coronavirus could be asymptomatic for up to 24 days, which means without showing any signs of symptoms or illness, this behavior of the German federal government has already been negligent and over the past few weeks completely incomprehensible.

At the same time, the official narrative, according to which normal influenza was more dangerous and resulted in more fatalities over the course of a season, was maintained by the Federal Government and Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn, with which, from today’s perspective, the German population was misled and misinformed by its own government.

Officials such as Federal Minister of Health, Spahn, constantly downplayed possible dangers and risks, while increasingly critical reporting on the Internet was of course defamed under the category “conspiracy theories”.

From this point of view, the question arose how an interview by health expert Karl Lauterbach from the SPD party ruling the country in a coalition with the CDU with Springer press medium Die Welt from February 3 fitted into this narrative, which was officially maintained by the federal government, in which Lauterbach announced as follows: “We are dealing with a very dangerous pest.”

Now it should be looked at whether the time since the beginning of February has been used by the German government to initiate any preventive or containment measures of SARS-CoV-2 from spreading in the home country in the face of constantly increasing infection numbers in the rest of the world.

In this regard, nothing happened over the entire month of February. Rather, the risk of contagion and the health risk associated with SARS-CoV-2 were still downplayed by the German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, in public appearances, with the help of Germany´s National Center for Infections and Disease Control, namely the Robert Koch-Institute (RKI).

The Robert Koch-Institute even issued the recommendation not to wear face masks. The question arises whether this recommendation could have something to do with the fact that German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas sent protective clothing, sprayers and disinfectants in abundance to China after the German government made the statement to the Chinese authorities to support them in their struggle against their local epidemic.

The result is that mouth and face masks have been sold out in almost all German pharmacies for some time. Some pharmacies that still have face masks in stock now sell a pack of 100 pieces for up to 90 euros. The German government is countering a buying panic by notifying the public that mouth protection against the virus is of no use.

Let´s see how things are seen in China, where Global Times editor Hu Xijin twittered as follows on March 2, 2020:

Suggesting people not wear face mask is seriously misleading. All of the Chinese experts have advised people to wear face masks when in contact with others during time of epidemic and consider it one of the most effective measures. Please heed suggestion of Chinese experts. pic.twitter.com/xUxq11m7Bg

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) March 2, 2020

And this at a time when a great deal of uncertainty was and is even more so spreading among the German population despite the attempt by government officials to calm down everyone, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel would have been expected to turn to the citizenry in terms of addressing the threat that is associated with SARS-CoV-2.

But in this emerging crisis, Merkel can hardly be heard or seen at all. Anyone who has followed the news formats on Germany´s public channels such as the first channel (ARD) over the month of February, especially the daily news broadcast every evening at 8:00 p.m. (Tagesschau), could not help but become aware of it, to become a “victim” of a propaganda and disinformation campaign that seemed to be focused on suppressing what´s going on in the rest of the world.

The more the number of infections with SARS-CoV-2 increased abroad – and especially in Asia – the calmer it became in the reporting by Germany´s public media. In some news programs such as ARD Tagesschau, the global development around SARS-CoV-2 was increasingly not even mentioned in one word. Such reporting can be described as ignoring propaganda.

Otherwise, most of the news programs on public channels, for whose reception German citizens have to pay an annual compulsory levy, dedicated its news stories in particular to the regional election in the eastern German state of Thuringia (Thüringen), the interference of the Berlin government with regard to its election result and a supposedly reviving right-wing radicalism in the country.

Once there was talk of the spread of SARS-CoV-2, it was in most cases about an establishment of quarantine stations in the country, in which German citizens brought home from Wuhan were taken in over a period of 14 days. It has also been reported that members of the German Red Cross will volunteer to help those affected in these quarantine facilities.

The fact that a 14-day quarantine period, based on current studies showing that the incubation period can be up to 27 days before infected people start developing disease symptoms, turns out to be too short, is neither mentioned nor addressed in the official planning of the various government authorities.

Furthermore, German airports remained open to travelers from high-risk areas such as China, Iran, South Korea, Thailand, etc. throughout the entire month of February – and this is still the case at present time.

A responsible government would have ensured that risks, threats, and dangers were communicated openly to the citizenry!

In my view, a responsible government would have ensured that risks and dangers were communicated openly to an increasingly insecure population. This would have included the temporary suspension of major events such as Carnival, Bundesliga soccer matches or the like in order to prevent a massive spread of infections. However, none of this has happened so far.

After such decisions have long been made in Italy, France and Switzerland, the German government is still not doing anything. The result is that weekend after weekend tens of thousands of visitors flock to the Bundesliga soccer stadiums to enjoy the matches.

The whole thing gets even more incredible. Despite the significant increase in confirmed novel Coronavirus cases in Germany, the Robert Koch-Institute does still not seem to see any increased risk to the general health of the German population.

“The risk can be assessed as low to moderate,” said RKI Vice President Lars Schaade recently at a press conference in Berlin. The RKI also advises: “Please receive your informatiom from reliable sources.” This statement is intended to insinuate that in the case of a “reliable source” it is solely the Robert Koch-Institute to advise people what to do and what not do.

Are people listening what the RKI is publicly recommending? It does not seem so. And there must be a valid reason why people choose not to listen.

For example the RKI explicitly does not recommend “the use of disinfectants in everyday life, even in this current situation. It is neither recommended to use face masks or any other kind of mouth-nose protection in the general public or in everyday life. ”

It is already known among people that the RKI advises against mouth-nose protection like a mantra. Reason seems to be, as more and more local politicians from several states warn, that there is by far not enough equipment stored at German warehouses for which the health minister of the Western state Nothrine-Westphalia not only openly apologized recently but also said in a TV discussion to feel ashamed that things like this would be possible in a developed nation like Germany.

Hygiene expert Professor Dr. Klaus-Dieter Zastrow contrastingly believes that the hand disinfection among people is now actively talked down by the RKI, which Zastrow finds “extremely dangerous”.

“This is a kind of misinformation that does neither help the population nor the country a yota in containing the local epidemic,” says Zastrow. Mouth and nose protection is the only effective protection against droplet infection. ”

The expert repeatedly criticized the incorrect information being published by the RKI. Since mouth and nose protection as well as hand disinfection were discouraged from the onset, the result is that a spread of the virus is even promoted and there would be no way to contain it.

Over the past few years things like this have unfortunately become quite normal in Germany. The fact that eleven cities in the two Northern Italian provinces of Lombardy and Veneto are now under lockdown by police and military forces does not change the perspective of the German government and the Robert Koch-Institute at all.

Considering the dramatically increasing number of confirmed cases, it is still pretended that an even greater spread of the novel Coronavirus in Germany could be managed by itself, although Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn has meanwhile announced that individual infection chains can no longer be traced back.

From “Coronavirus is more harmless than flu” to “We are at the beginning of a serious epidemic” – Despite the fact, Spahn is still doing nothing while Merkel is nowhere to be seen or heard!

After all, the basic general opinion of the German Federal Minister of Health changed at least once after the events in Northern Italy, since Spahn all of a sudden sees Germany “at the beginning of a Coronavirus epidemic”. It’s hard to believe! In a conference call, he (Spahn) asked the Federal Health Ministers of the 16 German states to “activate their pandemic plans and prepare for their possible entry into force”.

Despite his fears of an epidemic outbreak, Mr. Spahn still does not want to consider closing the German borders to other – and highly affected – European nations or to take into consideration a set up of police controls at the inner German borders of the individual states!

What kind of political “leadership” is that? Mr. Spahn seems to be waiting for the novel Coronavirus to spread throughout Germany, what is happening anyway at the moment. The failure to act by this federal government does not only leave you with the impression of negligence, but almost with the bitter impression of sabotaging the interests of the own population!

And what does the Brussels EU have to say in terms of this development: We exactly got what had to be expected.

Even in the wake of the rapid spread of the novel Coronavirus in Europe, EU officials are vehemently opposed to finally implementing border closures. Rather, in the face of current developments, it seems more important from their perspective to maintain the policy of open borders among the 28 European Union member states.

Meanwhile, the number of confirmed infections in Italy has risen to more than 2,300 and a death toll of 52 persons as of today. Please keep in mind that this increase from three to more than 2,300 officially confirmed cases occurred within just a little more than one week. But the EU Health ministers, including Mr. Jens Spahn, still insist on their viewpoint that the Schengen agreement must remain untouched.

In the meantime, 50,000 citizens in Northern Italy still see themselves under lockdown in the two provinces of Lombardy and Veneto. From this point of view, why is it so difficult to close the borders in order to prevent an infiltration from Italy to the neighbouring nations on the continent? !! According to published information many cases being recently confirmed show that the affected German persons had been on vaccation or a business trip to Italy. Or they contracted the novel Coronavirus while being out for Carnival as if no one could have seen this coming.

Infiltration has already happened in Switzerland and Austria, too. The Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti refuses to consider border closures as well, arguing that such a decision would not prevent the novel Coronavirus spreading to other European nations – what?!

Do you understand this logic? To minimize the spread of the highly infectious Coronavirus, far more drastic measures are likely to be needed soon, when you look at China and what the Chinese government was willing to be doing to bring the R0 or reproductive value of this virus down to one or below that level.

Former Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, has in the meantime called for the resignation of Conte in response to Conte’s statements, because Conte obviously seems to be “unable to defend Italy and its citizens against a great danger”.

French Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari also refuses to close borders between France and Italy – not even temporarily. Germany´s Federal Minister of Health, Spahn, who has so far turned out to be a total failure in view of the crisis – and above all from a German perspective – seems to see things the same way.

EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides naturally sees things in the light of a common European market. Why wonder about Ms. Kyriakides being worried, when according to her own statement she sees “risks of a disinformation campaign”.

Statements like this are just echoing “concerns” over at the WHO, whose general director Dr Ghebreyesus is still not willing to declare a global pandemic by obviously keeping a close eye on the development of the so called catastrophe bonds formerly issued by the Worldbank. All these side shows seem to be more of importance than the health issues being associated with the Coronavirus outbreak. Or just name it corruption.

The question arises whether it is perhaps not just those people who are in leading political positions who, due to their ideologically coloured glasses, seem to be no longer aware of what is happening in the world. At what point will it become more important to stop a global and highly dangerous pandemic instead of putting one’s own economic ideology of open borders above the well-being of all people on our continent and the rest of the world?

A recent article in The Epoch Times, stated with reference to Deutschlandfunk, (in extracts) as follows:

Virologist criticizes “very slow” government reaction – Coronavirus “at least ten times more dangerous” than flu

The German virologist Alexander Kekulé has criticized the reactions of the European Union authorities regarding the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus. The approach of the responsible authorities would be far too “slow, relaxed, and leisurely”, Kekulé told Deutschlandfunk.

He called for “early” entry controls and “area-wide screenings” to protect populations against the epidemic, but it did not happen with the result that “infiltrations from country to country occurred”. Kekulé holds the academic Chair for Medical Microbiology and Virology at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and is Director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology at the University Hospital Halle.

On the occasion of the outbreak in Northern Italy, he now called for extensive testing of “every case” in Europe that can be associated with “serious respiratory infections”. The virologist had already suggested this to the European Health ministers two weeks ago. “The EU Health ministers did not agree with my suggestion, and now we observe things unfolding in Italy.”

Meanwhile, he also criticized the assessment of Germany´s Health Minister Jens Spahn and his authority in terms of the danger that is associated with the novel Coronavirus. “Above all, it is still the case that his authorities try to pretend as if the novel Coronavirus would be more harmless than flu.”

According to the virologist, the novel Coronavirus is “at least ten times more dangerous than flu” for those who get infected. In contrast to a normal flu, the risk groups being associated with the novel Coronavirus are still unknown.

“It’s a very different situation,” says Kekulé. The novel Coronavirus is not only fatal from the perspective of older or very young people, but for middle-aged people, too. On top there is no existing vaccine for the novel Coronavirus and “that’s why I do not understand why they’ve taken things so lightly thus far”.

If the German population is learning one thing these days, it is that they are alone in the face of a rapidly growing virus pandemic. At least it should be said with chancellor Merkel hiding in the shadow that the Berlin government has managed to set up a “crisis team” that includes the same government figures who have so far reportedly played down the emerging crisis and – for whatever reason – have taken things very lightly. This endangers people’s trust in the authorities.

So, my American fellows, and now look at your “crisis team”: Health Czar Mike Pence, Steven Mnuchin and Larry Kudlow. Jikes! Similar to the German perspective, this is certainly a “dream team” to fight dangerous viruses! An ex-Goldman investment banker and a former cocaine addict whose economic assessments were often nothing more than smoke and mirrors in the past.

Have you ever wondered what these people actually know about viruses?

Good luck with that and may god be with us!!

Roman Baudzus is running his own economics blog Wirtschaftsfacts on Cashkurs.com and has been contributor to various economic or political websites such as Goldmoney.com, Goldseiten.de or Heise/Telepolis.

March 5, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception | European Union, Larry Kudlow, Mike Pence, Steven Mnuchin | Leave a comment

CIA has been hacking China for 11 YEARS, says Chinese cybersecurity firm citing Vault 7 leak

RT | March 3, 2020

US spies have been hacking into Chinese aviation, energy, internet and even government sectors for more than a decade, Beijing-based cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360 said after a probe based on ‘Vault7’ tools published by WikiLeaks.

Coming from a major and reputable Chinese cybersecurity vendor, the accusations – made public on Monday on the company’s blog, in both English and Chinese – carry extra weight. According to Qihoo, a group of hackers designated APT-C-39 has been confirmed as coming from the US Central Intelligence Agency.

“Qihoo 360 data have shown that the cyber-weapons used by the organization and the cyber weapons described in the CIA Vault 7 project are almost identical.”

The attacks were traced as far back as September 2008, with the greatest concentration of targets in Beijing, Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces, the company said. Among the targeted sectors were civil aviation, scientific research institutions, oil and petroleum industries, internet companies and Chinese government.

The cybersecurity firm came to a conclusion that the attack was initiated by a “state-level hacking organization” because the hackers had used “CIA-exclusive cyber weapons” such as Fluxwire and Grasshopper – long before they were publicly revealed to have been developed by US spies, when WikiLeaks published the so-called “Vault7” cache of documents, in March 2017.

Control commands and encryption schemes of APT-C-39 also lined up with Vault7 disclosures, while compilation times matched “North American business hours,” Qihoo said.

The CIA coder accused of leaking the documents, Joshua A. Schulte, is currently on trial for espionage in the US.

Another Chinese antivirus company, Qi-Anxin, published a report in September 2019 also accusing the CIA of hacking Chinese companies, notably the aviation sector. Qi-Anxin’s research was also based on analyzing CIA software made public by WikiLeaks.

March 3, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception | CIA | Leave a comment

Email Scandal: Hillary Clinton Ordered to Provide Deposition In Person After ‘Preposterous’ Defence

Sputnik – March 3, 2020

The almost six-year-long saga relates to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for government business while secretary of state. Although the FBI investigation resulted in no charges, it still remains to be seen whether her unusual email practices were meant to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests.

A federal judge has ordered Hillary Clinton to provide a sworn deposition in person about her private email server.

The order, issued on Monday by US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, grants the request of conservative watchdog Judicial Watch to depose Clinton about her correspondence and documents related to the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The court also ordered the deposition of Clinton’s former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and two other State Department officials. It also allowed Judicial Watch to subpoena Google for documents and records associated with Clinton’s emails during her time at the State Department from 2009 to 2014.

Republican officials and members of Congress had accused then-Secretary of State Cinton of failing to prevent the attack, which left four Americans dead. She defended her handling of the episode.

Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeking Benghazi-related records led to a scandal in 2015 when it helped discover that Clinton had repeatedly used her own private email server, rather than a government-issued one, during her time as Secretary of State. Records of official correspondence must be kept under federal law, and Clinton’s reliance on a private account sparked concerns that she was seeking to sidestep that requirement.

Clinton email controversy

The email scandal haunted Clinton’s presidential campaign and was weaponised against her by then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.

The FBI concluded in July 2016 that she had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”. Although Clinton insisted that she had never received or sent classified material, the FBI discovered that she had send out over a hundred emails that should have been regarded as classified.

Around 30,000 emails, deemed to be work-related, were provided to the State Department; her aides had also deleted around 32,000 emails, which they claimed to be non-work related, before any subpoenas were issued.

The bureau, however, recommended bringing no criminal charges against Clinton and referred the case to the Justice Department, which closed it with no charges. The FBI reopened its probe just days before the November election after new emails were discovered.

Questions still remain

“Judicial Watch argued that Secretary Clinton’s existing testimony has only scratched the surface of the inquiry into her motives for setting up and using a private server,” Judge Lamberth said in the 11-page ruling. “Secretary Clinton has repeatedly stated that convenience was the main reason for using a private server, but Judicial Watch justifiably seeks to explore that explanation further.”Clinton previously explained her use of a private server in a sworn written statement, but this deposition would be the first time she had to answer questions on the case in person.

“To argue that the Court now has enough information to determine whether [the] State [Department] conducted an adequate search is preposterous,” Lamberth wrote. “Even years after the FBI investigation, the slow trickle of new emails has yet to be explained.”

He stressed that some of the questions remain to date: “How did she arrive at her belief that her private server emails would be preserved by normal State Department processes for email retention? … Did she realise State was giving ‘no records’ responses to her FOIA requests for emails? … And why did she think that using a private server to conduct State Department business was permissible under the law in the first place?”

March 3, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception | FBI, Hillary Clinton, United States | Leave a comment

Guyana: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Prior to 2020 Elections

teleSUR | March 1, 2020

The small Caribbean country of Guyana is on the brink of becoming one of the largest oil-producing nations in the world thanks to the 2015 discovery of major offshore oil deposits.

This newfound wealth set into motion a transformative period for the country, which is one of the poorest nations in South America as more than 36 percent of its people are living in poverty.

But as in many cases, the blessing and promise of billions of dollars in revenue to fill the state’s coffers have also been marred in corruption scandals and caused in 2018 a major political crisis that will be resolved on March 2 as hundreds of thousands of Guyanese head to the polls.

The Guyanese people have been waiting for this day ever since President David Granger received a motion of no confidence in Dec. 21, 2018 with 33 votes against 32. A decision later upheld by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) in 2019.

The no-confidence motion, a first in the nation’s history, on the leader of the Partnership for National Unity/Alliance for Change (APNU/AFC) party was led by former president and opposition leader Bharrat Jagdeo of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).

Jagdeo stated Granger “sold” the country’s “patrimony” to Exxon Mobil, accusing the government of mismanaging oil resources and granting the transnational overly generous contract terms.

The government, on the other hand, has insisted that it got the best deal it could and is banking on new oil wealth to transform the economy of the English-speaking country of just 750,000.

So as people head to the polls to elect a new five-year administration amid the recent oil boom, Guyana’s situation could be summarized into the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good

In May 2015 ExxonMobil shocked the world and the Guyanese as the company announced the discovery of significant oil deposits in the Liza-1 well, followed by Payara, Liza Deep, Snoek, Turbot, Ranger, and Pacora by early 2018.

ExxonMobil and Hess reported that new discoveries contained estimated resources exceeding eight billion barrels of oil equivalent – one of the world’s largest reserves-, potentially producing 750,000 barrels per day by 2025. In rough estimates, this placed the oil wealth at over US$300 billion.

In a nation with a per capita income of under US$4,000, the findings meant a game-changer.

The revenue is expected to generate an estimated US$168 billion over the life of the project until 2056, representing 120 times Guyana’s annual budget, which in 2019 stood at US$1.4 billion.

By 2024 the amount of money coming in could lift income per person from US$5,000 to US$19,000, nearly the same as in Poland. All the wealth promised for impoverished Guyana hopes of tremendous economic growth in the years ahead. The International Monetary Fund forecasts an 85.6 percent GDP growth in the small nation.

By 2030 the government’s share of earnings from oil could reach US$10 billion in real terms, more than double last year’s GDP. However, not everything that glitters is gold.

The Bad

But Guyana is no stranger to oil exploration and drilling. Since the 1940s transnational companies had operated in the Guyana basin and in small wells. Yet the 2015 find was so unexpected it took even Exxon by surprise as, by April 2016, the United States oil giant had a problem.

The company had recently found oil off the coast in the Stabroek oil block but its license was about to expire in only two years, putting in jeopardy the company’s increasingly valuable asset.

So in early April 2016, the company began a powerful negotiation campaign by confronting two inexperienced Guyanese officials with a new draft license to be signed within ten weeks.

“Exxon did not want to change the favorable financial terms from its 1999 license, despite having recently found significant oil reservoirs that would customarily allow the government to ask for more,” a report titled ‘Signed Away’ by international watchdog Global Witness states.

The Guyanese government despite having a strong bargaining position when the contract came up for renegotiation in 2016 was outmaneuvered by the international company, due to “inexperienced” bureaucrats according to the report.

Guyana’s Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman ended up giving Exxon largely the same tax terms as before it found oil and then the company regained parts of the license area it was supposed to give up.

Also, and within months of signing Stabroek, Exxon agreed to buy portions of two additional licenses from companies that had obtained them under apparently suspicious circumstances. Only three days after getting its new license, Exxon announced its massive find.

The agreement left Guyana with a two percent royalty and a 50 percent profit share after the company recoups its costs. Granger has defended that the attractive terms were needed to secure investment in a risky new location.

However, for German-based company Open Oil -which specializes in providing financial analysis of natural resource investments for public policy purposes – Guyana lost a lot.

“If the royalty had been at 10 percent and standard corporate income tax (CIT) of 25 percent had been applied, both of which are well within international norms, the resulting government take would have been 69 percent, and Guyana would earn US$55 billion more during the life of the Stabroek field, up until 2056,” their report reads.

On average, Guyana will lose over US$1.3 billion a year over the life of the project from signing in 2016 until expiry. With the additional money, the country could have doubled its annual US$172 million health budget, US$251 million education budget, US$185 million infrastructure budget, and still have US$700 million left each year.

“This is a story about how an aggressive company negotiated an exploitative deal with a minister who may not have been working in Guyana’s best interests,” Global Witness’ commented on the matter. Supposedly the opposition voted to end granger’s government in order to renegotiate these contracts, which they thought to be unfair for Guyana.

And this is where things get ugly.

The Ugly

As Granger’s administration came to a halt by the opposition’s vote, the reassuring argument to the Guyanese people was that oil contracts would have been revised and renegotiated. The March 2 elections were meant to prove this thesis as the issue was the deciding factor, or at least it seemed so for campaign purposes.

With elections looming, the People’s Progressive Party presidential candidate announced in January that Exxon’s contract wouldn’t be renegotiated, despite the numerous warnings of the lopsided nature of the agreement.

“Exxon is a different case,” Ali told Reuters after a campaign rally in the contested western Essequibo region, adding that he would administer the deal better after reviewing terms.

For Associate Fellow in the energy, environment and resources program at Chatham House, Valerie Marcel, although the stakes are high in the elections as that the winning party will reign over the country’s oil revenues there is no real difference regarding the party’s policies approaching the oil boom.

Both are on a similar path with the development strategy set up by Granger, support the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and a sovereign wealth fund, and mainly imitate their approach to licenses and future agreements.

“Exxon was a pioneering investment,” Ali reiterated. “But those that came after that time they were not pioneering, so they have to be examined in totality.”

However, others have not yet confirmed significant commercial finds. Tullow has made several discoveries in the past year, but the company has yet to find enough reserves to make the project work so Exxon continues to be the main winner in all this transaction.

If asked what’s really at stake in Guyana’s election, the answer might be as unpleasant as it sounds: nothing. As the good tidings of newfound immense natural resources for one of the poorest nations in the continent have been marred by power struggles and the ugliness of transnational greed over sovereign interests.

March 2, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Economics | Guyana | Leave a comment

Biden treated Ukraine ‘as his private property’, says purged prosecutor Shokin on Burisma scandal – UkraineGate documentary

RT | February 27, 2020

Former top Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin says he was pushed out under pressure from US Vice President Joe Biden, after he seized the assets of the oligarch behind Burisma, the gas company that employed Biden’s son.

President Donald Trump’s efforts to investigate Biden’s role in getting Shokin fired served as a pretext for his impeachment in the House of Representatives back in December. However, after Trump was acquitted by the Senate, the US media forgot about Burisma — and Ukraine.

French investigative journalist Olivier Berruyer, founder of popular anti-corruption and economics blog Les Crises, did not. In the fourth installment of his documentary series ‘UkraineGate: Inconvenient facts,’ Shokin reveals why and how he was ousted and what role the US has played in Ukraine.

Click here for video

Shokin tells Berruyer that Biden and the US government had approved his appointment as prosecutor-general — as, indeed, they did all major appointments in Ukraine since the 2014 Maidan upheaval — and worked with him well until he started getting too close to Burisma. He rejected reports that described his probe as “dormant.”

“Biden was acting on behalf of his own interests, and those of his family, and not in the interest of the American people,” Shokin said, adding that Barack Obama’s VP “believed that Ukraine was his private property, his fiefdom and that he could do whatever he wanted here.”

Within a few days of Shokin seizing the assets of Mykola Zlochevsky, the oligarch owner of Burisma, President Petro Poroshenko summoned him and told him to back off.

“Don’t you understand what Biden wants from you? Why are you getting into this Burisma stuff again?” Shokin quoted Poroshenko as saying. Within a few weeks, he was replaced by someone Biden called “more solid” – Yuriy Lutsenko, who had no training in law, and whom Shokin describes as a traitor to Ukraine.

The previous installment of Berruyer’s documentary featured testimonies from Ukrainians who argued that Poroshenko was directly involved in corruption, and that Hunter Biden’s job at Burisma was a de facto bribe intended for his father.

February 29, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | Joe Biden, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

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Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink

By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012

… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.

Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.

In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]

Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]

The groupthink syndrome

The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:

1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]

2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]

3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]

It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article

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