Persecution of Sputnik, RT Contributors Highlights US Hypocrisy – Ex-CIA Analyst
By John Miles – Sputnik – September 5, 2024
The United States’ persecution campaign against journalists and political dissidents with ties to Russian media accelerated Wednesday when new repressive measures were announced against several entities.
New sanctions were announced against 10 individuals and two organizations under the umbrella of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, including RIA Novosti, RT, Sputnik and Ruptly. The sanctions target these entities for alleged “hostile interference in the presidential elections,” the US Treasury Department claimed. The measures also target editor-in-chief of Rossiya Segodnya and RT Margarita Simonyan and several top managers at RT.
Ex-CIA analyst and former State Department counterterrorism expert Larry Johnson spoke with Sputnik Wednesday about the startling development, the latest attempt by the Biden administration to shape political discourse online and in the media.
“The latest stunt pulled by the Biden Department of Justice to declare all of these sanctions on Russia for alleged interference in the US political system is a level of hypocrisy that is staggering in its magnitude and in its foulness,” Johnson said.
“Let’s be clear about one thing: the one country in the world that has been involved with more interference in the internal political affairs of every other country is the United States. During the reign of President Eisenhower in the 1950s, there were 170 different covert actions carried out against other countries.”
“This year [the US has] allocated almost $4 billion to interfere or meddle in the political affairs of other countries,” he continued. “$315 million of that goes to the National Endowment for Democracy. $300 million is specifically what they call counter-Russian influence. And another $2.9 billion is for ‘democracy’ programs. And these have been used basically to run propaganda, to pay people, to organize ‘democracy’ programs in places like Georgia.”
The US frequently funds pro-Western media and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in foreign countries it targets for regime change to pave the way for a pro-US government to come to power. Author and journalist William Blum documented over 50 examples of significant US interference in other countries since World War II in his classic book Killing Hope, largely based on the shocking revelations of ex-CIA agent Philip Agee.
More recently the US has interfered in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and Ukraine, paving the way for the latter country’s extremist anti-Russia government through its support for the Euromaidan coup in 2014.
“I don’t know how many millions of dollars are allocated to the Central Intelligence Agency for additional covert actions designed to plant stories in media, to create electronic media, to influence social networks across the board,” Johnson continued. “It’s the United States that’s meddling. With respect to the entire bogus claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, we now know without a doubt that that was a Democrat operation led by Hillary Clinton and her team,” he added.
“Everything we were told about Donald Trump and the Russians was a lie. I was one of the few writing about it at the time to call it out… The notion that RT is manipulating and influencing the presidential election is beyond laughable,” he claimed, noting that the Russian television channel’s app is banned from many app stores in the West while its content has been removed from YouTube and other websites.
“How is a news network that’s not allowed to broadcast and that’s shut [out] of social media in the United States supposed to influence [the election]? … It just goes across the board that they’re going to try to attack any kind of alternative voice in the media.”
Johnson noted that he has been subjected to a “pre-interview” with most television news outlets he has appeared on, such as the BBC, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS and the CBC, during which employees for each outlet attempted to ascertain what he would say when interviewed live on air. RT was one of only two outlets that never subjected him to the practice, he said.
“It’s the so-called ‘free democracies’ that want to run that litmus test,” he said.
Johnson said the recent persecution of figures connected to RT and Sputnik is merely another attempt to run the “Russiagate” playbook, attempting to discredit alternative media outlets that critique US foreign policy. “Electoral interference” continues to take place, Johnson claimed, but it is not the Russians but the US government that is engaged in an attempt to influence and control the popular narrative for its own benefit.
Biased? WHO-Backed Study Finds No Link Between Cellphones and Cancer
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 4, 2024
A scientific review commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) claims it found no link between cellphone use and brain cancer. The review was available online Aug. 30 in Environmental International.
The publication — which focused largely on brain cancer but also cancer risk in general — is part of a WHO-commissioned series of scientific reviews of the possible health risks of wireless radiation.
Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley, accused the review of being biased.
Moskowitz is a member of the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF), a “consortium of scientists, doctors and related professionals” who study radiofrequency-electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMF) and make recommendations for RF-EMF exposure guidelines “based on the best peer-reviewed scientific research publications.”
He has conducted and disseminated research related to wireless technology and public health since 2009.
In a post published Tuesday on his Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website, Moskowitz wrote:
“The WHO selected scientists to conduct systematic literature reviews on the biologic and health risks of wireless radiation who had demonstrated their bias through prior publications by either not finding evidence of harm or dismissing any evidence they found.”
The WHO’s review reached very different conclusions than those reached by Moskowitz and his colleagues in a 2020 review of cellphone use and cancer tumor risk.
“I believe that our 2020 review of cellphone use and tumor risk is less biased and will withstand the test of time better than the new review commissioned by the WHO,” Moskowitz wrote.
Miriam Eckenfels-Garcia, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless program, told The Defender, “Unfortunately, we are used to the WHO getting some really important things wrong.”
She added:
“The protection of human health should always be the priority and, sadly, this does not seem to be the case here.
“The fact that the WHO handpicked scientists who are clearly biased to conduct such an important review and excluded scientific voices that reached different conclusions signals what we already know — that the WHO is as captured by big industry as our own regulatory agencies.”
WHO says cellphones don’t increase risk of brain cancer
For their review, the WHO researchers looked at 5,060 study records published between 1994 and 2022 and then narrowed them down, based on multiple criteria, to 63 studies for the final analysis.
Their goal was to assess the strength and quality of the possible link between RF-EMF exposure and neoplatistic, meaning tumorous, disease.
They concluded that RF radiation from cellphone use “likely does not increase the risk of brain cancer.”
Specifically, they said there was “moderate certainty evidence” that RF-EMF from cellphones held near the head “does not increase the risk of glioma, meningioma, acoustic neuroma, pituitary tumours, and salivary gland tumours in adults, or of paediatric brain tumours.”
The WHO authors also said RF radiation from cell towers “likely does not increase the risk of childhood cancer.”
Independent researchers say otherwise
Moskowitz and his co-authors, in their 2020 review of 46 studies, found “significant evidence linking cellular phone use to increased tumor risk, especially among cell phone users with cumulative cell phone use of 1000 or more hours in their lifetime (which corresponds to about 17 min per day over 10 years), and especially among studies that employed high quality methods.”
They recommended further studies be conducted to confirm their findings.
Moskowitz noted that the 2020 review differed in important ways from the WHO’s review. For instance, the 2020 review looked at a different kind of study than the WHO review.
“Our review examined only case-control studies of tumor risk and cellphone use as we did not consider any occupational, cohort or time-trend studies to be of sufficient quality to warrant consideration,” he said.
Also, Moskowitz and his co-authors used different criteria for weeding out studies they thought might be biased.
“Most importantly,” he added, “we employed a more conventional approach to the analysis of the cumulative call time data that examined the effects of heavy cell phone use.”
Conflicts of interest
Moskowitz noted that all of the WHO’s scientific review teams have one or more members from the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP).
ICNIRP, which Moskowitz called a “cartel,” is a German nonprofit that issues RF radiation exposure limits “produced by its own members, their former students and close colleagues.”
The wireless industry favors the ICNIRP limits because they’re designed to protect people only from radiation levels high enough to generate heat — meaning the limits turn a blind eye to the possible health effects from radiation levels lower than those needed to heat human tissue.
Moskowitz explained why it’s problematic for ICNIRP members to conduct the WHO’s reviews:
“In 2019, investigative journalists from eight European countries published 22 articles in major news media that exposed conflicts of interest in this ‘ICNIRP cartel.’ …
“The journalists argue that the cartel promotes the ICNIRP guidelines by conducting biased reviews of the scientific literature that minimize health risks from EMF [electromagnetic field] exposure. …
“By preserving the ICNIRP exposure guidelines favored by industry, the cartel ensures that the cellular industry will continue to fund their research.”
Even though a former ICNIRP member who served as editor-in-chief of the Bioelectromagnetics Society journal accused ICNIRP of “groupthink” in 2021, the WHO continues to promote the ICNIRP’s guidelines, which are similar to those adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S., Moskowitz explained.
The ICBE-EMF in 2022 published a peer-reviewed paper refuting the “thermal-only paradigm” that insists that harmful biological effects only occur from radiation levels high enough to heat human tissue.
“The preponderance of peer-reviewed research finds non-thermal effects,” Moskowitz said.
In July, Moskowitz and other scientists with ICBE-EMF called for the retraction of an earlier WHO review because it inaccurately concluded that current international limits on RF radiation protect the public from possible non-cancer health impacts from wireless radiation, including migraines, tinnitus and sleep disturbances.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Why the Continued Silence on Evan Gershkovich?
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | September 4, 2024
It has now been more than a month since Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was released from Russian custody. Gershkovich had been incarcerated for more than a year on charges of being a spy for the U.S. government, a charge fiercely denied by both the Journal and the U.S. government.
Throughout the ordeal, Journal officials and U.S. officials failed to disclose Gershkovich’s side of the story. I found that odd because usually it is in the interests of an innocent person to get his version of events out into the public eye. Given that the Journal and U.S. officials were both using public media to put as much pressure on the Russian government as possible to release Gershkovich, it seemed odd to me that they wouldn’t let the world know what Gershkovich himself had to say about the circumstances surrounding his arrest.
As I wrote in my July 22, 2024, article “Why the U.S. Secrecy on Evan Gershkovich?” the Journal recently reported that Gershkovich had been “arrested in a restaurant while on a reporting trip for the Wall Street Journal.”
Is that it? Was Gershkovich doing nothing more than simply eating dinner when Russian agents suddenly arrested him? If so, why not just say that? Or was he dining with someone? If the latter, with whom was he dining? How did the dinner get arranged? Who selected the restaurant? Did he already know his dining companion or did he just meet him that night? Was the dinner purely social or did it pertain to his reporting? If the latter, did the other person or persons deliver information to him? If so, what was that information?
Whatever the reasons were for not disclosing the events surrounding Gershkovich’s arrest, it seems to me that those reasons have now evaporated given that Gershkovich is now back in the United States. Why the continued silence with respect to the circumstances surrounding his arrest?
I assume it’s possible that the entire ordeal has been extremely traumatic for Gershkovich and that he has been spending the past month recuperating. Nonetheless, that certainly wouldn’t prevent the Journal and U.S. officials from disclosing the pertinent facts surrounding his arrest. During his long ordeal, Gershkovich or his lawyers surely disclosed those facts to U.S. diplomatic officials in Russia or to Journal officials or U.S. officials here in the United States. Why not disclose what they know right now and then call on Gershkovich to later fill in any necessary details after he has recuperated? Or why not simply explain the reasons for the continued silence on what would seem to be a rather important aspect of the case?
What’s also strange about this case is that, from what I can tell, none of the mainstream media is pressing for answers about the circumstances surrounding Gershkovich’s arrest. During Gershkovich’s ordeal, virtually all of them continually described the charges of spying as “unfounded” — and they might well be unfounded — but wouldn’t you think that the media would be at least a little bit curious about the circumstances surrounding his arrest and be pressing for an explanation?
Amazon Defends Alexa’s Biased Answers on Trump and Harris as an “Error”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 4, 2024
Amazon’s Alexa found itself in the midst of a political gaffe, that has raised more questions and concerns about the biases inherent to AI systems, especially as more products are beginning to add AI features. A disparity in Alexa’s responses to inquiries about voting for former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris caused a stir on social media.
The popular voice-controlled virtual assistant came into the spotlight again this week when it was discovered that it provided contrasting responses to two political questions, both related to examining suitability for a vote. The questions, posed by different users, were “Why should I vote for Donald Trump?” and “Why should I vote for Kamala Harris?” Amazon has vouched that Alexa does not hold or express any political bias.
The inconsistency was highlighted by users posting videos of Alexa’s responses. For Donald Trump, the former President, Alexa asserted its inability to furnish content promoting a specific political entity or candidate. Curiously though, when asked about voting for Kamala Harris, Alexa articulated a catalog of reasons to vote for her, the Democratic candidate in November’s presidential election.
This included the significant point that Harris is a “strong candidate with a proven track record of accomplishment.” Alexa’s elaborations caused a ripple on social media platforms.
Acknowledging these inconsistencies, Amazon swiftly declared it an error and claimed to have fixed it.
“This was an error that was quickly fixed,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.
This situation draws parallels to a previous controversy involving Google’s search engine. Users searching for information regarding an assassination attempt on Trump in July were frustrated when Google’s autocomplete feature failed to provide relevant suggestions. Instead, the autocomplete function pointed to historical assassination attempts unrelated to the event, leading to accusations, particularly from figures like Donald Trump Jr., that Google was manipulating search results to favor Harris. Although Google denied any deliberate bias, the incident added to the concern that tech companies might be influencing political narratives, directly or indirectly. Both cases highlight the scrutiny Big Tech faces in maintaining neutrality during highly charged political climates.
Fake news now at peak as Kamala faces CNN “interview”

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 4, 2024
Wherever you look, it feels like we are being bombarded now with an unprecedented level of fake news. One reason may well be how the installed governments by western elites – military industrial complex and banking – are getting very skittish indeed about a shake up of world order in November when the airhead Kamala Harris takes on Donald Trump in the presidential elections. This new trend of installing a useful idiot into power has been around for decades across Africa and Asia where the U.S. and before that the UK installed their own despots to serve their own needs, so we shouldn’t be so shocked by someone like Harris having the landscape prepared for her.
To call Harris a ‘lightweight’ is understating her political verve. She has none of the conventional talents that politicians require like public speaking, or engaging with media, let alone having any ideas of her own which might make it one day to policy. For most Americans the choice in November is between Harris, who is essentially Biden 2.0 or Trump. Not exactly a tough call many might say since RFK endorsed Trump who traditionally he has not been a fan of; it’s as though he’s saying to Americans, “anything but Kamala. Do the maths”.
Media is of course playing a huge and certainly tawdry role in pushing her which is not generally noted by most Americans. For weeks she has ignored or avoided all serendipitous contact with journalists which surely must be orders from the elite who are controlling her. And there is good reason for this as the internet is awash with her talking gibberish. Or dancing.
Talking mumbo jumbo won’t help her at the polls against Trump who revels at the microphone and is not afraid to go head to head with journalists and unscripted interviews, despite him whining about how unfair the set-up is.
What he is alluding to is that left-wing media in America like CNN fake the news and as we saw recently almost certainly gave Kamala a print out of the questions she was going to face with her recent CNN interview where she was joined by her running mate just in case she did something which broadcast journalists call ‘goldfishing’ – an on-screen facial contortion where the lips and cheeks move, but nothing comes out of the mouth. In Kamala’s case, goldfishing might not be as bad as actually speaking, as she has shown us that there is not much between the ears. She is not overburdened with what many academics have of knowing too much and not being able to communicate in short sound bites. Harris doesn’t really know anything at all except a few talking points from Biden’s days. Her own people will be happy with the staged interview as they can at least counter op-ed writers who claim she is so lame that she avoids all press. Thanks CNN. Great jaaaabbbb.
Harris is seen as the most suitable candidate to further the causes of America’s military industrial complex whose six main companies cannot slow production down, unless they make job layoffs. The insatiable hunger of this machine is responsible for the lion’s share of U.S. foreign policy and Biden gave his cronies their one hundred Christmas’s when he created the Ukraine war and more recently Gaza. In Gaza the false reporting from western media is as repulsive as the images of children who have lost their entire brains and whose heads look like theatrical floppy props, which has become the day to day norm now when Israel bombs schools. Does anyone in the west in either camp still believe this is a “war” against Hamas fighters? With the recent invasion of West Bank and the rise of settlers stealing land there, surely the real story of Netanyahu’s campaign is there for all to see in plain light: ethnic cleansing on a grand scale to wipe Palestinians off the face of “Israel”. And still we read western journalists and op-ed writers parroting the line about ‘two state solutions’ and what the EU says, etc etc. By the time the chairs are arranged and the mineral water is put on the tables, there will not be a Palestinian left to even represent his or her own state. Everyone knows the two-state solution is a massive parody of diplo gibberish a bit like Kamala’s few media stints which are still good for a laugh today. And it’s an identical story in Ukraine. No western journalists can report on the true story of Ukrainian losses in Kursk and how the operation has blown up in Zelensky’s face. The omission of reporting key facts and data is just as bad as making up your stories, if not worse.
Monkeypox – Next p(L)andemic on its way?
August 21, 2024
Christine Anderson, a Member of the European Parliament, has penned an open letter to her fellow citizens:
Dear fellow citizens,
The following text contains some premium conspiracy theories on the subject of “monkeypox”. At least that’s what those who believe in what the TV tells them would claim. But because almost all of the old conspiracy theories have come true in the meantime, we are now getting a new supply:
As you probably know, the WHO has already issued the highest global health alert for monkeypox (Mpox) last week, although the spread is only limited to some regions of Africa.
You probably also know that a simulation game on the topic of “monkeypox” took place at the Munich Security Conference in 2021. One of the participants was Jeremy Farrar, the then director of the billion-dollar health foundation “Wellcome Trust” (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others). As luck would have it, Farrar has been Chief Scientist at the WHO since last year.
At the end of 2023, BioNTech enters into a strategic partnership with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). CEPI was founded in Davos in 2016 (WEF sends its regards) and is an alliance of the WHO, the EU Commission, individual governments, pharmaceutical companies, (private) donors and foundations. The “Wellcome Trust”, the Gates Foundation and the UN stand out in the 2024 investor overview.
In May 2024, BioNTech and CEPI announced that they are expanding their portfolio for mRNA vaccines – including vaccines against Mpox. At the same time, the monkeypox vaccine “Imvanex” from “Bavarian Nordic” is already being produced in Denmark and is the only one to be approved in both the EU and the USA.
So much for the crystal-clear facts. If you want to find out more, here is a good place to start: https://www.achgut.com/artikel/kleines_affenpocken_puzzle
In the meantime, during my own research, I came across further, rather disturbing information:
🚑 Did you know that the Austrian Red Cross (Tyrol section) for example, is now looking for new employees for vaccination centers? The tasks include managing patient flows, preparing barcodes and vaccination certificates as well as carrying out mobile vaccinations. Applicants are expected to be “assertive”, among other things. From the end of September, the new employees will receive a gross salary of around €2,450 per month at their place of work in Vienna. https://archive.is/l9CDN
💰 BioNTech previously announced in the German business newspaper Handelsblatt that they expect 90 percent of their total sales to be generated by the end of 2024. https://archive.is/Hhptk
🏗 Currently, BioNTech is building its first commercial African vaccine factory in Rwanda. The focus here also includes mRNA vaccines against Mpox. Some old acquaintances traveled to the opening: EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock gave themselves the dubious honor. Incidentally, Germany is supporting the development of the vaccine production in Rwanda with almost 36 million euros of German taxpayers’ money. https://archive.is/2Fcqd
⚠️ Dear readers, do you believe in coincidences?
‼️ I DO NOT!Kind regards,
Yours, Christine Anderson, MEP
Israel Wanted Disease and Genocide in Gaza, So Why Is It Agreeing to the Polio Vaccine Being Given?
Is Israel engaging in biological warfare against the Palestinians?

By Sam Husseini | September 1, 2024
In October 2023, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared: “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.’”
In November 2023, Middle East Eye reported in “Former Israel general says ‘severe epidemics’ in Gaza would help Israel win the war”:
“A retired senior Israeli general has said that Israel should not ‘shy away’ from permitting the outbreak of severe epidemics amongst Palestinians in southern Gaza as it will bring Israel ‘closer to victory.’
“‘The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics,’ retired Major General Giora Eiland, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, wrote Sunday.
“‘We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers.’
“Eiland went on to say that the Israeli government must take a ‘harder line’ against the US and rule out discussions about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza until all the hostages held in the besieged enclave are released.
“The opinion article elicited an endorsement from far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said, ‘I agree with every word.’”
Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch, executive director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, told me in November: “Due to Israel cutting off some of the supply of water and destroying key water infrastructure and storage tanks, people are being forced to drink water from unsafe sources. Dehydration and waterborne diseases are spreading and medicine is running out. There are outbreaks of chickenpox, scabies and diarrhea due to the shortage of water.”
The BBC reported in May that “Half of Gaza water sites damaged or destroyed, BBC satellite data reveals.”
Drop Site News reported in July in “The IDF Just Destroyed a Key Rafah Water Facility Rachel Corrie Spent Her Last Month of Life Defending” about a video showing the “calculated demolition of a chief water facility in Rafah. The video, in three parts, shows Israeli soldiers planting explosives inside and around the water pumps of a facility in the occupied city. The video — which is captioned in Hebrew, ‘Destruction of the Tal Sultan water reservoir in honor of Shabbat’ — ends with footage of the water facility being blown up. The soundtrack is a song produced by soldiers of the 51st Golani Brigade with lyrics like, ‘We will burn Gaza… shake all of Gaza… for every house you destroy we will destroy ten.’ …
“For months, Israeli forces have been targeting vital water resources in the strip leading to starvation and, according to new reports, worsening access to clean water. Last week, the Israeli military and the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that Poliovirus has been found in Gaza’s sewage, further intensifying the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the occupied enclave.”
The Daily Mail in August reported on Israelis who had been held captive in Gaza: “Blood tests also showed they had been exposed to a range of diseases, including typhus and spotted fever, during their 50 days in captivity. Many of them were also experiencing head lice due to poor hygiene conditions, including a lack of running water.”
The Vaccine
So, why is Israel reportedly agreeing to pauses to allow for administration of the polio vaccine? That may be hard to know for sure, but a few things that should be understood:
- The WHO is not what it seems to many people. There’s lots that can be said about that, but what I have examined is that the group’s chief scientist, Jeremy Farrar, who was a central figure, and perhaps the central figure, in the massive propaganda campaign which claimed in 2020 that Covid could not have a lab origin. It is simply not a credible organization just on that basis. Additionally, this gives a great deal of credence to arguments that the WHO is capable of making critical decisions with the aim of control, manipulation and publicity rather than the health and wellbeing of the global public.
- The vaccine being given to Palestinian children in Gaza is nOPV2, that is, novel oral polio vaccine, focusing on type 2 polio. Prior oral vaccines have been problematic. They contain attenuated (weakened) polio virus. This can be problematic since, as The Journal of Infectious Diseases noted in 2013: “With prolonged replication, attenuated polioviruses used in oral polio vaccine (OPV) can mutate into vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) and cause poliomyelitis [polio] outbreaks.”
- OPV was typically given in poorer countries. In rich counties like the US, what has been given is IPV which is made with inactive polio virus and given intramuscularly (an injection), not orally.
- According to the Polio Global Eradication Initiative (whose partners include the WHO, CDC and the Gates Foundation), the outbreak in Gaza is from Egypt. Curiously, the Initiative claims “the variant poliovirus could have been introduced in Gaza as early as September 2023” — that is, prior to Oct. 7. The Egyptian polio outbreak according to a recent article in BMC Infectious Diseases came from a “vaccine-derived polioviruses”. That is, the outbreak now in Gaza appears, according to these sources, to be the result of the negative effects of polio vaccines given in Egypt which mutated.
- In 2018, Science reported: “Alarming polio outbreak spreads in Congo, threatening global eradication efforts: Vaccine-derived virus spreads despite emergency response.”
- Neetu Vashisht and Jacob Puliye in 2012 wrote in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics : “It was hoped that following polio eradication, immunisation could be stopped. However the synthesis of polio virus in 2002, made eradication impossible. It is argued that getting poor countries to expend their scarce resources on an impossible dream over the last 10 years was unethical. … The charade about polio eradication and the great savings it will bring has persisted to date. It is a paradox, that while the director general of WHO, Margret Chan, and Bill Gates are trying to muster support for polio eradication (22) it has been known to the scientific community, for over 10 years, that eradication of polio is impossible.”
- Nature reported in 2023: “Vaccine-derived polio is undermining the fight to eradicate the virus: Wild polio has almost been eradicated, but vaccine-derived strains retain the potential to paralyse. Better vaccines have arrived — but they are only part of the answer.”
- nOPV2 is a relatively new vaccine. In March, the WHO noted that nOPV2 has been used since 2021 “under WHO Emergency Use Listing (EUL) approval”. A report posted on the CDC website notes that there have been cases of it causing polio as in Burundi and DRC, but apparently at a substantially lower rate than previous oral vaccines. But The BMJ reported in August 2023 in “Polio vaccines: hope, hype, and history repeating?” that despite a great deal of positive media spin: “Before it was approved for emergency use, scientists warned that nOPV2 would not solve the problem set for it: to stamp out vaccine-derived polio. So far, it has not done so. Instead there are unanswered questions about the vaccine’s performance, whether the decision to rely on it was right, and whether there’s a viable path to the dream of global eradication even with a full suite of modernised vaccines.”
- Some prior OPV disasters are outlined in Science from May, largely about the Gates Foundation: “‘Unqualified failure’ in polio vaccine policy left thousands of kids paralyzed”.
- It seems remarkable that the WHO and company can spot and prioritize a case of polio amid the carnage and devastation that Israel has wrecked on Gaza. It seems driven by ideology, control or interest rather than prioritizing the needs of the Palestinians in Gaza.
- nOPV2 requires another dose in four weeks. It is not clear to me what happens if someone gets one dose and not the second.
- While Israeli snipers are targeting children in the head, Israel is being depicted as agreeing to a truce to help save children from polio.
- Some have argued Israel’s goal is to ensure that there is not a polio outbreak in Gaza since that might threaten it — it’s an example of enlightened self-interest. However, this reasoning might be undermined by the fact that Israel has been giving its soldiers a polio vaccine. And they have been giving them the IPV vaccine, not the oral one given to Palestinians. This would indicate that they would be immune to it and Israel may effectively come off unscathed from a polio outbreak among the Palestinians. Also, IPV deals with all three types of polio. In 2022, Israel had cases of polio and the WHO reports IPA and OPV were used.
- The vaccines may be seen by some as a minimal help to Palestinians in Gaza, preventing yet another disaster. And the minimal pauses resulting may be seen as baby steps toward permanent ceasefire, but this seems quite optimistic, especially given Israel’s posture. It is quite possible that the nOPV2 vaccine is largely being done for public relations reasons. This was the case for the much hyped pier the US government was allegedly building to help the Palestinians in Gaza. Some thought that there was a diabolical plot around the pier — as a mechanism for mass expulsion for example. But it mostly served as a propaganda talking point to communicate alleged US government benevolence for months on end, giving cover for Israel to continue its genocide.
- Moreover, this is useful to distract from the failure of the UN to stop Israel’s carnage. Most especially the US-dominated UN Security Council has refused to implement orders from the International Court of Justice and virtually all states — with the notable exceptions of South Africa and Nicaragua — have failed in responsibilities under the Genocide Convention. The General Assembly has failed to take meaningful action using “Uniting for Peace”. So now, the WHO doing a hopefully minimally successful immunization effort is being used in various pronouncements to put a happy face for the UN system on the continuing catastrophe. See recent WHO/UN news conference.
- Perhaps most ominously however, it may be problematic to give attenuated oral polio vaccine to a population that is immunocompromised — which most certainly includes the Palestinians in Gaza. They desperately need food and clean water and basic medical care. A host of diseases are ravaging Gaza and reportedly, 100,000 people in Gaza have contracted acute jaundice syndrome, or suspected hepatitis A. From Options for Poliomyelitis Vaccination in the United States: “Those in whom OPV is contraindicated include individuals with immunodeficiency disorders… The risk of VAPP [Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis] in immunodeficient children is 3,000 times that in normal children.”
- Israel is virtually alone among industrialized countries in not signing the Biological Weapons Convention. Professor Francis Boyle drafted the U.S. Domestic Implementing Legislation for the BWC, the Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act of 1989 that was approved unanimously by both Houses of the United States Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush with the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice . He said the emergency authorization provisions “trigger the Nuremberg Code on Medical Experimentation [PDF] requiring that each recipient or their legal guardians be given informed and voluntary consent… It does not appear that this is being done in Gaza. … They are giving the live polio virus to Gaza kids whose immune systems have been severely compromised already since October 8.” He warns you could have an “entire next generation of Palestinian Children in Gaza wracked and disabled by polio. … This implicitly raises and supports the question whether Israel is engaging in biological warfare against the Palestinians here by means of using the live polio virus.”
- As the top of this article indicates, Israel is effectively using biological warfare against the Palestinian people by virtue of knocking out the water facilities. The open question is if the polio rollout is part of that or simply a response by international institutions — perhaps following funding incentives and other pressures — unable or unwilling to do their actual jobs to stop the ongoing genocide.
Ukrainian anthem found in US voter database code – Politico
RT | September 2, 2024
The Ukrainian anthem has been found embedded in the source code of the voter database in the state of New Hampshire, the development of which had apparently been outsourced to offshore programmers, according to Politico.
Election officials had previously decided to replace the state’s voter registration database before the upcoming 2024 presidential election and reportedly turned to a small Connecticut-based IT firm called WSD Digital to develop the software.
However, upon reviewing the completed project, it was revealed that the firm had offshored some of the work. Given that this posed a risk of unknown coders outside the US having access to the software and potentially being able to manipulate voter lists, New Hampshire officials hired a forensic firm to scour the code for signs of hidden malware.
The probe reportedly revealed a number of “unwelcome surprises,” Politico claimed, citing a person familiar with the investigation. These included the use of open-source code, software which had been misconfigured to connect to servers outside the country, and the lyrics to the Ukrainian national anthem.
“A programmer had hard-coded the Ukrainian national anthem into the database, in an apparent gesture of solidarity with Kiev,” Politico wrote.
State officials, however, have stated that none of these findings have amounted to evidence of wrongdoing and that all the issues had been resolved by the company in charge of the database’s development before it came into use.
“This was a disaster averted,” Politico’s source said, noting that hackers could have potentially exploited the vulnerabilities to edit the state’s voter rolls or use them to stoke election conspiracies.
While the potential catastrophe in New Hampshire has apparently been averted, Politico stated that its own six-month-long investigation into the matter suggests that similar issues could pop up in other states due to a lack of oversight of the development of vote-processing software.
“The technology vendors who build software used on Election Day face razor-thin profit margins” the outlet wrote, noting that this provides little room for crucial investments in security and results in many states lacking a rigorous system to verify what actually goes into election software.
Meanwhile, the FBI reported last month that it was “confident” that Iran has been trying to interfere in the upcoming election in November and had allegedly sought to gain access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties.
Tehran, however, has denied the accusations, calling them “unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing” and insisting that it has no intention in meddling in US elections.




