Timeless or most popular

Tax the Rich! An Alt-Right Plan to Virtually Eliminate Income Tax

By Thomas Dalton, Ph.D. | Occidental Observer | April 12, 2020

Everybody loves to hate taxes. As the old saying implies, taxes are right up there with death among humanity’s least favorite things. Yet they are as old as civilization itself; tax records have been found from as far back as the Ur III dynasty of 2,000 BC, and possibly older. And we can be sure that its residents paid them grudgingly. Tax resistance is a perennial theme in history, dating back to Jesus, at least, and his alleged “forbidding us to pay taxes to Caesar” (Luke 23:2). Lady Godiva’s mythic ride through Coventry was allegedly on behalf of excessive taxes. Dozens of wars, revolts, and uprisings in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries occurred over taxation. We all know of the infamous “no taxation without representation” and the Boston Tea Party, leading to the American Revolution. Thoreau was briefly jailed in 1846 over a failure to pay taxes, in an act of civil disobedience against the Mexican-American War. Among the American public, there was significant resistance to tax increases during both World Wars and the Vietnam War. Even today, scarcely a month goes by without some anti-tax action making the news somewhere in the world.

And yet, everyone except pure anarchists wants some level of service from their government, and thus we all more or less accept the inevitable. Everyone has their favorite governmental program that they want funded; but they always want someone else to pay for it. We all would love to get something for nothing from the feds. But most of us realize that government cannot function without revenue, and that it cannot simply create money out of thin air—at least, not indefinitely. And so we pay.

Most galling of all, I suppose, is income tax: government “tribute” taken directly from our paychecks, before we see a single penny. Long hard hours put in, the daily grind, dealing with obnoxious bosses and coworkers, moronic customers, deadlines, 60-hour weeks…and then the government steps in and takes its “fair share.” We can sometimes get tricky and defer payment until Tax Day, but eventually the bill comes due; and we pay. In the US, the average worker pays 20–25 percent of income to the federal government, and another 5 percent to state or local governments: upwards of a third of our income, gone, lost, squandered.

But what if we—most of us, anyway—didn’t have to pay any income tax? What if we could have all the same governmental services that we do today, but surrender nothing from our hard-earned paychecks? It may surprise the reader to know that, for most of the history of the USA, citizens paid no income tax at all. And for decades more, only a very small percentage paid them. For 150 years, it worked. What if we could have that again? And what if the lost funds could be covered, in large part, by that most prosperous of ethnic minorities? There would be a sort of sublime justice in that, would there not?

A Short History of Taxation in America

Born out of tax revolt, the early United States government was uniquely sensitive to the question of taxation. Much of the debate centered on the role and size of a federal government. The so-called federalists, like Madison and Hamilton, argued for a strong central government and hence significant taxation, whereas others like Jefferson defended a small, decentralized, states-rights model that necessarily required lesser federal taxes. But neither side wanted to tax the nation’s farmers and small businessmen, and so it was agreed that import taxes—tariffs—would be employed to fund the government. These were easy to collect at ports of entry, and they had the added benefit of protecting nascent American industries. Tariffs, along with a few selected excise taxes on specific commodities, funded the entire federal government.

Correspondingly, the early government was relatively small. At no time in those early years did federal spending exceed 5 percent of the nation’s GDP; whereas today, the figure is around 21 percent.[1] Jefferson’s argument evidently held sway, for well into the nineteenth century. The US continued to rely almost exclusively on tariffs and minor excise taxes, right up to the Civil War. Thus, for the first 85 years of its existence, the United States had precisely zero income tax.

With the advent of the Civil War in 1860, things changed, at least temporarily. The Revenue Act of 1861 imposed a 3% tax on income over $800 (equivalent to about $25,000 today). The income threshold was lowered the following year to $600, thus bringing in additional revenue. In 1864, the rate increased to 5% for most wage-earners, and up to 10% for the highest incomes. In any case, it was all justified only by the exigencies of war. With Union victory in 1865, the on-going need vanished and the income tax was rightly abolished a few years later.

For the next two decades, the nation again relied on tariffs for the vast majority of its funding. But meanwhile, pressure to reduce them steadily grew, in part to allow for lower prices for businesses and consumers on imported items. Congressmen realized, however, that another tax would be needed to offset the lost revenue. Hence came the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act of 1894, which reintroduced income taxes, now of 2% on earnings over $4,000—equivalent to about $120,000 today. It was truly a tax for the well-off.

Unfortunately for the government, it was also unconstitutional. When a New York company, Farmer’s Loan and Trust, attempted to enforce the law, a wealthy stockholder, Charles Pollock, objected, sued the company, and won in the Supreme Court. It seems that, at the time, the US Constitution had no provision for a “direct” tax on income without a complex system of apportionment, i.e., payment back to the states. In effect, by the court’s ruling, the income tax was functionally abolished. For the next 20 years, the feds again had to rely on import tariffs.

This little dilemma was resolved in 1913 with the passing of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It reads, in full: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” There were some oddities connected with both the wording of the amendment and the ratification process, but I won’t go into those here.[2] In any case, Congress wasted no time, and the Revenue Act of 1913[3] reduced tariffs but imposed a 1% tax on income over $3,000, rising to a rate of 6% on incomes over $500,000. The income threshold of $3,000—about $78,000 today—effectively applied only to the top three percent of earners; a full 97% of Americans were unaffected. The vast majority of people continued to pay no income tax.

The Revenue Act of 1913 was gladly signed into law on October 3^rd of that year, by first-term president Woodrow Wilson. For his part, Wilson seems to have been the first president elected with the full blessing of the Jewish Lobby. As Henry Ford saw it, “Mr. Wilson, while President, was very close to the Jews. His administration, as everyone knows, was predominantly Jewish”.^[12] His major political donors were Jews, including the likes of Henry Morgenthau, Jacob Schiff, Samuel Untermyer, Paul Warburg, Bernard Baruch, and Louis Brandeis. Wilson was also the first president to fully reward their support; Morgenthau was named ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and Warburg was appointed as the first chairman of the newly-formed Federal Reserve. Later, Baruch would assume vast powers in his War Industries Board, and Brandeis would become the first Jew on the Supreme Court.

Onset of War

Meanwhile, trouble was brewing in Europe. A complex series of treaties and alliances, combined with the untimely assassination of Archduke Ferdinand on 28 June 1914, inaugurated the First World War. For a full two years, the US avoided entanglement. Wilson ran for his second term in late 1916 with the slogan “He kept us out of war.” But to no avail; soon after winning, he declared war on Germany, in April 1917.

With the US now involved, revenues would need to be drastically increased, and one obvious means was via the income tax. Hence the War Revenue Act of 1917: a quadrupled rate of 4% (still with a $3,000 per year income threshold), along with incremental marginal rates ranging from 1% to 50%.

Into the last year of the war, 1918, rates again increased: combined rates ranged from 6% to 77%. Also, the income threshold was lowered to $1,000 per year (for individuals), drawing in many more taxpayers—though still amounting to just five percent of all taxpayers.

Postwar, the US experienced both the Roaring ‘20s and the Great Depression of the ‘30s, all while retaining the same basic tax structure. As Benjamin Ginsberg explains,

Prior to the New Deal [of the 1930s]…a high tax threshold and numerous exemptions meant that only about 3 percent of American adults were subject to [income] tax. … The system depended on more or less voluntary compliance by a small number of well-to-do individuals. This meant that income taxation was not at first a major source of federal revenue.[13]

Thus, right up until the eve of World War Two, and excepting for a few years during the Civil War, the vast majority of Americans paid no income tax at all—in over 150 years. But that was about to change, thanks to Hebraic influence in the US Treasury.

Onset of War (again)

Just as Henry Morgenthau, Sr.’s political patronage of Wilson earned him a prime governmental post, so too his son, Henry Jr, earned the favors of the next wartime president, Franklin Roosevelt. Henry Jr and FDR went back many years, well before the latter’s stint as governor of New York in the late 1920s. As FDR prepared for his run for president, Henry and other Jews were there, happy to donate. As Myron Scholnick explains, “A number of wealthy Jewish friends contributed to Roosevelt’s pre-nomination campaign fund: Henry Morgenthau Jr., Lt. Gov. Lehman, Jessie Straus, [and] Laurence Steinhardt.” Once the primaries were out of the way, “Roosevelt’s campaign was heavily underwritten by Bernard Baruch”.[14] As with Wilson, FDR did not fail to reward his donors; Morgenthau, for example, was named Secretary of Treasury in early 1934.

But it wasn’t only Morgenthau, of course. In time-honored tradition, Henry brought in a host of fellow Jews to help direct American economic policy. “Among those working for Morgenthau at Treasury were large numbers of Jewish economists and statisticians, including such contemporary and future luminaries as Jacob Viner, Walter Salant, Herbert Stein, and Milton Friedman, who helped to fundamentally change America’s tax system…”[15] And change it they did.

War came again to Europe in September 1939, and by late 1940 it was becoming increasingly apparent that the US would get drawn in, one way or another.[16] Total federal spending in 1939 was about $8 billion, of which around $1 billion (12%) came from personal income taxes. But with war looming, Morgenthau and friends knew that spending, and thus revenue, would need to dramatically increase. They had three options: personal income tax, corporate income tax, and war bonds. So they set to work; “in the realms of both taxation and bond sales, Jews played major roles,” writes Ginsberg.[17]

Special emphasis was placed on increasing personal income taxes, both by lowering the threshold for paying, and by increasing the tax rates. The effect was dramatic. The number of taxpaying adults increased from a very modest 1 million in 1939, to 5 million in 1941, to 40 million in 1942—at the time, constituting virtually all non-farm wage-earning adults. Corresponding revenues soared from $1 billion to $40 billion by the last years of the war. Revenue increases matched spending increases, as federal expenditures rose from $8 billion in 1940 to over $100 billion by 1945.

At the start of the war, however, the Treasury Jews knew that enforcement of new tax laws would be difficult. Millions of Americans who had never even considered the possibility of paying an income tax were suddenly asked to contribute thousands of dollars. What to do? Morgenthau’s boys devised a clever plan: “a number of Jewish economists [including Milton Friedman and Morgenthau himself] championed the introduction of payroll withholding, or ‘collection at the source,’ which to this day ensures a smooth, regular flow of billions of dollars into the federal government’s coffers”.[18] That is, the government would work with employers to extract the worker’s share of taxes prior to paying their wages. Corporations were much easier to coerce than unruly citizens, and rates could be arbitrarily raised in the future with little fuss. This tactic was a “central feature” of the 1943 Revenue Act, and would remain in effect for all future years. Thanks to payroll withholding, income tax evolved “from a minor tax levied on wealthy Americans into a major tax levied on all Americans”.[19]

With this glorious new cash cow in place, the Treasury Jews—currently headed by Steven Mnuchin—never looked back. As a result, Americans today pay an astonishing $2.1 trillion in income and “payroll” (FICA, or social security plus Medicare) taxes, accounting for roughly 68% of all federal revenue. In other words, over two-thirds of the entire funding of our federal government comes directly out of citizens’ paychecks. This monumental burden is carried by 84% of all households, who pay either income tax, or payroll tax or, most likely, both. Most of the remaining 16% of households—representing about 50 million people—earn too little to pay any income tax at all.

And yet even this is not enough for our voracious feds. The $2.1 trillion is supplemented by some $760 billion in corporate taxes (income tax plus their share of payroll), and another $260 billion in excise and estate taxes. In sum, the government currently takes in about $3.3 trillion. But it spends around $4.1 trillion annually, mostly on defense and military-related costs, which approach a breath-taking $1.25 trillion per year.[20] The difference—an annual deficit of about $800 billion—is pushed onto future taxpayers, in the form of additions to the federal debt, which currently stands at nearly $22 trillion. We may be excused for holding the feds in contempt.

Return of the “3 Percent” Plan

So: What to do? Here’s one idea: Let’s return to the old “3 percent” rule—that is, that the entire income tax burden should again be borne by the richest 3% of households. It worked for the decades leading up to World War II, and it could work again. After all, we’re not at war—the last formally-declared war was in fact World War II—and apart from sporadic ‘terrorist’ actions, the world is generally at peace. In a peacetime economy, the wealthiest Americans should rightly bear the full cost of income taxation.

There are several ways to make this happen, but let me lay out one proposal here. Data exists to make a reasonably accurate set of calculations. Here are the numbers:

At present, we have about 160 million tax households in the US, representing our 325 million people. The top one percent—that is, the richest 1.6 million households—earn an average of about $880,000 per year.[21] The second-richest one percent earn around $400,000 on average, and the 3^rd one-percent about $325,000. Altogether, our top 3% are paid about $2.6 trillion every year.

The problem, however, is that we need to raise $2.1 trillion in taxes from these folks. The simplest way would be to tax them at a flat rate of 80%. Imagine: you earn a hefty $1 million per year from your vulture capitalist hedge fund, and you have to pay $800,000 to the feds. Hard to make those yacht payments on just $200,000 a year.

Cruel, you say? Perhaps. Fortunately, we have an alternative. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that most of our top 3-percenters (in terms of income) are also millionaires or billionaires (in terms of assets). They have real assets—assets that can be taxed. Each household in the top one-percent, in fact, owns an average of $22 million in assets—mostly in property, stocks and bonds, and corporate equity. The second percentile household owns some $7.5 million, on average; the 3^rd percentile, $5 million. In total, this group of individuals owns or controls about $56 trillion in assets—an utterly incredible sum, to say the least.

Here then is my proposal: tax the upper 3-percenters income at a flat rate of 60%; this will raise about $1.5 trillion annually. Then let’s also impose a mere 1% wealth tax on their assets, which will raise another $560 billion. In sum, we get nearly exactly the desired total of $2.1 trillion. Our richest people have fully funded the federal government. And the remaining 97% of us—around 315 million people—get to keep all of our hard-earned income. Imagine that.

And who, exactly, are these poor buggers who are about to personally fund the federal government? We know the big names: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, the Koch brothers. But they are just the tip of the iceberg. When we run down the list of leading names, we find a striking fact: around half of them are Jews. Among the top ten, we find five Jews: Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg. Of the top 50, at least 27 are Jews, including Sheldon Adelson, Steve Ballmer, Michael Dell, Carl Icahn, David Newhouse, Micki Arison, and Stephen Ross.[22] More broadly, we can cite once again Benjamin Ginsberg, who wrote, “Today, though barely 2% of the nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews”.[23]

Based on such data, we can infer that up to half of the top 3-percenters are Jews.[24] As a whole, they therefore own or control up to $28 trillion in assets. On my proposal, they will correspondingly pay half of the annual $2.1 trillion to keep our government afloat, and to fight foreign wars on their behalf. As the prime beneficiaries of American economic policy, this is only fair.

At a minimum, some such proposal deserves wider discussion, given that it offers massive financial benefit to fully 97% of the nation. By rights, something like this should be discussed in every political debate and on every nighttime news program. The closest thing we have to this is Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax proposal: 2% on assets between $50 million and $1 billion, and 3% on assets over $1 billion. By my estimates, this would apply only to the top 0.1% of households (versus my 3%), and would only bring in, she says, around $275 billion annually (versus my $560 billion). It’s weak, but at least a step in the right direction. And yet her proposal got almost no discussion, and virtually no endorsement. This is unsurprising, given that our media bosses include multi-millionaire Jews like Bob Iger and Ben Sherwood at Disney/ABC, David Levy and Jeff Zucker at Warner/CNN, Noah Oppenheim and Andrew Lack at NBC, and Sumner and Shari Redstone at Viacom/CBS. They certainly have no interest in any wealth tax, as it would hit them directly in the pocketbook. By definition, if it’s bad for them, it’s bad, period.

Still, such a tax system, disproportionately falling on American Jews, would have vast implications. Think of it: A $1 trillion annual contribution from the American Jewish community, in order to provide for the health and security of all Americans. It would go a long way toward burnishing their long-besmirched image, and lessening anti-Jewish hostility. By draining away some of their excessive wealth, it would reduce their ability to meddle in government and the corporate world. It would be a boon to the US economy, lifting millions out of poverty and allowing millions more to get out from under crushing debt. It would serve as a measure of true economic justice. And it would allow for an honest, transparent, fair, and just system of taxation.

But don’t hold your breath.

[1] Federal spending is now about $4.1 trillion, which is roughly 21% of our current GDP of $21 trillion. More on this below.

[2] See, for example, the work of Bill Benson and his book The Law That Never Was (www.thelawthatneverwas.com).

[3] Also known as the ‘Underwood Tariff’ or the ‘Underwood-Simmons Act.’

[4] To say that Stolypin was no friend of the Jews is an understatement. He once wrote: “It is important that racial characteristics have so drastically set the Jewish people apart from the rest of humanity as to make them totally different creatures who cannot enter into our concept of human nature” (in A. Vaksberg, Stalin Against the Jews, 1994, p. 6).

[5] News reports of these events, especially in the New York Times, consistently referred to “6 million” suffering Jews—but that’s a story for another time. See my book Debating the Holocaust (4^th ed. 2020, pp. 53-64).

[6] In S. Singer, “President Taft and the Jews” (The Jewish Press, 23 Dec 2015). Sazonov served from 1910 to 1916.

[7] N. Cohen, 1963, “The abrogation of the Russo-American treaty of 1832,” Jewish Social Studies 25(1).

[8] Prelude to Catastrophe (2010; Ivan Dee), p. 22.

[9] Indeed—a “special effort” was made to get the support of Wilson, “whose influence was rising within the Democratic ranks” (p. 32).

[10] For a fuller treatment of this incident and its implications, see my book The Jewish Hand in the World Wars (2019).

[11] The Jews and Modern Capitalism (1911/1982; Transaction), p. 44.

[12] Dearborn Independent, 11 June 1921. The entire ‘international Jew’ series ran without a byline, and so for sake of convenience I attribute it to Ford—even though it is unlikely that he wrote the pieces himself.

[13] How the Jews Defeated Hitler (2013; Rowman), p. 57.

[14] The New Deal and Antisemitism in America (1990; Taylor and Francis), p. 193.

[15] Ginsberg, p. 56.

[16] Again, as with WW1, there was a prominent Jewish role in our entry into the war; see Dalton (2019)—supra note 10.

[17] Ginsberg, p. 56.

[18] Ginsberg, p. 57.

[19] Ginsberg, p. 59.

[20] Total annual military-related spending includes several categories, far beyond simply the Dept of Defense. In 2019, it was reported that total military-related spending exceeded $1 trillion. This includes: base DOD budget ($550 billion), “war” budget, aka OCO ($174 billion), DOE and nuclear spending ($25 billion), FBI defense-related ($9 billion), Veterans Affairs ($216 billion), Homeland Security ($69 billion), international affairs and foreign military aid (mostly to Israel) ($51 billion), military intelligence, CIA, and NSA ($80 billion), and lastly, defense-related share of the national debt ($156 billion)—for a total cost of $1.25 trillion. For details, see “America’s defense budget is bigger than you think,” http://www.thenation.com (7 May 2019).

[21] Howard Gold, “Never mind the 1 percent, let’s talk about the 0.01 percent”, 2017 (https://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2017/article/never-mind-1-percent-lets-talk-about-001-percent).

[22] Bloomberg Billionaires Index (2018).

[23] The Fatal Embrace (1993; Univ of Chicago Press), p. 1.

[24] For details, see my TOO article “A brief look at Jewish wealth” (7 Feb 2019).

April 13, 2020 Posted by aletho | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | United States | Leave a comment

Meet The Companies Poised To Build The Kushner-Backed “Coronavirus Surveillance System”

By Whitney Webb | The Last American Vagabond | April 11, 2020

The three companies behind the leading proposal to build a “national coronavirus surveillance system”, an initiative spearheaded by Jared Kushner, boast deep ties to Google, intelligence-linked venture capital firms as well as one of last year’s eerily predictive “pandemic” simulations.

On April 7, Politico reported that the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was spearheading an all-private sector taskforce that aims to build a “national coronavirus surveillance system” in order to “give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what.”

This proposed nationwide network, according to that report, would be used to better inform government decision-making regarding which parts of the United States may “safely relax social-distancing rules” and those that may not. Politico treaded lightly in its discussion of such a system’s likely effects on civil liberties, but did note that some critics have compared this proposed system “to the Patriot act enacted after the 9/11 attacks.”

According to Politico, three companies collectively sent out a memo on March 22 to three administration officials – Jared Kushner, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. The memo was “widely circulated” throughout the administration relative to other submitted proposals. Those companies – Collective Medical, PatientPing and Juvare – asserted in the memo that they could collectively “supply the government with information on where and how many patients are seeking care across 80 percent of the U.S. ‘in short order.’”

Two of those companies, Collective Medical Technologies and PatientPing, declined to comment on the memo and its contents. A representative from Juvare, however, stated that the company has “spoken with officials across several federal agencies including FEMA, HHS and the CDC about its various emergency preparedness and data tools.”

Though the article downplayed the privacy concerns such a system would create, it failed to note the direct and troubling ties of these three companies, not only to Silicon Valley giants with dubious records regarding data privacy and coordination with U.S. intelligence agencies, but also ties to controversial simulations that took place last year and seemingly predicted the current coronavirus crisis.

Collective Medical Technologies

Utah-based Collective Medical Technologies is currently the nation’s largest “healthcare collaboration network” and was recently described by Forbes as having “conquered emergency rooms on a bootstrap.” Its current CEO, Chris Klomp, worked at the Mitt Romney-founded Bain Capital, whose alumni also include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and current CEO of Google’s YouTube, Susan Wojicki.

One of Collective Medical’s largest investors is the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, which poured $47.5 million into the company in 2017. Kleiner Perkins, an early investor in both Google and Amazon, counts former Secretary of State Colin Powell among its “strategic advisors” and has managed a $200 million “pandemic and biodefense fund” since 2006 that has been coordinated in part with the World Health Organization. That same year, Dr. Thomas Monmath, former chief of the Fort Detrick bioweapon lab’s Virology Division and former senior science advisor to the CIA, also joined Kleiner Perkins to help “advance innovation” in relation to this specific fund. Dr. Monmath is also a former executive at an Emergent Biosolutions subsidiary.

Kleiner Perkin’s pandemic fund has heavily invested in companies that compose the Emergent Biosolutions-run Alliance for Biosecurity, such as BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, as well as NovaVax, which recently entered into a major partnership with Emergent Biosolutions to produce a coronavirus vaccine. Emergent Biosolutions, one of the most scandal ridden vaccine companies in the country with deep ties to the U.S. government and the Pentagon, is the subject of an investigation recently published by The Last American Vagabond.

PatientPing

Boston-based PatientPing is another company in this private sector triad lobbying to form a new national “health” surveillance system in the name of combatting the coronavirus epidemic. Founded by Jay Desai and David Berkowicz, PatientPing is a technology company focused on information-sharing in order to create a “healthcare collaboration network.” The company’s first lead investor was Google Ventures, often referred to in press releases and media reports simply as “GV.” Dr. Krishna Yeshwant of Google Ventures sits on PatientPing’s board and he also led GV’s investment in Editas Medicine, the CRISPR gene-editing start-up backed by Bill Gates and his former scientific advisor Boris Nikolic.

As its name suggests, GV is the venture capital arm of Google and over a third of its investments are in the “life sciences.” It frequently co-invests in companies with In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. The cooperation is hardly surprising if one is aware of Google’s history, as the technology behemoth was a beneficiary of In-Q-Tel funding in its early days.

Google’s use (or rather misuse) of private data is well-known and they have recently been in the news in relation to the coronavirus after giving the government broad access to the private location data of Android smartphone users to allegedly help track the virus’ spread. GV’s association with In-Q-Tel and their interest in a company like PatientPing is notable given that In-Q-Tel, particularly In-Q-Tel’s current Executive Vice President Tara O’Toole, has long promoted mass surveillance programs that utilize healthcare IT services just like those offered by PatientPing and Collective Medical Technologies. O’Toole is a key and recurrent figure in The Last American Vagabond’s “Engineering Contagion” series.

PatientPing’s other lead investor is the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz. Andreesen Horowitz is advised by former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, an associate of pedophile and intelligence asset Jeffery Epstein as well as billionaire Bill Gates. This same venture capital firm is also one of the lead investors in Toka, an Israeli intelligence-linked “start-up” founded by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was also a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein. Toka describes its product portfolio as “empower[ing] governments, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies to enhance Homeland Security with groundbreaking cyber-intelligence and operational capabilities” by allowing government’s covert access to consumer electronic devices. Two members of Andreesen Horowitz, Jeff Jordan and Vijay Pande, sit on PatientPing’s board.

Juvare

The last of the three companies poised to build a national coronavirus surveillance system is the emergency management software company Juvare. One of their key products is called EMTrack, which – according to Juvare’s website – provides its clients the ability to track “patients, people, pets and populations throughout any kind of event.” Its software, in general, relies heavily on Google-made or owned software.

Juvare boasts that its products have been used by the government to coordinate responses to mass shootings, such as the Las Vegas and Pulse Nightclub shootings, and past pandemic scares such as Swine Flu (H1N1), Bird Flu, Ebola and SARS. Juvare’s software products are used by 80% of state public health agencies and over 50 different U.S. federal agencies – including the FBI, the State Department and Homeland Security. It is also a contractor for the U.S. military. In Mid-March, it released a “free” software add-on for existing clients in government to track coronavirus cases including “presumptive cases” as well as the number of those under “mandatory and voluntary” quarantines.

Juvare was a notable private sector participant in the series of “Crimson Contagion” simulations that were conducted last year by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Crimson Contagion, overseen and designed by HHS Assistance Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Robert Kadlec (also a key player in the “Engineering Contagion” series), simulated the U.S. government’s response to a massive viral pandemic four times between last January and August. Those simulations involved both large and small-scale exercises that brought together 19 different federal agencies, 12 states and several private companies. One focus of those simulations, which preceded the coronavirus crisis by a matter of months, was the use of the surveillance in order to better enforce “social distancing” among Americans.

Here to help?

Though these private companies – as noted by Politico – are now offering their services of “surveillance” to the U.S. government “for free,” it is difficult to believe that their offer is altruistic in nature given their ties to companies and organizations that have long lobbied for or actively participated in mass surveillance for years, long before the current coronavirus came to dominate headlines and the public consciousness.

Much like the Patriot Act after 9/11, the current pandemic crisis is being used to expand mass surveillance programs, programs that are unlikely to end after the pandemic fades. To the contrary, if history is any indicator, such sweeping new surveillance systems will instead be further expanded.

It is also worth pointing out the significance of Jared Kushner’s involvement in leading this effort, as his wife Ivanka Trump – the President’s daughter – was one of the leading proponents of a controversial program last year called the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARPA). HARPA seeks to create a new government “health” agency aimed at stopping mass shootings before they occur. This agency’s main program, called “Safe Home” (Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes), aims to develop an artificial intelligence-based system that would analyze data harvested from consumer electronic devices as well as information provided by health-care providers to identify those who might threaten others.

Though HARPA ultimately failed to gain traction, a similarly Orwellian mass surveillance system is now being promoted in its place, with coronavirus now replacing mass shootings as the official justification. The superficial re-branding of this new, far-reaching mass surveillance system aims to justify its imposition by framing it as a solution to whatever is currently inspiring the most fear among Americans, with the hope that something sticks. These transparent attempts to gain public consent for further expansion of unconstitutional surveillance strongly suggests that such a system is aimed at expanding authoritarianism and further reducing American civil liberties and has little to do with protecting “public health” and assisting the country’s response to coronavirus.

April 12, 2020 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | Google, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

COVID-19 and Vitamin D: Could We Be Missing Something Simple?

By Katie Weisman and the Children’s Health Defense Team | April 7, 2020

Introduction

Briefly, the literature on Vitamin D’s role in immune health has exploded in the past 10 years, particularly in relation to viral infections and autoimmune disorders. Approximately 80% of the literature is new in the past decade and much of it has been published overseas. There are studies showing that Vitamin D sufficiency is important to reduce mortality in ventilated patients. There is a large and growing literature on Vitamin D’s role in preventing viral infections and reducing their severity.

The populations at highest risk of severe cases of COVID-19 (the elderly and those with underlying health conditions) and the timing of the outbreak (end of winter in the Northern Hemisphere when population Vitamin D levels are typically lowest) are consistent with deficient Vitamin D status being a risk factor for COVID-19. The relatively small percentage of infections in children may reflect children’s higher milk consumption since milk is fortified with Vitamins A and D. Vitamin D is both a vitamin and a steroid hormone with hundreds of roles in our bodies.

A 2018 study based on NHANES data from 2001-2010 found that 28.9% of American adults were Vitamin D deficient (serum 25(OH)D<20ng/ml) and an additional 41.4% of American adults were Vitamin D insufficient (serum 25(OH)D between 20ng/ml and 30ng/ml). Americans who were black, less-educated, poor, obese, current smokers, physically inactive or infrequently consumed milk had higher prevalence of Vitamin D deficiency. Those with intestinal disorders (Crohn’s or celiac) that reduce dietary uptake of Vitamin D and those with liver or kidney diseases that may reduce the body’s conversion of Vitamin D to its active form may also be at increased risk of deficiency regardless of age. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble steroid hormone that regulates over 200 genes in the human body.

Questions that need answers

Based on the breadth of the research on Vitamin D in acute respiratory disorders and the many viral infections in which Vitamin D status plays a role, the following questions need to be answered:

Are hospitalized COVID-19 patients Vitamin D deficient (serum 25(OH)D levels < 20ng/ml) or insufficient (levels between 20ng/ml and 30ng/ml)?
Are hospitalized COVID-19 patients more Vitamin D deficient than would be expected in matched controls?
Are hospitalized COVID-19 patients who need intensive care more Vitamin D deficient?
Does giving high-dose Vitamin D to COVID-19 patients reduce their need for mechanical ventilation and/or reduce the amount of time that they require mechanical ventilation?
Does giving high-dose Vitamin D to health-care workers reduce their risk of COVID-19?
If Vitamin D deficiency is found in severe COVID-19 patients, what recommendation should be made to the general public, particularly those who are quarantined and/or fighting infections at home?

While only time and studies will give us definitive answers to these questions, Vitamin D testing is widely available, supplements are inexpensive and in a COVID-19 critical care setting we should consider anything that might reduce the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Even a 10% reduction in one of these metrics would have a major impact.

The literature supports the importance of Vitamin D sufficiency

There are studies suggesting that sufficient Vitamin D reduces the risk of acute respiratory infections. Also, the literature supports the importance of Vitamin D sufficiency in reducing morbidity and mortality in critical care settings. This is a sample of the literature.

A 2017 article in the BMJ states the following: “25 eligible randomized controlled trials (total 11 321 participants, aged 0 to 95 years) were identified… Vitamin D supplementation reduced the risk of acute respiratory tract infection among all participants (adjusted odds ratio 0.88, 95% confidence interval 0.81 to 0.96; P for heterogeneity <0.001).” The protective effects were greatest in those who were deficient (serum levels <25 nmol/L = 10ng/ml) and in those who took Vitamin D regularly (on a daily or weekly basis) compared to large bolus doses.

Another 2018 review of the literature specifically in intensive care settings suggests that the non-significant results in some large trials of Vitamin D supplementation are likely the result of including subjects who are Vitamin D sufficient in the trials and not excluding Vitamin D supplements in the control groups. The authors are clear that “three different meta-analyses confirm that patients with low vitamin D status have a longer ICU stay and increased morbidity and mortality” and that “this hormone plays an important pleiotropic (having more than one effect) role in the setting of critical illness and may support recovery from severe acute illness.”

A small 2019 Iranian study recommended larger follow-up studies after randomizing 44 mechanically ventilated adult patients to 300,000 IU of Vitamin D vs. placebo. The study found a significant reduction in mortality (61.1% vs. 36.3%) and a non-significant 10-day reduction in time on the ventilator.

In a 2018 follow-up pilot study they found that in critically ill, ventilated patients, with Vitamin D deficiency and anemia, high-dose Vitamin D increased hemoglobin.

Additionally, a research group at Emory published a 2016 pilot study showing that high-dose Vitamin D decreased hospital length of stay in ventilated ICU patients. In a 2018 follow-up pilot study they found that in critically ill, ventilated patients, with Vitamin D deficiency and anemia, high-dose Vitamin D increased hemoglobin.

A 2017 study found that “Monthly high-dose vitamin D₃ supplementation reduced the incidence of ARI (acute respiratory infections) in older long-term care residents but was associated with a higher rate of falls without an increase in fractures.”

A 2015 study in Thorax found that Vitamin D deficiency was common in patients who developed acute respiratory distress syndrome after esophagectomy.

A 2018 study in the Indian Journal of Anesthesia reported no significant results in mechanically respirated patients based on Vitamin D deficiency vs. sufficiency at admission, but this was likely due to small sample size. The trends for days in the ICU, days on mechanical ventilation, days to spontaneous breathing trial and 30-day mortality were all more favorable in the group with sufficient Vitamin D.

In another 2018 Iranian study of 46 patients with Vitamin D deficiency and Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia, a single dose of 300,000 IU of Vitamin D compared to placebo significantly reduced serum levels of IL-6 and significantly reduced mortality. IL-6 is a cytokine that is typically elevated in acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Unlike the above studies, a large 2014 Austrian study of 492 critically ill patients with Vitamin D deficiency did not find significant results with Vitamin D supplementation for most of its outcome measures. The only significant result was decreased hospital mortality in the severely Vitamin D deficient subgroup. However, this study population included surgical, neurological and medical patients and it is possible that Vitamin D is only relevant for respiratory infections. Also, this study reported no serious adverse events using very high doses of Vitamin D in a critically ill population.

A 2017 rat study showed that pretreatment with calcitriol (the active form of Vitamin D) reduced lipopolysaccharide-induced acute lung injury by modulating the renin-angiotensin system. ACE and ACE2 are part of this system and ACE2 is the binding site of SARS-CoV2 on cells. There is an unresolved ongoing debate on whether angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE inhibitors) used to treat blood pressure and heart conditions increase or decrease the risk of SARS-CoV2 infection. How Vitamin D deficiency might fit into this discussion is an open question.

Interestingly, a 2018 case-control study of 532 Japanese workers found that in a subgroup of participants without vaccination, vitamin D sufficiency was associated with a significantly lower risk of influenza.

Research on Vitamin D in other viral infections

Vitamin D deficiency has been studied in many viruses and, generally, sufficient Vitamin D levels lead to lower rates of infection and less severe cases. This research is a combination of in vitro and in vivo studies. There is no specific literature on coronaviruses so we looked for research on Vitamin D in other viral infections including Influenza, HIV, Dengue, Epstein Barr, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C. Some examples follow:

A 2018 Chinese trial of two different doses of Vitamin D in 400 infants showed significantly lower risk of influenza A, reduced viral load and reduced duration of symptoms in the group on the higher dose. A similar 2010 study in Japanese school children found that 1200 IU/day of Vitamin D reduced Influenza A infections from 18.6% in the placebo group to 10.8% in the supplemented group. The supplemented children with asthma also had a reduced risk of asthma attacks. Interestingly, a 2018 case-control study of 532 Japanese workers found that “In a subgroup of participants without vaccination, vitamin D sufficiency (≥30 ng/mL) was associated with a significantly lower risk of influenza (odds ratio 0.14; 95% confidence interval 0.03-0.74)”.

A 2018 study of youth with HIV showed that high-dose Vitamin D attenuated immune activation and exhaustion from anti-retroviral therapy. A 2016 study of 466 South African infants (half HIV-infected) found that low Vitamin D and SNPs on certain genes increased the risk of tuberculosis and death. A 2018 review of Vitamin D in HIV infection states, “High levels of VitD and VDR expression are also associated with natural resistance to HIV-1 infection. Conversely, VitD deficiency is linked to more inflammation and immune activation, low peripheral blood CD4+ T-cells, faster progression of HIV disease, and shorter survival time in HIV-infected patients.”

A small 2020 study of healthy patients showed that higher dose Vitamin D supplementation reduced susceptibility to DENV-2 (dengue) infection in blood cells. A 2017 study of human monocyte-derived macrophages found that “DENV bound less efficiently to vitamin D3-differentiated macrophages, leading to lower infection”.

The situation with Vitamin D deficiency and Epstein-Barr virus infection in Relapsing/Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS) is more nuanced. While each is an independent risk factor for RRMS, recent studies have found that high-dose Vitamin D supplementation resulted in significantly lower antibody levels to EBNA-1. In this case the lower antibody levels lead to lower risk of relapse and lower risk of new lesions on MRI.

A 2019 meta-analysis of studies of Vitamin D status in chronic Hepatitis B infections found that “Vitamin D levels were lower in CHB patients and inversely correlated with viral load”. A 2018 Israeli study found that Hepatitis B transfected liver cancer cells actually downregulate Vitamin D receptors to allow the virus to replicate.

In a 2012 Israeli study, the addition of Vitamin D to standard anti-viral therapy in patients with chronic Hepatitis C infections improved viral response. A 2015 study of Egyptian children with Hepatitis C found that cases treated with Vitamin D along with antivirals showed significantly higher “early and sustained virological response” compared to controls.

One additional factor should be considered. Single nucleotide polymorphisms that affect Vitamin D Receptor function and metabolism of Vitamin D to its active form affect sufficiency, so identifying patients with those polymorphisms will help identify those at greater risk for Vitamin D deficiency. There is a growing literature on these genetic factors as well.

Last week, former CDC Director, Dr. Tom Frieden, suggested that Vitamin D might decrease coronavirus infections. We hope this article will convince doctors and researchers to take a closer look at Vitamin D as a potential preventative and therapeutic option. As we stated in our recent video, we think that scarce resources should be focused on treatment versus a vaccine that may never materialize.

Last, a caveat

This is not medical advice and you should not take high doses of Vitamin D without checking with your doctor, particularly if you have any underlying health conditions. Vitamin D does have potential toxicity at high levels including hypercalcemia and kidney stones. A daily dose of 800 IU – 2000 IU of Vitamin D is generally regarded as safe and will produce sufficiency in most people, but more is not necessarily better. NIH’s information on Vitamin D dosing and drug interactions can be found here.

April 11, 2020 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Vitamin D and immunity

Dr. John Campbell | March 9, 2020

Vitimin D https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor…

https://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.i…

https://cks.nice.org.uk/vitamin-d-def…

April 10, 2020 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

A Killer Enterprise: How One of Big Pharma’s Most Corrupt Companies Plans to Corner the Covid-19 Cure Market

“One of the most politically-connected yet scandal ridden vaccine companies in the United States, with troubling ties to the 2001 anthrax attacks and opioid crisis, is set to profit handsomely from the current Coronavirus crisis.“

By Whitney Webb & Raul Diego – The Last American Vagabond – April 9, 2020

In August 2001, biopharmaceutical company BioPort faced imminent disaster. A series of company scandals, controversial federal bail-outs and severe, adverse health reactions among U.S. troops were causing both Congress and the Pentagon to reconsider its multi-million dollar contract to provide the military with an anthrax vaccine.

Formed for the sole purpose of acquiring a publicly-owned company in Michigan that held the exclusive license to manufacture the only FDA-approved anthrax vaccine in the United States, BioPort sought to quickly expand the size and scope of its contracts with the U.S. military. This strategy was made possible thanks to the former head of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William Crowe, who would prove highly instrumental in the rise of BioPort’s vaccine monopoly and its subsequent, aggressive hiring of former government officials as lobbyists.

Yet, soon after scoring these multi-million dollar contracts and securing a monopoly on anthrax vaccines, BioPort would claim that they were flailing financially and would subsequently be bailed out to the tune of $24 million at the Pentagon’s request, which cited “national security concerns” as justification.

However, Pentagon auditors had found that much of the money awarded to BioPort was unaccounted for and the money they were able to trace had failed to go towards renovating their vaccine production facility, which had lost its license until numerous sanitary problems (sanitary and otherwise) were fixed. Meanwhile, scores of soldiers who had suffered ill health effects from BioPort’s anthrax vaccine, some disabled for life, began speaking out, bringing BioPort’s most critical product and chief source of income under unwanted scrutiny.

While BioPort seemingly faced imminent ruin from these and other scandals in August 2001, the 2001 anthrax attacks that followed a month later came at just the right time for the company, as demand for their anthrax vaccine soon skyrocketed, resulting in new lucrative government contracts. Their license was also quickly renewed thanks to intervention from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) despite many of the problems with its production facility persisting.

Though they were conveniently rescued by the unfortunate events of 2001, BioPort would soon lobby for larger contracts than ever before, calling for a massive increase in government purchases of their controversial anthrax vaccine. Riding the fear caused by the 2001 anthrax attacks, they pushed for the government to stockpile anthrax vaccines, not just for the military, but for civilians, postal workers, police and many more who could potentially be put in harm’s way were the anthrax attacks to repeat themselves.

One of their biggest proponents of expanding BioPort’s contracts was working for HHS at the time — Jerome Hauer, a man who not only had foreknowledge of the anthrax attacks, but had also participated in the Dark Winter simulation that would also predict those same attacks just months prior. Hauer would, months later, be appointed to a newly created position at HHS, one which oversaw the new biodefense stockpile from which BioPort would be a major beneficiary.

BioPort would be then renamed and repackaged as Emergent Biosolutions in 2004. It would then hire even more well-connected lobbyists and add several big names from government and the private sector to its board. One of these “big names” was none other than Jerome Hauer, who was added to Emergent’s board soon after leaving HHS. Hauer still remains a company director and sits on three of its corporate governance committees.

Not only did Emergent Biosolutions profit from national anthrax fears, they would also cash in on subsequent pandemic panics and later receive substantial backing from the Bill Gates-backed Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). They would then turn their attention to the still-raging opioid addiction and overdose crisis by buying rights to the only drug approved for treating opioid overdoses at the scene while also suing any and all generic producers of this crucial, life-saving treatment.

Given its history, it should come as little surprise that Emergent Biosolutions is now set to profit from the Coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis. They are particularly well-suited to make record profits off of Covid-19, as they are backing not one, but two, vaccine candidates as well as an experimental blood plasma treatment already approved for trials in New York state, thanks in part to Jerome Hauer’s old boss, New York governor Andrew Cuomo. As noted in a previous article for The Last American Vagabond, the other main companies developing Covid-19 vaccines in the U.S. are strategic partners of the controversial Pentagon research agency DARPA, which has become increasingly aligned with HHS in recent years thanks to another Dark Winter participant, Robert Kadlec.

In this second installment of the series “Engineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex,” Emergent Biosolution’s rise to prominence, made possible through acts of blatant corruption and the public-private revolving door, will be explored. The clear nexus between Big Pharma, Government and University-affiliated “Biosecurity Centers” offers a startling look into the Biotech-Industrial Complex that has long dominated U.S. biodefense policy and is now guiding much of the U.S. government’s response to the Coronavirus crisis.

A Bio Threat is Born

For half a century, Vladimir Pasechnik had been a model Soviet citizen, with his scientific prowess in the field of bioweapons earning him an honorary rank of general. However, having been granted such a title didn’t seem to inspire much loyalty when he made a call to the British embassy from a phone booth in France in 1989. The famed microbiologist subsequently defected to England, a decision that preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall by a matter of months. Yet, few could have provided a more riveting view behind the Iron Curtain than Pasechnik, who regaled Whitehall with shocking tales of monstrous pathogens engineered as part of the Biopreparat, communist Russia’s top secret biological weapons program.

Pasechnik’s MI6 handler, Christopher Davis, shared all of the intelligence gathered with his counterparts in the United States, including claims that Biopreparat programs had developed antibiotic-resistant strains of anthrax, tularemia and botulinum toxin. Ancient diseases like the plague had also been modified, according to Davis. When the stories ran out, Pasechnik was given a job at Britain’s own biodefense facilities at Porton Down, where he would remain for another decade before branching out and founding his own biotech firm.

The Western geopolitical establishment, however, wasted no time in cementing a new narrative of imminent, worldwide bioweapons threats following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s resignation in 1991 abruptly crashed the Cold War rhetoric market in the West and the massive military-industrial complex that had profited from those tensions remained revved up, yet lacking a boogeyman.

Pasechnik was just one of several Biopreparat alumni who had defected to Western countries, with another well-known example being Ken Alibek (born Kanatjan Alibekov), who defected to the US as opposed to the UK. Many of Alibek’s sensational claims and dire warnings regarding the Soviet bioweapons program in the 1990s would later be proven to be imaginative falsehoods. Despite this, Alibek retained influence in the biotechnology industry and Washington, where the ability to sell fear is often a sought-after trait.

Pasechnik, however, wasn’t so lucky, dying of a suspected heart attack in November 2001. He was one of 11 of the world’s top microbiologists to die under mysterious circumstances from November 2001 to March 2002.

In light of the claims made by Pasechnik, Alibek and others in the 1990s, a relatively small group of well-connected individuals — many of whom would later participate in the June 2001 Dark Winter simulation — asserted that Biopreparat presented an enduring threat, hypothesizing that defectors from the program might not turn to the West, but instead to rival regimes like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Anthrax was quickly deemed to be one of the top threats by these bioweapons doomsayers and then, just months after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a competitive bid solicitation for the production of 6.3 million doses of the anthrax vaccine. Its previous contract, only a year before, had called for merely 700,000 doses by comparison.

Sourcing Problems

The Michigan Biologic Products Institute (MBPI) had been founded in 1926 by the State to serve the vaccination needs of its largely rural population, many of whom worked on farms and required inoculation against naturally occurring anthrax spores and rabies. By the 1980s, the Institute stood alone as the only anthrax vaccine manufacturer in the U.S. after 1970s-era regulations had driven most private vaccine manufacturers out of business. MBPI’s anthrax vaccine was known as Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed (AVA) or BioThrax.

Aligning himself with policy recommendations issued by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy – a front for the controversial Koch brothers, Michigan’s governor, John Engler, cited the MBPI’s endemic financial losses to justify putting the nation’s only licensed anthrax vaccine manufacturer up for sale in 1996. However, upon closer examination, the real reason behind the decision had more to do with a sudden spike in demand by the lab’s only customer, the US government, and the MBPI’s inability to meet it.

The Michigan facility required massive renovations if it was to fulfill the needs of a national security establishment that had come to reconstitute itself around the threat of weapons of mass destruction and biowarfare, a threat largely manufactured by the stories of Soviet defectors. The Pentagon offered to pony up $1.8 million for the necessary renovations, but there were no takers — at least, none with a US passport.

That same year, perennial US defense contractor, Dyncorp, went into business with a shadowy group of biotech entrepreneurs from across the pond, forming the DynPort Vaccine Company, LLC., a combination of DynCorp’s name with that of its UK-based partner, Porton International, Inc. The latter company’s president, Zsolt Harsanyi, would also lead DynPort as the British firm began to lay the groundwork for its second attempt at securing a crucial monopoly within the American biotech space.

Germ Monopoly

Porton International had come into existence as a result of the Thatcherite revolution that balkanized British public sector assets and distributed them among private interests that frequently had close and cozy ties with Thatcher-era officials and other UK politicians. Among these assets was the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research (CAMR), a biotechnology arm of the United Kingdom’s infamous Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, commonly referred to as Porton Down, which also happened to house the UK’s own anthrax vaccine program.

Porton International began operations in 1982, when London financier, Wensley Haydon-Baillie, founded the company to develop a herpes medication invented by Dr. Gordon Skinner, which had stalled during clinical trials and never actually entered the market. In 1985, Haydon-Baillie secured exclusive rights to commercialize drugs developed by the CAMR, a sweetheart deal from the Thatcher government that drew in large investments from British Telecom and Lloyds Bank, among others, totaling £76 million. Haydon-Ballie profited handsomely from the venture, collecting annual dividends of half a million pounds and selling some of his shares for £24 million in 1986.

In 1989, Porton International acquired Sera-lab and Hazleton Biologics, Inc., providing it with an established distribution network. The following year, the company’s bid to outright purchase the 650-employee CAMR lab, would be accepted by British Health Secretary, Kenneth Clark, despite opposition from the staff who had voted against the takeover.

House of Fuad

By the time the sale closed, Haydon-Ballie — once the 50th richest man in England — was on the brink of being forced out of Porton International over accusations of illicit enrichment. Around the same time, the anthrax vaccine was set to enter a bull market and Porton International was now in a prime position to reap the full benefits.

A year earlier in 1989, Ibrahim El-Hibri, a Venezuelan citizen who had made a fortune working for US telecommunications companies, had become a silent partner in Porton International. His son, Fuad El-Hibri, was made director of Porton Products, Ltd, a Porton International subsidiary, which was the conduit by which the El-Hibri family had made a killing selling anthrax vaccines to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states at $300 to $500 a dose. Fuad El-Hibri had previously been an intelligence contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton and an executive at the Wall Street giant, CitiGroup.

The elder El-Hibri had a knack for business that ran back decades to the 1970s when he lived in Qatar, where he befriended the then-head of US Central Command, Admiral William Crowe. The career military man kept in touch with El-Hibri through the years and perhaps even gave him a few business leads at a time when Crowe was also serving on the board of pharmaceutical behemoth, Pfizer. Crowe would later pick up the phone in late 1997 (officially at least, but probably well before) to make a proposition to his old friend.

In 1997, then-US Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen announced a plan to vaccinate every single member of the US Armed Forces against anthrax, which ultimately resulted in the vaccination of approximately 2.4 million troops by 2003. Admiral Crowe, who was serving as the US ambassador to the UK at the time, quickly contacted El-Hibri to discuss the US government anthrax vaccine market in light of this new Pentagon policy.

The only obstacle was getting his son, Fuad El-Hibri, a U.S. passport so that he could run the business stateside. To easily and quickly circumvent this issue, the politically-connected Admiral — with his deep ties to the Pentagon intact — was made a director of BioPort and given 10% of company stock, despite not having put a single penny into the company.

The stage was set to bring Porton International into the exclusive government contract business in the United States as BioPort, Inc. As luck would have it, Porton International’s president, Zsolt Harsanyi, had just received a ten-year DoD contract worth roughly $322 million through DynPort Vaccine Company, LLC, and — thanks to Michigan’s governor — the only licensed anthrax vaccine manufacturing plant in the country was back on the auction block.

A Steal and a Scam

In September 1998, BioPort acquired the MBPI facility through a $25 million package of loans, cash and promises to pay Michigan state more for the company in the future, promises that were later broken. It was later revealed that El-Hibri and other BioPort partners had only placed $4.5 million of their own money into this package.

As previously mentioned, the MBPI plant in Lansing, MI had come with issues and had been closed for renovations six months prior to its purchase by BioPort. However, the MBPI had received millions from the Pentagon to fix the issues identified by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that had affected the vaccine’s “stability, potency and purity.”

Along with these issues, BioPort had also inherited military contracts worth nearly $8 million for anthrax vaccines. They quickly secured another contract for the same totaling more than $45 million, with an additional $16 million in cash for immediate renovations — a sizable deal likely due to BioPort’s aggressive hiring of former Pentagon and federal officials as lobbyists in addition to Crowe’s own deep ties to the Pentagon.

Despite the massive influx of cash, BioPort did not spend the money on renovating the plant and its sanitary issues, likely due to the fact that the deal required the Pentagon to buy anthrax vaccines from BioPort even if the plant and the vaccines it had produced lacked a FDA license.

With the Pentagon obligated to buy the vaccine, regardless of whether it was usable, BioPort spent millions renovating its executives’ offices, as opposed to the vaccine factory, and millions more on bonuses for “senior management.” Pentagon auditors would later find that still millions more had gone “missing” and BioPort’s staff were unaware of the cost of producing a single dose of the vaccine.

Despite the clear mismanagement and corruption, BioPort demanded to be bailed out by the Pentagon, requesting even more money to replace what they had lost and squandered. Though Pentagon auditors argued that the company should be abandoned, top military officials cited “national security” and awarded BioPort with an additional $24.1 million. They also upped the price to be paid for each dose of the anthrax vaccine, which only has a shelf life of 3 years, from $4.36 to $10.64.

Congress would hold hearings on the bail-out, hearings that went nowhere. During one of those hearings, then-Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) would state the following:

“The message seems clear: If a company wants to make millions without providing a product or service, enter into a sole-source contract with the Department of Defense to produce vaccines. BioPort appears to have the government over a barrel.”

Unsurprisingly, this would only be the first of BioPort’s federal bail-outs.

Fortune favors the corrupt

With BioPort well aware of its powerful position early on, it dragged its feet in getting its factory relicensed and up to federal standards. Meanwhile, due to the nature of the contract, the Pentagon kept buying up large amounts of vaccines that were unusable, and arguably unsafe, while also still paying BioPort for storage of the useless product.

During this time, anthrax vaccine doses made prior to these renovations were being used on U.S. troops, with many of those soldiers claiming that the vaccine produced in the troubled facility had given them permanent headaches, joint pain, loss of memory and other, more severe symptoms. Some were even disabled for life. Congress again held hearings, but they were stuffed with BioPort employees posing as “experts” as well as others who supported the Pentagon’s contract with the company.

However, in 2000, the Pentagon did finally lose patience and demanded that BioPort stop making BioThrax. BioPort obliged, but kept receiving government money to keep it afloat. By August 2001, the Lansing facility was still unlicensed and BioPort was still demanding government money to keep it from going out of business. That month, Congress and the Pentagon began to publicly discuss abandoning BioPort. The Pentagon began preparing a report, due to be released in September 2001, that would detail a plan for letting BioPort go.

Fortunately for BioPort but unfortunately for the nation, the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent anthrax attacks led to major increases in fear and panic that anthrax attacks could become a recurrent nightmare for the American public and that radical terror groups and rival nations sought to target, not just American soldiers with anthrax, but also the country’s civilians.

The ensuing panic led the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to intervene, returning BioPort its license in January 2002 despite persisting safety concerns at its vaccine production facility. BioPort was not content to merely see its past contracts with the Pentagon restored, however, as it began lobbying heavily for new contracts for anthrax vaccines intended for American civilians, postal workers and others. They would get them, largely thanks to HHS’ then-counter-terrorism adviser and soon to be HHS’ newest Assistant Secretary — Jerome Hauer.

Jerome Hauer’s Curious Past

As BioPort secured its control over the only licensed anthrax vaccine producer in the country in 1998, New York’s emergency crisis manager and bioterrorism expert, Jerome Hauer, was busy working and making doomsday contingency plans from his “bunker” on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building 7.

Put on the job by then-NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1996, Hauer had previously managed worldwide emergency response for technology giant IBM. He also was an adviser to the Justice Department, had briefed President Clinton on bioterror threats and was known to “consult regularly with Scotland Yard and the Israeli military.” It was reportedly Hauer’s idea to locate the city’s emergency management office at Building 7, even though placing it there was considered controversial at the time due to the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, bombings that were later revealed to have disturbing links to the FBI.

In 1999, the New York Times would describe Hauer’s job as “sitting around all day thinking up horrifying ways for things to be destroyed and people to die.” It would also note that Hauer described his expertise regarding specific emergency situations as follows: “helicopter crash, subway fire, water main break, ice storm, heat wave, blackout, building collapse, building collapse, building collapse.” His obsession with building collapses even led him to house “trophies” of the building collapses he had overseen and responded to. How odd then that Hauer’s multi-million dollar “bunker” itself would later fall victim to building collapse, falling into its own footprint in 7 seconds on September 11, 2001.

That fateful day, Hauer was no longer with NY’s Office of Emergency Management, having left in February 2000. However, in 2001, Hauer still worked at the World Trade center complex, running security for the buildings as managing director of Kroll Inc. Informally known as the “CIA of Wall Street”, Kroll was alleged to be an actual front for the CIA by French intelligence agencies, according to the Washington Post. Though it claimed to be mainly involved in corporate security and investigations, it also frequently investigated targets of Washington foreign policy, including Saddam Hussein. Kroll was also the company tapped to “reorganize” Enron in 2002.

Though Hauer should have been at his office at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, he did not show up for work that day and instead made TV media appearances, where he claimed that Osama bin Laden had been responsible for the attacks just hours after the towers collapsed in an interview with Dan Rather.

Yet, not all Kroll employees were as lucky as Hauer. John O’Neil had just begun working for Kroll and was at the World Trade Center that day, dying in the attacks. O’Neil had previously worked with the FBI and was the country’s top expert on Osama bin Laden and his activities. He had resigned in mid-2001 after his investigations into bin Laden were repeatedly blocked by his superiors, something that happened to numerous federal investigators prior to 9/11, and was subsequently offered a job at Kroll by none other than Jerome Hauer himself.

Also on the day of 9/11, Hauer had told top Bush administration officials to start taking the antibiotic Cipro to prevent infection via anthrax and Hauer would subsequently make public hints via mass media that foreign terrorists were working with Saddam Hussein to unleash an anthrax attack on the American public. All of this took place well before the first anthrax attack victim, photojournalist Robert Stevens, would even show symptoms.

Hauer had prepared for a scenario just like the anthrax attacks as part of the Dark Winter biowarfare simulation, which occurred just months prior and at a time when Hauer was a member of the Johns Hopkins Working Group on Civilian BioDefense, part of what is now the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, then led by Dark Winter co-author Tara O’Toole. The Dark Winter exercise and its current relevance are discussed in detail in Part I of this series.

Also of note is the fact that, while working for Kroll Inc. Hauer was also working for the Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a defense and intelligence contractor. There he became a co-worker of Stephen Hatfill, who Hauer had actually met years prior. At SAIC, Hatfill worked on developing protocols for handling “anthrax hoax letters,” a phenomenon present in Dark Winter and later during the actual 2001 anthrax attacks. Hatfill would later be accused of having committed those very attacks, but was later cleared of suspicion, winning a hefty multi-million dollar settlement from the government.

In addition to his work for SAIC and Kroll as the events of September 11, 2001 transpired, Hauer was also a national security adviser to then-head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Tommy Thompson. Hauer closely advised Thompson during the 2001 anthrax attacks and after, helping to shape HHS response and subsequent biodefense policy, which focused heavily on BioPort’s anthrax vaccine.

Hauer and HHS

As the anthrax attacks unfolded, Hauer advised Secretary Thompson to establish a new office at HHS, the Office of Public Health Preparedness (OPHP), whose first acting director was Dr. D.A. Henderson, a former official with the World Health Organization and the original founder of the Johns Hopkins Working Group on Civilian Biodefense, which had sponsored Dark Winter and included Jerome Hauer as well as Dark Winter co-authors Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby. In early 2002, Hauer himself would replace Henderson as head of the newly created OPHP.

In May 2002, Hauer — while leading OPHP — co-authored a report with members of the Johns Hopkins Working Group, including O’Toole and Inglesby. In that paper, published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Hauer, O’Toole, Inglesby and their co-authors argued that greater production and purchase of anthrax vaccine was necessary in light of the 2001 anthrax attacks and that government funding was also needed to research a new anthrax vaccine. They also asserted that the vaccine did not cause any significant adverse effects.

Notably, just months prior, O’Toole and Inglesby had come under scrutiny in their attempts to link the anthrax attacks to Al Qaeda, several months after that possibility had been ruled out completely by federal investigators and other independent scientists.

The paper authored by the Johns Hopkins Working Group would also come under scrutiny, particularly their recommendation that the government acquire more BioThrax. This was largely because the evidence from the attacks showed that antibiotics were much more effective and less expensive in responding to anthrax attacks, with subsequent studies claiming that calls for stockpiling more BioThrax “defy medical evidence and expert recommendations” based on lessons learned during the anthrax attacks.

Then, in June 2002, the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act was signed into law by President Bush, creating the post of Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness, which was quickly filled by Hauer and gave him near-complete power over HHS’ biodefense policy and all HHS matters related to “national security.”

In July 2002, Hauer and his deputy William Raub helped push the Pentagon to restart vaccinating the troops, despite long-standing concerns over the vaccine’s safety. Per the new immunization program, the number of troops being vaccinated would “jump,” according to officials. However, the size of that increase was never made public. In addition, half of the Pentagon’s BioThrax purchases would be stockpiled for civilian use.

Though Hauer, O’Toole, Inglesby, the Pentagon and, of course, BioPort, continued to assert that BioThrax was safe for human use, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) would release its findings just months later that showed that the vaccine “caused adverse reactions in most recipients [85%] and helped prompt many Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard members to transfer to other units or leave the military between 1998 and 2000.” The Pentagon and HHS rejected the GAO’s conclusions.

Despite rejections from the Pentagon and HHS, the number of veterans suffering ill effects from BioThrax continued to mount. Even mainstream sources began to report on claims linking BioThrax to over 20 deaths and over 4,000 illnesses, 347 of which were deemed to be “serious.”

As a result, in March 2003, six military service-members and Defense Department civilian contractors sued the Pentagon, HHS and the FDA over the mandatory BioThrax vaccination policy, claiming that the way the vaccine had been administered in the 1990s and in the early 2000s was experimental.

This claim was based on the fact the FDA had not approved BioThrax for use against aerosol exposure to anthrax (i.e. anthrax inhalation). However, the Pentagon was using BioThrax to ostensibly protect soldiers from exposure to aerosol anthrax, which is the form of anthrax that would be encountered by soldiers in a bioweapon or bioterrorist scenario. Thus, the Pentagon was injecting soldiers with BioThrax for a use for which it was not federally approved, rendering its use experimental. Given that the federal mandating of experimental vaccines is illegal, a federal judge ruled that the Pentagon’s mandatory Biothrax vaccination program was illegal in October 2004.

The ruling was a blow to BioPort, which had reorganized that year and took on the name Emergent Biosolutions. However, BioPort/Emergent Biosolutions would find relief in 2006, when the Pentagon decided to resume mandatory anthrax immunizations among U.S. servicemen soon after the FDA decided to approve BioThrax as a treatment for anthrax inhalation.

Biosolution’s BioShield

Just months before the Pentagon’s BioThrax vaccine program was deemed illegal, Congress passed the Project BioShield Act, an act that was largely written by Emergent Biosolution lobbyists and greatly influenced by Robert Kadlec, who was then serving as the Homeland Security Council’s Director of Biodefense. The goal of the act was to allocate $5 billion to be used to purchase vaccines, including millions of doses of anthrax vaccine, and stockpile them in the event of a future bioterrorist attack. Given that these vaccines have a limited shelf life (three to four years in BioThrax’s case), the stockpile would continually need to be renewed as its contents gradually expired.

Not long after BioShield was signed into law, Emergent Biosolutions co-founded a lobby group called the Alliance for Biosecurity as part of its strategy to easily secure lucrative BioShield contracts. That lobby group saw Emergent Biosolutions join forces with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Biosecurity, which was created in 2003 and populated with former members of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Civilian Biodefense Strategies. At the time, the University of Pittsburgh’s Center was led by Tara O’Toole.

Though Emergent Biosolutions had contacts with the key organizations and people in the biodefense-industrial complex, the Bush administration and the military, BioShield initially didn’t go as planned for the company. Instead of pumping even more money into the controversial BioThrax, HHS decided to invest in a new anthrax vaccine that involved fewer doses and fewer adverse side effects, and thus less controversy.

In November 2004, HHS through BioShield awarded VaxGen Inc. a $877.5 million contract to produce a recombinant anthrax vaccine and was the first contract made via BioShield. In great contrast to Emergent’s past BioThrax contracts with the government, the VaxGen contract did not provide the company with government money until the vaccine was approved and subsequently delivered.

The VaxGen contract greatly concerned BioPort/Emergent Biosolutions for obvious reasons. In order to avoid losing their vaccine monopoly, they invested heavily in lobbying and spent $5.29 million on lobbyists from 2004 to 2007. By comparison, over that same period, VaxGen spent $720,000 on lobbyists.

One of those lobbyists was Jerome Hauer, who was also added to Emergent’s board shortly after leaving HHS. Despite Hauer having supported a new anthrax vaccine other than BioThrax while he had worked at HHS, Hauer suddenly began to insist that BioThrax was the solution. He also demanded that his replacement at HHS, Stewart Simonson, who was ultimately responsible for VaxGen’s BioShield contract, be stripped of his authority. Other lobbyists hired by Emergent at the time included two former aides to then-Vice President Dick Cheney and former aides to influential members of Congress.

The hiring of Hauer and others well-connected to the Bush administration and Congress was just part of Emergent’s aggressive lobbying against the VaxGen contract, as the company also employed mafia-esque tactics, telling lawmakers and government officials that U.S. civilians “were at risk of death without an immediately expanded stockpile of [BioThrax] anthrax vaccine” and threatening to “stop making the vaccine if the government chose not to buy its product for the stockpile.”

The war between Emergent Biosolutions and VaxGen spread to Congressional hearings, where Congressmen who had received thousands from Emergent’s then-CEO attacked the VaxGen BioShield contract, with one calling it “highly suspect” and angrily demanding that HHS explain why it had not purchased more BioThrax. It also spread to the press, where Emergent lobbyists wrote Op-Eds in influential newspapers.

Emergent even found unlikely supporters in “progressive” journalists like Jeremy Scahill, who wrote an article for The Nation in which he praised Jerome Hauer, framing him as a champion of public health preparedness who was at odds with Bush-era neocons (despite his membership in organizations stuffed with those same neocons). Scahill also strongly criticized Hauer’s successor Stewart Simonson and the VaxGen contract.

Scahill did not mention in his report that Hauer was then working as a lobbyist for Emergent Biosolutions or was a member of its board, despite interviewing him for the piece. Scahill didn’t even mention Emergent Biosolutions (or its previous name BioPort) once in the entire article, despite it being VaxGen’s main competitor.

Finally, in 2006, HHS terminated VaxGen’s contract after the company hit a developmental snag with its vaccine, declining to offer them the type of lifelines that Emergent Biosolutions had received on numerous occasions under its previous name BioPort.

After VaxGen’s contract with HHS was crushed, Emergent Biosolution’s anthrax vaccine monopoly remained intact, at least for a time. However, PharmAthene, another biotechnology company that had co-formed the Alliance for Biosecurity lobby group with Emergent, soon announced its plans to develop its own recombinant anthrax vaccine. This prompted Emergent to end up buying the essentially bankrupt VaxGen and acquiring the very VaxGen anthrax vaccine it had spent millions of dollars over several years to discredit.

A few years later, Emergent’s competitors made inroads with the Pentagon, with the military offering contracts for the anthrax vaccine developed by PharmAthene and another manufactured by PaxVax. Emergent aggressively challenged its competitors or bought them out in order to retain its monopoly, while also developing three new anthrax vaccines (one of which was the VaxGen vaccine) to satisfy government demand for a new anthrax vaccine. Only one, dubbed NuThrax, ever made any progress.

NuThrax, a combination of BioThrax and an adjuvant, would be yet another gold mine for Emergent Biosolutions. The company received $127 million from HHS’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for early development. Meanwhile, they began to dramatically scale up their production of BioThrax with even more grants from BARDA. Then, in 2016, it received an additional $198 million from HHS for further development of NuThrax as well as a government promise to purchase up to 50 million doses for the national biodefense stockpile. That promise was made as part of a contract valued at up to $1.6 billion and was also made before NuThrax received approval by the FDA. To date, NuThrax still remains unapproved by the FDA.

The A Team

It is worth noting that Hauer was not the only key government official that had aided BioPort and was later awarded with a position on its board of directors. A few years after Hauer became a board member of Emergent Biosolutions, the company added Dr. Sue Bailey to its board in 2007. Bailey had previously served as the Pentagon’s former top medical official during the late 1990s and played a key role in keeping the military’s anthrax vaccine program from being derailed from persistent concerns from veterans about its safety and adverse side effects.

Back in 1999, when Congress had held its hearings into the anthrax vaccine’s safety following concerns raised by affected veterans, Bailey was part of a panel of experts, which had included BioPort’s Admiral William Crowe. In her prepared statement, Bailey began by underscoring the urgency of the bioterrorist threat, claiming that “at least ten nation states and two terrorist groups“ possessed biowarfare capabilities and citing a 1958 study by Johns Hopkins University as proof that anthrax vaccinations were safe. She concluded by reassuring members of Congress that they had a “safe and effective vaccine to respond to a well-documented threat.” Neither of these statements would turn out to be true.

Another expert Dr. Katherine Zoon, who was then director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation, concurred with Dr. Bailey’s assessment regarding the safety of the anthrax vaccine in her statement. Zoon, who would subsequently hold key posts at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was also added to Emergent’s board of directors.

The statements that had been made by Zoon and Bailey at that hearing were a significant divergence from the FDA’s own appraisal on the long-term safety of the vaccine, according to testimony by Kwai-Cheung Chan of the General Accounting Office (GAO). Chan practically invalidated both Bailey’s and Zoon’s testimony by revealing that the studies they had cited were carried out on a completely different anthrax vaccine that was produced by Merck, not Emergent Biosolutions, among other details. Chan’s testimony made it clear that BioThrax had no safety track record at all. Not unlike Hauer, Emergent later rewarded Bailey and Zoon for their loyalty to the private sector as opposed to public health with board positions and lucrative stock options.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste”

Though Emergent Biosolutions has enjoyed its privileged status regarding the anthrax vaccine for over two decades, it has long since branched out and profiteered from a variety of pandemic scares, including Ebola and Zika, and public health crises both globally and domestically. They have also acquired other vaccine monopolies, including the U.S.’ only licensed smallpox vaccine through their purchase of Sanofi, which came with a $425 million government contract and the promise of subsequent multi-year renewals on that contract for the ever-increasing national biodefense stockpiles.

Another drug monopoly acquired by Emergent Biosolutions has allowed them to profit handsomely off of the U.S.’ devastating opioid epidemic. In 2018, a year when the opioid crisis claimed the lives of nearly 70,000 Americans and was considered the top health crisis facing the nation, Emergent acquired the producer of Narcan, the only FDA-approved nasal spray of naloxone, which is used to treat opioid overdoses at the scene. At the time of acquisition, Emergent Biosolutions executive Daniel J. Abdun-Nabi referred to U.S. high schools and colleges as lucrative, “untapped markets” for Narcan.

Two months after Emergent completed its acquisition of the Narcan monopoly, HHS began recommending that doctors co-prescribe the drug alongside opioid painkillers. However, HHS offered no measures aimed at preventing the over-prescription of opioid painkillers like fentanyl and has remained silent regarding efforts to make opioid painkillers a controlled, schedule 1 substance. After the HHS recommendation regarding Narcan, several states subsequently passed laws requiring doctors to co-prescribe the nasal spray. Emergent’s sale of Narcan, which now costs $150 per dose, predictably spiked.

Regarding its Narcan monopoly, Emergent has long claimed that they are working to keep the drug affordable and they have even donated Narcan to public libraries and YMCAs as part of a major public relations push. However, Emergent’s same-old aggressive tactics still apply to Narcan, as they have sued any competitors aiming to market a cheaper, generic version of the drug. In addition, government promotion of Narcan as opposed to other, longer-term solutions to opioid addiction, have come under scrutiny, with some arguing that Narcan actually enables opioid addiction and may actually be worsening the crisis.

Cornering the Covid-19 market

Emergent’s history of corruption and profiteering has in no way prevented them from cashing in on the Covid-19 global health crisis. On March 10, Emergent announced a partnership with Novavax to produce a Covid-19 vaccine, a vaccine also backed by the Bill Gates-backed Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). CEPI had previously partnered with Emergent Biosolutions, giving them over $60 million in 2018. Emergent further expanded its partnership with NovaVax on March 31.

Just 8 days after partnering with Novavax, Emergent partnered with yet another producer of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate, VaxArt. Unlike the Emergent-Novavax vaccine, the vaccine candidate co-produced with VaxArt will be oral and in pill form, “offer[ing] enormous logistical advantages in the roll-out of a large vaccination campaign,” according to VaxArt CEO Wouter Latoud.

While backing two of the most prominent vaccine candidates for Covid-19 gives Emergent an advantage in terms of profiting from whatever vaccines end up being approved for use by the government, Emergent’s star has risen during the current Coronavirus crisis largely thanks to its two experimental blood plasma treatments.

Announced just one day after their Novavax vaccine partnership, Emergent’s first experimental blood plasma treatment involves pooling and concentrating blood plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients, while the second uses plasma taken from horses that have been injected with parts of the virus. These treatments were slated to begin clinical trials later this year, but have been greatly aided by HHS’ BARDA, which falls under the authority of Robert Kadlec. These treatments are now expected to begin Phase II trials by late summer.

On April 3, BARDA awarded Emergent Biosolutions $14.5 million for the development of its blood plasma treatment. Though the sum is smaller than other contracts Emergent has received from BARDA in the past, the partnership allows Emergent to overcome its greatest obstacle in developing this product, a massive supply of blood plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients. Thanks to their partnership with BARDA, Emergent will gain access to blood donations made by recovered Covid-19 to public blood centers.

Emergent’s Dr. Lisa Saward confirmed this in a recent interview with TechCrunch, stating “we are overcoming [the lack of “source material” i.e. blood plasma] with the help of partnerships like that of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority within Health and Human Services, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced earlier this week.”

However, Emergent’s use of donated plasma to develop its product may prove controversial, since the plasma donated by recovered Covid-19 patients is currently being used as a treatment for seriously ill Covid-19 patients. The use of plasma to treat critical patients began late last month after New York’s state government first authorized its use in such cases, followed by the FDA’s offer to approve its use for critical Covid-19 patients nationwide on a case-by-case basis. Yet, thanks to the BARDA and Emergent partnership, a significant amount of that plasma will instead go towards helping Emergent corner yet another key market.

April 9, 2020 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, FDA, United States | Leave a comment

The Project for a New American Century and the Age of Bioweapons: 20 Years of Psychological Terror

By Matthew Ehret | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 8, 2020

A little over 20 years ago, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) conducted a military exercise that involved a “hypothetical scenario” of hijacked planes flying into both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

One year later, on October 24-26, 2000, another “hypothetical” military exercise was played out featuring an airline crashing into the Pentagon killing 341 people followed by yet another May 2001 Department of Defense “hypothetical scenario” which saw hundreds of medical personnel training for a “guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner” crashing into the Pentagon.

What arose from the smoke and debris of September 11, 2001 was unlike anything the sleeping masses or international community expected.

The shock effect so traumatized the masses that quite suddenly, citizens found themselves willing to give up their liberties at home while acquiescing to any retaliatory action desired by their government abroad. The scale of horror was so great that the international community banded together and showed their love and solidarity towards America in the wake of the tragedy with candlelight vigils across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Russia and South America. Humanity’s natural tendency to embrace and aid our fellow man in times of crisis expressed itself like a bright light in a world of confused darkness and a hope for a durable peace awoke in the hearts of many.

Alas, as the world came soon to discover, that hope was short lived.

The Neocon Takeover of America

Police State measures grew swiftly with the Patriot Act and mass internal surveillance under the “crisis management” run by the neocon cabal in the White House. While a new type of regime change war was created abroad, Dangerous protocols for Cheney’s “Continuity of Government” were set into motion and with these procedures, new mandates for Martial Law were created amplifying the powers, financing and deployment of U.S. Military capabilities both within the USA “under crisis conditions” and around the world.

Governments that had no connection to 9/11 were swiftly targeted for destruction using false evidence of “yellowcake” produced in the bowels of MI6, and a broader unipolar military encirclement of both Russia and China was set into motion which President Putin called out brilliantly in his famous 2007 Munich Security Conference Speech.

Of course this should not have been a surprise for anyone who took the time to read the Project for a New American Century manifesto published in October 2000 entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ (RAD).

Under the Chairmanship of William Kristol (a neocon agent today leading the charge to impeach President Trump) and co-authored by John Bolton, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, and Donald Rumsfeld, RAD stated that to “further the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one-absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor”. Going further to describe its Hobbesian agenda, the cabal stated that “the Cold War was a bipolar world; the 21st century world is- for the moment at least- decidedly unipolar with America as the world’s sole superpower”.

While much has been said about the “inside job” of 9/11, a lesser appreciated terrorist act occurred over several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001 killing five and infective 17 in the form of envelopes laced with bio-weaponized anthrax.

The Age of Bioweapons and PNAC

This anthrax attack led quickly into the 2004 Bioshield Act with a $5 billion budget and mandate to “pre-empt and defend further bioweapon attacks”. This new chapter of the revolution in military affairs was to be coordinated from leading bioweapons facility at the Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. Since 2002, over $50 billion has been spent on Bioweapons research and defense to date.

The earlier October 2000 RAD document emphasized the importance which the neocon cabal placed on bioweapons (and other next generation war tech) stating: “Combat will likely take place in new dimensions: In space, cyber-space and perhaps the world of microbes… advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”.

Lawyer and bioweapons expert Francis Boyle stated in 2007 that Fort Detrick’s mandate includes “acquiring, growing, modifying, storing, packing, and dispersing classical, emerging and genetically engineered pathogens for offensive weapon programs.” These new post-9/11 practices fully trashed the 1975 UN Convention Against Biological Weapons ratified by the USA by establishing a vast international network of bioweapons labs coordinated from Fort Detrick which would be assigned the role of doing much of the dirty work that the U.S. was “officially” prevented from doing on its own soil.

Where Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag to justify his enabling Acts, the neocons had their 9/11. The difference in the case of America was that Cheney failed to achieve the same level of absolute control over his nation as Hitler captured by 1934 (evidenced by pushback from patriotic American military intelligence circles against Cheney’s Iran war agenda). With this neocon failure, the republic lurched on.

The Rot Continues Under Obama

Obama’s rise was seen as a hopeful light to many naïve Democrats who still had not realized how a “false left” vs “false right” clash had been slowly constructed over the post WWII years. Either camp increasingly found itself converging towards the same world government agenda through using somewhat dissimilar paths and flavors.

It didn’t take long for many of Obama’s more critically-minded supporters to realize that the mass surveillance/police state measures, regime change wars, and military confrontation of Russia and China begun under Cheney not only failed to stop, but even expanded at faster rates than ever.

In the months before Obama left office in July 2016, the classified Directive 40: National Continuity Policy was enacted creating a line of “Devolution authority” for all branches of the government to a “duplicate chain of individuals secreted outside Washington available in a catastrophic emergency”. Days prior to Trump’s inauguration, Federal Continuity Directive 1 was issued to transfer authority to military forces who could be used to suppress “insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.”

The Importance of Knowing This History

There are very clearly two diametrically opposing methods of analyzing, and solving the existential crisis threatening our world currently: Multipolar or Unipolar.

While Russia and China represent a multipolar/pro-nation state vision driven by large scale development projects that benefit all- rich and poor alike exemplified by the New Silk Road, Polar Silk Road, Space Silk Road and now Health Silk Road, something much darker is being promoted by the same financial oligarchy that owns both right and left sides of the deep state coin. These later forces have provably positioned themselves to take control of western governments under crisis conditions and are not afraid to use every weapon in their arsenal to destroy their perceived enemies… including bioweaponry. This latter uncomfortable reality was asserted quite candidly by leading officials of Iran and even the Chinese Foreign Ministry just weeks ago.

Admittedly, whether or not the current coronavirus pandemic is a bioweapon is not yet fully proven (although growing body of evidence asserts that it is, as seen here and here and here and here). What we know for certain are the following facts:

Numbers are being systematically misrepresented to convey much greater rates of death vs infections as dozens of leading medical experts have proven. Contaminated test kits have started showing up in the UK on March 30 and countless false results are showing up since covid test kits are often not differentiating between covid-19 and the typical coronavirus strains of the flu that average between 7-14% of flu cases every year. This doesn’t mean that COVID-19 should not be taken seriously, but only that the reported numbers are being artificially falsified to generate heightened panic.

The COVID-19 Task Force at London’s Imperial College has been found to be the singular source of the false “left” vs “right” debate poisoning the west’s response to the pandemic. Teams working out of this British Intelligence nexus have generated BOTH the “do-nothing-and-wait-until-natural-resistance-evolves” herd immunity theory while simultaneously creating the “shut everything down one-size-fits-all” doomsday models being used by the WHO, UN, and leading Deep State assets like Michael Bloomberg, Steve Bannon, Bill Gates and George Soros. In case you doubt the influence of the Imperial College on world policy, a March 17 New York Times article described them in the following terms: “With ties to the World Health Organization and a team of 50 scientists, led by a prominent epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson, Imperial is treated as a sort of gold standard, its mathematical models feeding directly into government policies.”

Investigative Journalist Whitney Webb’s February 2020 research demonstrated conclusively that DARPA had received funding in tandem with Fort Detrick since 2017 on genetic modification of novel coronaviruses (with a focus on bats) as well as the development of never before used DNA and mRNA vaccines which change the structure of DNA both for an individual and potentially for a whole race.

Lastly, and most importantly, the pre-9/11 military exercises were not merely hypothetical scenarios but exercises which led directly into a new “Pearl Harbor” that modified the behaviour of Americans under terror, panic and misinformation like nothing ever seen before. The parallels to today’s coronavirus outbreak cannot be missed for anyone who has taken a serious look at the strange case of the Event 201 Global Pandemic Exercise on October 19, 2019 in New York. Event 201 was sponsored by the Michael Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and World Economic Forum which ran simulations under the “hypothetical” scenario of a novel coronavirus pandemic killing 60 million people. Reviewing just one of Event 201’s many recordings openly available on their official site features some very disturbing parallels to the events unfolding today:

Unipolar Martial Law or Multipolar Marshall Plan?

As I outlined in my previous paper, the mass-panic generated by COVID-19 has created a 9/11-situation with the expected police state laws being passed under the radar of many people who would normally be paying attention to such things. One of the most dangerous measures enacted involved a classified bill in February which formally mandates the head of NORTHCOM (who is also the head of NORAD) to become acting President of the United States under conditions of Martial Law, un-governability of the executive branch or general chaos in America. This later scenario is not terribly unlikely considering the danger of a financial blowout of the banking system combined with economic lockdowns of the west.

China and Russia both understand the nature of the game and both nations have acted responsibly in dealing with the outbreak of Coronavirus with China’s successful containment having won seven consecutive days of no new cases. It is important that unlike the remedies promoted by London’s Imperial College, neither Russia or China have totally shut down their nations, but have rather kept their economies alive by selecting methods for selective quarantines and lockdowns (China only locked down 15 nations plus Wuhan while the remaining 95% of their economy continued to produces and support the recovering component).

We know that President Trump has resisted the pressure by Deep State Experts to shut down America and has stated so repeatedly, but up until his recent conversations with Xi Jinping and Putin, there were very few options available to him beyond those proposed by Dr. Cauci, the Green New Dealing Dems or “bailout everything” monetarists around Mnuchin and Kudlow.

Now that China and Russia have begun sending vital medical equipment to America as part of the Health Silk Road (over the screams of neocons and neoliberal technocrats like), a new possibility for a cure has presented itself. If Trump acts decisively with courage and intelligence, there is still a chance that sovereign nation states may yet stay in the drivers’ seat and use this crisis as an opportunity to force through a debt jubilee, banking reform and new Bretton Woods emergency conference to establish a foundation for a new just economic system. If Trump is unsuccessful in this task, it is more than a little scary to think about what hell will beset the world in the coming months and years.

April 8, 2020 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | CIA, Covid-19, United States | Leave a comment

‘No real thinking in academia anymore’

Sky News Australia • October 5, 2019

Scientist Dr Shiva Ayyadurai says there is “no real critical thinking” in academia anymore as professors are “following the money” when it comes to climate science.

April 7, 2020 Posted by aletho | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Trump proclaims national day honoring racist rabbi, Menachem Schneerson

President Trump proclaiming Education and Sharing Day 2018. (Photo Credit: The White House)

By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | April 6, 2020

President Donald Trump recently proclaimed April 3rd “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A,” a national day to “celebrate Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe.”

The proclamation called upon “all government officials, educators, volunteers, and all the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.”

This was not the first such proclamation. For 42 years presidents from both parties have proclaimed a national day to honor Rabbi Schneerson.

President Barack Obama presents a ceremonial copy of the Education and Sharing Day Proclamation that he issued on March 31, 2015 to a delegation from the American Friends of Lubavitch in the Oval Office, April 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) (ObamaWhiteHouse)

What they probably didn’t know is that some of Schneerson’s lesser-known teachings are extremely problematic on a number of levels. Among other things, they help fuel some of the most violent attacks against Palestinians by extremist Israeli settlers and soldiers.

For example, Schneerson taught that non-Jews were “created to serve the Jews.”

To learn about Schneerson and his teachings, read the following article that I wrote six years ago, when Barack Obama played his role in the yearly tribute.

Please note that the information in the article comes largely from Jewish and Israeli sources. A list of the sources used in the article is provided below it.

The main source, Israel Shahak, was a respected Israeli professor who had been praised by Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Edward Said, Columbia Professor and public intellectual; and diverse others.

It is my feeling that all Americans should know the facts reported below. Year after year after year, American citizens are being told to honor Rabbi Schneerson. We need to know what The Rebbe taught, consider the implications for us and for others, and decide for ourselves whether we agree with the annual decree that we celebrate his views.

***

Why is the US Honoring a Racist Rabbi?

By Alison Wier | CounterPunch | April 7, 2014

If things proceed normally, President Barak Obama will soon proclaim April 11, 2014 “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.” Despite the innocuous name, this day honors the memory of a religious leader whose lesser-known teachings help fuel some of the most violent attacks against Palestinians by extremist Israeli settlers and soldiers.

The leader being honored on this day is Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, charismatic head of a mystical/fundamentalist version of Judaism. Every year since 1978, a Presidential Proclamation, often accompanied by a Congressional Resolution (the 1990 one had 219 sponsors), has declared Schneerson’s birthday an official national day of observance.

Congress first passed a Resolution honoring Schneerson in 1975. Three years later a Joint Congressional Resolution called on President Jimmy Carter to proclaim “Education Day, U.S.A.” on the anniversary of Schneerson’s birth. The idea was to set aside a day to honor both education and the alleged educational work of Schneerson and the religious sect he headed up.

Carter, like Congress, dutifully obeyed the Schneerson-initiated resolution, as has every president since. And some individual states are now enacting their own observances of Schneerson’s birthday, with Minnesota and Alabama leading the way.

Schneerson and his movement are an extremely mixed bag.

Schneerson has been praised widely for a public persona and organization that emphasized “deep compassion and insight,” worked to bring many secular Jews “back” into the fold, created numerous schools around the world, and had offered, in the words of the Jewish Virtual Library, “social-service programs and humanitarian aid to all people, regardless of religious affiliation or background.”

However, there is also a less attractive underside often at odds with such public perceptions. And some of the more extreme parts of Schneerson’s teachings – such as that Jews are a completely different species than non-Jews, and that non-Jews exist only to serve Jews – have been largely hidden, it appears, even from many who consider themselves his followers.

As we will see, such views profoundly impact the lives of Palestinians living – and dying – under Israeli occupation and military invasions.

Who was Rabbi Schneerson?

Schneerson lived from 1902 to 1994 and oversaw the growth of what is now the largest Jewish organization in the world. The religious movement he led is known as “Chabad-Lubavitch,” (sometimes just called “Lubavitch” or “Chabad,” the name of its organizational arm). Schneerson was the seventh and final Lubavitcher “Rebbe” (sacred leader). He is often simply called “the Rebbe.”

Founded in the late 1700s and originally based in the Polish-Russian town of Lubavitch, it is the largest of about a dozen forms of “Hasidism,” a version of Orthodox Judaism connected to mysticism, characterized by devotion to a dynastic leader, and whose adherents often wear distinctive clothing. (Spellings of these terms can vary; Hasid is also written as Hassid, Chasid, etc.)

There is an extreme cult of personality focused on Schneerson himself. Some followers consider him the Messiah, and Schneerson himself reportedly sometimes implied this was true. Some Lubavitch educators consider him divine, making such claims as, “the Rebbe is actually ‘the essence and being [of God] … he is without limits, capable of effecting anything, all-knowing and a proper object of worshipful prostration.”

While many secular Jews and Jews from other denominations disagree with its actions and theology, Chabad-Lubavitch is generally acknowledged to be a powerful force in Jewish life today. According to a 1994 New York Times report, it is “one of the most influential and controversial forces in world Jewry.”

There are approximately 3,600 Chabad institutions in over 1,000 cities in 70 countries, and 200,000 adherents. Up to a million people attend Chabad services at least once a year. Numerous campuses have such centers and the Chabad website states that hundreds of thousands of children attend Chabad summer camps.

According to the Times, Schneerson “presided over a religious empire that reached from the back streets of Brooklyn to the main streets of Israel and by 1990 was taking in an estimated $100 million a year in contributions.

In the U.S., the Times reports, Schneerson’s “‘mitzvah tanks’ – converted campers that are rolling recruiting stations whose purpose is to draw Jews to the Lubavitch way – roamed streets from midtown Manhattan to Crown Heights. And the Lubavitchers’ Brooklyn-based publishing house claimed to be the world’s largest distributor of Jewish books.”

Non-Jewish souls ‘satanic’

While Chabad sometimes openly teaches that “the soul of the Jew is different than the soul of the non-Jew,” Schneerson’s specific teachings on this subject are largely unknown.

Quite likely very few Americans, both Jews and non-Jews, are aware of Schneerson’s teachings about the alleged deep differences between them – and about how these teachings are applied in the West Bank and Gaza.

Let us look at Schneerson’s words, as quoted by two respected Jewish professors, Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, in their book Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (text available online here. This book, praised by Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and many others is essential reading for anyone who truly wishes to understand modern day Israel-Palestine. (Brackets in the quotes below are in the translations by Shahak and Mezvinsky.)

Some of Schneerson’s rarely reported teachings:

“The difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish person stems from the common expression: “Let us differentiate.” Thus, we do not have a case of profound change in which a person is merely on a superior level. Rather, we have a case of “let us differentiate” between totally different species.”

“This is what needs to be said about the body: the body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all nations of the world … The difference in the inner quality between Jews and non-Jews is “so great that the bodies should be considered as completely different species.”

“An even greater difference exists in regard to the soul. Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness.”

“As has been explained, an embryo is called a human being, because it has both body and soul. Thus, the difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish embryo can be understood.”

“…the general difference between Jews and non-Jews: A Jew was not created

as a means for some [other] purpose; he himself is the purpose, since the substance of all [divine] emanations was created only to serve the Jews.”

“The important things are the Jews, because they do not exist for any [other] aim; they themselves are [the divine] aim.”

“The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews.”

Most people don’t know about this aspect of Schneerson’s teaching because, according to Shahak and Mezvinsky, such teachings are intentionally minimized, mistranslated, or
hidden entirely.

For example, the quotes above were translated by the authors from a book of Schneerson’s recorded messages to followers that was published in Israel in 1965. Despite Schneerson’s global importance and the fact that his world headquarters is in the U.S., there has never been an English translation of this volume.

Shahak, an Israeli professor who was a survivor of the Nazi holocaust, writes that this lack of translation of an important work is not unusual, explaining that much critical information about Israel and some forms of Judaism is available only in Hebrew.

He and co-author Mezvinsky, who was a Connecticut Distinguished University Professor who taught at Central Connecticut State University, write, “The great majority of the books on Judaism and Israel, published in English especially, falsify their subject matter.”

According to Shahak and Mezvinsky, “Almost every moderately sophisticated Israeli Jew knows the facts about Israeli Jewish society that are described in this book. These facts, however, are unknown to most interested Jews and non-Jews outside Israel who do not know Hebrew and thus cannot read most of what Israeli Jews write about themselves in Hebrew.”

In Shahak’s earlier book, Jewish Religion, Jewish History, he provides a number of examples. In one, he describes a 1962 book published in Israel in a bilingual edition. The Hebrew text was on one page, with the English translation on the facing page.

Shahak describes one set of facing pages in which the Hebrew text of a major Jewish code of laws contained a command to exterminate Jewish infidels: “It is a duty to exterminate them with one’s own hands.” The English version on the facing page softened it to “It is a duty to take active measures to destroy them.’”

The Hebrew page then went on to name which “infidels” must be exterminated, adding “may the name of the wicked rot.” Among them was Jesus of Nazareth. The facing page with the English translation failed to tell any of this.

“Even more significant,” Shahak reports, “in spite of the wide circulation of this book among scholars in the English-speaking countries, not one of them has, as far as I know, protested against this glaring deception.”

Praised by Said, Chomsky, etc., Shahak is almost unknown today

This pattern of selective omission, it seems, applies to Shahak himself, whose work is largely unknown to Palestine activists today, even though he was considered a major figure in the struggle against Israeli oppression of Palestinians, and his work was praised by diverse writers.

While Shahak was alive, Noam Chomsky called him “an outstanding scholar,” and said he had “remarkable insight and depth of knowledge. His work is informed and penetrating, a contribution of great value.”

Edward Said wrote, “Shahak is a very brave man who should be honored for his services to humanity … One of the most remarkable individuals in the contemporary Middle East.” Said wrote a forward for Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion.

Catholic New Times said: ‘This is a remarkable book …[It] deserves a wide readership, not only among Jews, but among Christians who seek a fuller understanding both of historical Judaism and of modern-day Israel.”

Jewish Socialist stated: “Anyone who wants to change the Jewish community so that it stops siding with the forces of reaction should read this book.”

The London Review of Books called Shahak’s book “remarkable, powerful, and provocative.”

Yet, very few Americans today know of Shahak’s work and the information it contains.

American tax money & Jewish Extremism in Palestine

If they did, it’s hard to believe that Americans would allow $8.5 million per day of their tax money to be given to Israel, where such teachings underlie a powerful minority that is disproportionately influential in governmental actions.

Nor is it likely that a fully informed American public would allow donations to religious institutions in Israel that teach supremacist, sometimes violent doctrines to be tax-deductible in the U.S.

One organization raised over $10 million tax-deductible dollars in the U.S. in 2011 alone – removing money from the U.S. economy and enabling illegal, aggressive Israeli settlements in Palestine. And some of this money went to benefit individuals convicted of murder – including the murderer of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The New York Times obituary on Schneerson reported that Schneerson was “a major political force in Israel, both in the Knesset and among the electorate,” but failed to describe the nature of his impact.

One of a sprinkling of writers willing to publicly discuss Shahak and Mezvinsky’s findings is Allan Brownfeld, who is less reticent. Brownfeld is editor of the American Council for Judaism’s periodical Issues and contributor to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

In a review of Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Brownfeld describes Schneerson’s views on Israel:

“Rabbi Schneerson always supported Israeli wars and opposed any retreat. In 1974 he strongly opposed the Israeli withdrawal from the Suez area. He promised Israel divine favors if it persisted in occupying the land.”

Brownfeld reports that after Schneerson’s death, “[T]housands of his Israeli followers played an important role in the election victory of Binyamin Netanyahu. Among the religious settlers in the occupied territories, the Chabad Hassids constitute one of the most extreme groups. Baruch Goldstein, the mass murderer of Palestinians, was one of them.”

Another such Chabad Hassid is Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburg (also sometimes written as “Ginzburg” and “Ginsburgh”), who studied under Schneerson in Crown Heights and who heads up a major Chabad institution in the West Bank.

Ginsburg praised Goldstein, the murderer of 29 Palestinians while they were praying, and considers all non-Jews subhuman.

According to author Motti Inbari, Ginsburg “gives prominence to Halachic and Kabbalistic approaches that emphasize the distinction between Jew and non-Jew (Gentile), imposing a clear separation and hierarchy in this respect.”

In his book Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? Inbari states, “[Ginsburg] claims that while the Jews are the Chosen People and were created in God’s image, the Gentiles do not have this status and are effectively considered subhuman.”

Professor Inbari, an Israeli academic who now teaches in the U.S., writes that Ginsburg’s theological approach continues “certain perceptions that were popular in medieval times.”

“For example,” Inbari writes, “the commandment ‘You shall not murder’ does not apply to the killing of a Gentile, since ‘you shall not murder’ relates to the murder of a human, while for him the Gentiles do not constitute humans.”

Inbari reports, “Similarly, Ginzburg stated that, on the theoretical level, if a Jew requires a liver transplant to survive, it would be permissible to seize a Gentile and take their liver forcefully.”

While the mainstream American press almost never reports this kind of information, an April 26, 1996 article in Jewish Week by Lawrence Cohler reported on Ginsburg’s teachings, including their problematic roots in Jewish texts.

Cohler reported that a professor of Bible at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Rabbi Moshe Greenberg, “called for radically revising Jewish thinking about some Jewish texts on the grounds that scholars such as Rabbi Ginsburgh are far from aberrant in their use of them.”

Cohler quoted Greenberg’s concerns: “‘There’ll be a statement in Talmud… made in circumstances where it’s purely theoretical, because Jews then never had the power to do it,’ he explained. And now, he said, ‘It’s carried over into circumstances where Jews have a state and are empowered.’”

A rabbi associated with Ginsburg coauthored a notorious Israeli book, The King’s Torah, which claims that Jewish law at times permits the killing of non-Jewish infants. American donations to the Chabad school Ginsburg heads up, and that published the above book, are tax-deductible in the U.S. Ginsburg, who endorses the book, teaches classes throughout Israel, the U.S. and France.

Such extremism is opposed by the majority of Israelis, and major Jewish religious authorities condemn it, a Chief Rabbi, for example, stating: “’According to the Torah, every man is created in God’s image.”

Yet, such extremist views continue to exert a powerful influence.

Israeli military manuals echo extremist teachings: “kill even good civilians”

Israeli military manuals sometimes replicate extremist teachings. For example, a booklet authored by a Chief Chaplain stated, “In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians…” Such teachings by the IDF rabbinate were prominent during Israel’s 2008-9 attack on Gaza that killed 1,400 Gazans, approximately half of them civilians. (The Palestinian resistance killed nine Israelis during this “war.”)

Chicago writer Stephen Lendman has described these teachings, giving a number of examples.

Lendman writes, “In 2007, Israel’s former chief rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu, called for the Israeli army to mass-murder Palestinians:

“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1000. And if they don’t stop after 1000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000. Even a million.”

Lendman reports that some extremist Israeli rabbis teach that “the ten commandments don’t apply to non-Jews. So killing them in defending the homeland is acceptable, and according to the chairman of the Jewish Rabbinic Council:

“‘There is no such thing as enemy civilians in war time. The law of our Torah is to have mercy on our soldiers and to save them…. A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail.’”

Lendman writes, “Rabbi David Batsri called Arabs ‘a blight, a devil, a disaster…. donkeys, and we have to ask ourselves why God didn’t create them to walk on all fours. Well, the answer is that they are needed to build and clean.’”

Another such rabbi is Manis Friedman, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi inspired by Schneerson who served as the simultaneous translator for a series of Schneerson’s talks. (Friedman is currently dean of a Jewish Studies institute in Minnesota.)

A 2009 article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports, “Like the best Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, Manis Friedman has won the hearts of many unaffiliated Jews with his charismatic talks about love and God; it was Friedman who helped lead Bob Dylan into a relationship with Chabad.

“But Friedman, who today travels the country as a Chabad speaker, showed a less warm and cuddly side when he was asked how he thinks Jews should treat their Arab neighbors.”

In Moment magazine’s article, “Ask the Rabbis // How Should Jews Treat Their Arab Neighbors?” Friedman answered:

“I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral.

“The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).”

Lendman reports, “Views like these aren’t exceptions. Though a minority, they proliferate throughout Israeli society…”

They also, Lendman notes, work to prevent peace in Israel-Palestine.

Shahak and Mezvinsky note that when the book containing Schneerson’s statements quoted above about Jews and non-Jews was published in Israel, he was allied to the Labor Party and his movement had been provided “many important benefits” from the Israeli government.

In the mid-1970s Schneerson decided that the Labor Party was too moderate and shifted his support to the more right-wing parties in power today. The authors report, “Ariel Sharon was the Rebbe’s favorite Israeli senior politician. Sharon in turn praised the Rebbe publicly and delivered a moving speech about him in the Knesset after the Rebbe’s death.”

Roots in Some Early Texts

Brownfeld decries the fact that few Americans are properly informed about the fundamentalist movement in Israel “and the theology upon which it is based.”

He notes that Jewish Americans, in particular, are often unaware of the “narrow ethnocentrism which is promoted by the movement’s leading rabbis, or of the traditional Jewish sources they are able to call upon in drawing clear distinctions between the moral obligations owed to Jews and non-Jews.”

Teachings that Jews are superior and gentiles inferior were contained in some of the earliest Hassidic texts, including its classic text, “Tanya,” still taught today.

Brownfeld quotes statements by “the revered father of the messianic tendency of Jewish fundamentalism,” Rabbi Kook the Elder, and states that these were derived from earlier texts. [Kook, incidentally, was also an early Zionist, who helped push for the Balfour Declaration in England before moving to Palestine. He was the uncle of Hillel Kook, an agent who went by the name “Peter Bergson” and created front groups in the U.S. for a violent Zionist guerilla group that operated in 1930s and ’40s Palestine.]

Brownfeld quotes Kook: “The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews—all of them in all different levels—is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”

Brownfeld explains that Kook’s teaching, which he says is followed by leaders of the settler movement in the occupied West Bank, “is based upon the Lurianic Cabbala, the school of Jewish mysticism that dominated Judaism from the late 16th to the early 19th century.”

Shahak and Mezvinsky state, “One of the basic tenets of the Lurianic Cabbala is the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body. According to the Lurianic Cabbala, the world was created solely for the sake of Jews; the existence of non-Jews was subsidiary.”

Again, Shahak and Mezvinsky report that this aspect is often covered up in English-language discussions. Scholarly authors of books about Jewish mysticism and the Lurianic Cabbala, they write, have frequently “willfully omitted reference to such ideas.”

Shahak and Mezvinsky write that it is essential to understand these beliefs in order to understand the current situation in the West Bank, where many of the most militant West Bank settlers are motivated by religious ideologies in which every non-Jew is seen as “the earthly embodiment” of Satan, and according to the Halacha (Jewish law), the term ‘human beings’ refers solely to Jews.”

Israeli author and former chief of Israeli military intelligence Yehoshafat Harkabi touches on this in his 1988 book Israel’s Fateful Hour.

Harkabi writes that while such extremist beliefs are not “widely dominant,” the reality is that “nationalistic religious extremists are by no means a lunatic fringe; many are respected men whose words are widely heeded.”

He reports that the campus rabbi of a major Israeli university published an article in the student newspaper entitled “The Commandment of Genocide in the Torah,” in which he implied that those who have a quarrel with Jews “ought to be destroyed, children and all.” Harkabi writes that a book by another rabbi “explained that the killing of a non-Jew is not considered murder.”

Brownfeld writes, “Although messianic fundamentalists constitute a relatively small portion of the Israeli population [most Israeli settlers are motivated by the subsidized lifestyle US tax money to Israel provides], their political influence has been growing. If they have contempt for non-Jews, their hatred for Jews who oppose their views is even greater.”

Brownfeld cites the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had started to make peace with the Palestinians, writing that it was just one “in a long line of murders of Jews who followed a path different from that ordained by rabbinic authorities.” Brownfeld reports that Shahak and Mezvinsky “cite case after case, from the Middle Ages until the 19th century.”

The authors report, “It was usual in some Hasidic circles until the last quarter of the nineteenth century to attack and often to murder Jews who had reform religious tendencies…”

They quote a long article by Israeli writer Rami Rosen, “History of a Denial,” published by Ha’aretz Magazine in 1996. This article, which cannot be found online, at least in English, is also cited in the book Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination, by Israeli professor Ehud Sprinzak.

In his Ha’aretz article Rosen reported: “A check of main facts of the [Jewish] historiography of the last 1500 years shows that the picture is different from the one previously shown to us. It includes massacres of Christians; mock repetitions of the crucifixion of Jesus that usually took place on Purim; cruel murders within the family; liquidation of informers, often done for religious reasons by secret rabbinical courts, which issued a sentence of ‘pursuer’ and appointed secret executioners; assassinations of adulterous women in synagogues and/or the cutting of their noses by command of the rabbis.”

While Rosen’s article may seem shocking, in reality, it simply shows that members of the Jewish population, like members of Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and diverse other populations, have at times committed atrocities, sometimes allegedly in the name of their religion. The difference, as Shahak and Mezvinsky point out, is that such information is largely covered up in the U.S. Such cover-ups, however, don’t make facts go away. They merely bury them, where they smolder and at times eventually lead to exaggerated perceptions.

U.S. media rarely report that some extremist Israeli settlers are intensely hostile to Christians, and in one instance threatened peace activists who came to the West Bank to participate in nonviolent demonstrations, “We killed Jesus and we’ll kill you, too.” There is also a record of official hostility. For example, a few years ago an Israeli mayor ordered all New Testaments to be rounded up and burned.

Schneerson’s “schools”

While Schneerson is honored on national “Education” days, the reality is that the elementary schools he created often failed to teach children “basic reading, writing, spelling, math, science and history,” according to a graduate.

In his article “National Education Day and the Education I Never Had,” Chaim Levin reports on his experience at the Chabad school “Oholei Torah” (Educational Institute Oholei Menachem) in Crown Heights, New York – the site of Chabad’s world headquarters:

“I have profound respect for the late Rebbe and his legacy. However, I remember very clearly those talks that [Schneerson] gave – the ones we studied every year in elementary school about the unimportance of ‘secular’ (non-religious, formal) education, and the great importance of only studying limmudei kodesh (holy studies). As a result of this attitude, thousands of students were not taught anything other than the Bible throughout our years attending Chabad institutions.”

The goal of such schools, Levin writes, was to produce “schluchim,” missionaries who would promote Chabad all over the world.

Meanwhile, he notes, “Failure to provide basic formal education cripples children within Chabad communities. We cannot ignore the harm done…” Levin writes, “Until this day, Oholei Torah and many other Chabad schools — particularly schools for boys and a few for girls in Crown Heights and in some other places — do not provide basic formal education.”

Education and Sharing Day 2014

In his 2000 article, Brownfeld writes that Shahak and Mezvinsky’s book should be “a wake-up call “to Americans, particularly Jewish supporters of Israel.”

Fourteen years later, however, very few people are aware of these books and their powerful information, and U.S. tax money continues to flow to Israel. The main author, Israel Shahak, is now dead, as is Edward Said; Noam Chomsky rarely, if ever, mentions him; and Shahak’s co-author, Norton Mezvinsky (uncle of Chelsea Clinton’s husband), is a member of a Lubavitch congregation in New York.

In many ways, little seems to have changed since 1994, when Congressmen Charles Schumer, Newt Gingrich, and others introduced legislation to bestow on Schneerson the Congressional Gold Medal. The bill passed both Houses by unanimous consent, honoring Schneerson for his “outstanding and lasting contributions toward improvements in world education, morality, and acts of charity.”

And in two weeks, Americans will be officially called on to observe a day that honors Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson and the Lubavitcher movement.

That is, unless masses of people contact their Congressional representatives to demand a whole new direction: a “National Education and Sharing Day” that honors an individual who values education, and who believes that all people – in the words of the Declaration of Independence – are created equal.

Works Cited

“About Chabad-Lubavitch.” Judaism, Torah and Jewish Info – Chabad Lubavitch. N.p., n.d. Web.

Barillas, Martin. “US Court Finds That Chabad Can Sue for the Return of Precious Archives Held by Russia.” The Cutting Edge News. N.p., 23 June 2008. Web.

Blau, Uri. “From New York to Hebron: The American Treasury’s Support for Jewish Settlements in the West Bank.” Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Harvard University, 26 Sept. 2013. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.

Brownfeld, Allan C. “Book Review: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Mar. 2000: 105-06. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.

“Chabad Worldwide Genealogy Project.” Geni_family_tree. Geni, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.

Cohler, Lawrence. “Hero Or Racist? Are Jewish Lives Really More Valuable than Non-Jewish Ones?” Jewish Week [New York] 16 Apr. 1996: 12+. Print.

Cowell, Alan. “AN ISRAELI MAYOR IS UNDER SCRUTINY.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 June 1989. Web.

“David Hartman: The Rise of Extremism and the Decline of Reason.” YouTube. Shalom Hartman Institute, 09 Mar. 2009. Web. Apr.-May 2014.

“Ehud Sprinzak, 62; Studied Israel Far Right.” The New York Times. Associated Press, 12 Nov. 2002. Web.

Eldar, Akiva. “U.S. Tax Dollars Fund Rabbi Who Excused Killing Gentile Babies Read More: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/akiva-eldar-u-s-tax-dollars-fund-rabbi-who-excused-killing-gentile-babies-1.2137.” Ha’aretz [Israel] 15 Dec. 2009: n. pag. Web.

Estrin, Daniel. “The King’s Torah: A Rabbinic Text or a Call to Terror?” Haaretz.com. N.p., 22 Jan. 2010. Web.

Friedman, Manis. “Ask the Rabbis // How Should Jews Treat Their Arab Neighbors?” Moment Magazine. N.p., May-June 2009. Web.

Goldman, Ari L. “Rabbi Schneerson Led A Small Hasidic Sect To World Prominence.” New York Times 13 June 1994, US Edition ed., N.Y./Region sec.: n. pag. Print.

Group, ISM Media. “Swedish Human Rights Worker Viciously Attacked by Jewish Extremists in Hebron.” International Solidarity Movement. N.p., 18 Nov. 2006. Web.

Harkabi, Yehoshafat. Israel’s Fateful Hour. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Print.

Heilman, Samuel C., and Menachem Friedman. The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2012. Print.

Inbari, Motti. Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? Albany: State U of New York, 2009. Print. Translated by Shaul Vardi

Lendman, Stephen. “Religious Fundamentalism in Israel.” OpEdNews. N.p., 12 Aug. 2009. Web.

Levin, Chaim. “National Education Day and the Education I Never Had.” The Huffington Post. N.p., 04 Apr. 2012. Web.

Likshin, Martin I. “Chabad Messianism.” My Jewish Learning. N.p., 17 Jan. 2002. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.

Mezvinsky, Norton, and Israel Shahak. Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. London: Pluto, 2015. Print.

Novak, David. “The Man-Made Messiah.” First Things. InstituInstitute on Religion and Public Lifete on Religion and Public Life, 2014. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.

Odenheimer, Natan. “The Kabbalist Who Would Be King of a New Jewish Monarchy in Israel.” The Forward. N.p., 14 Oct. 2016. Web. 03 Mar. 2017. (Article on Rabbi Ginsburgh published in 2016)

“Orthodox Judaism.” Lubavitch and Chabad. Jewish Virtual Library, n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.

Popper, Nathaniel. “Popular Rabbi’s Comments on Treatment of Arabs Show a Different Side of Chabad.” The Forward. N.p., 03 June 2009. Web.

“Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson| Jewish Virtual Library. Jewish Virtual Library, 13 June 1994. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.

“A Rabbinate Gone Wild.” Ha’aretz [Israel] 27 Jan. 2009: n. pag. Print. Ha’aretz Editorial

“Rabbis in the Caucus Room?” Lubavitch Archives | Article. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2017.

Shahak, IsraeÍÌl, and Gore Vidal. Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years. London: Pluto, 2008. Print.

Shahak, Israel, and Norton Mezvinsky. “Full Text of “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel”.” Full Text of “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel”. Archive.org, n.d. Web.

Sprinzak, Ehud. Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination. New York, NY: Free, 1999. Print.

The Tanya of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Elucidated by Rabbi Yosef WinebergPublished and Copyrighted by Kehot Publication Society. “The Tanya Chapter 1.” Chabad.org. N.p., n.d. Web.

Torossian, Ronn. “The First Jewish Start-Up Nation ? Chabad: Marketing Genius.” Jewocity.com. N.p., 07 June 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.

“Vintage Satellite Footage Promotes Web Event.” Jewish Educational Media. N.p., 8 Apr. 2011. Web.

Wagner, Matthew. “Netanyahu’s UN Speech Inspired by The Rebbe.” Chabad Lubavitch of Alberta. Jerusalem Post, n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.

Weir, Alison. Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel. Charleston, NC: CreateSpace, 2014. Print.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and president of the Council for the National Interest. Her book, Against Our Better Judgment: How the U.S. was used to create Israel, contains additional information on Rabbi Kook’s family connection to American front groups for Israeli terrorists.

April 6, 2020 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

The American Occupation of Iran 1941-1978

Tales of the American Empire

American control of Iran began in 1941 when the United States provided military aid to allow the British to invade Iran to seize its oil. Britain could no longer pay Iran royalties on oil production, so decided to steal it.

The British joined the Soviets to invade and partition Iran, in the same manner the Germans had joined the Soviets to partition Poland in 1939.

The United States pretended it was neutral in this conquest, but massive American military aid made this invasion possible. During the World War II, Iran was occupied by some 30,000 American troops.

Americans filled key positions in Iran’s government, so the nation functioned as a colony of the American empire.

After the war ended, most American troops were withdrawn, but thousands of soldiers and civilians remained to advise the Iranian government, military, and police to support the dictator they had installed.
_________________________

“CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup”; National Security Archive; August 19, 2013; https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSA…

“The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia; T.H. Vail Motter; Center of Military History US Army; 1952; https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/p…

April 5, 2020 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, Video | Iran, UK, United States | Leave a comment

Iraq War Lies Still Cause Pervasive Distrust of UK State

Militant arson against 5G towers showed citizens view the state as a liar

By L’Ordre | Dissident Voice | April 5, 2020

With anti-statist paranoia and acts of vandalism now part of the coronavirus crisis in the UK, in one outrageous video sent to me by a friend (I will not produce it, due to the responsibility to prevent the spread of false information) a British man denounced the virus as a hoax. What is most shocking is that he included (17 years on!) an appeal to the fact the Iraq War was based on lies.

The continued disbelief towards any government statements and guidance shows, despite attempts to put Tony Blair’s shame to rest or somehow apologize for his supposed mistakes, the grave injustice of the Iraq War has still not been resolved. Instead, the failure to punish Blair sent the message that deception and conspiracy are the rule rather than the exception for the statists, with Tony Blair only being an example of what the British state continues to be. The image of the craven, dishonourable, lying villain who once led the Labour Party has only grown more in people’s minds every year Blair continuously eluded punishment. Rulers believed they ruled over goldfishes, but the citizens have not forgotten anything. On the contrary, their suspicions have only grown to target ever more politicians.

It is the role of the state to calm the people, to possess agencies and departments that offer the most impartial and well-intentioned information. Throughout the handling of the coronavirus outbreak, there is no doubt that the British government has indeed been true to its word. Its guidance has been appropriate, its measures aimed genuinely to save the resources of the National Health Service. However, it is not enough to tell the truth sometimes. If the rages of the citizenry are to be appeased, the government must refrain from deception at all times. If it can’t, its downfall must be witnessed by that same citizenry or their distrust will only increase and their cooperation will decrease.

It is a fact that the British government has not sufficiently apologized for the 2003 War on Iraq, nor offered sufficient compensation to its victims. Its supposed investigation of the crime in the Chilcot Inquiry is considered to be a farce by anyone remotely interested in seeing the issue addressed properly. The criminals even continue to be celebrated and followed dearly by other politicians, and their criminal policy continues to remain in effect the policy of the state as the “war on terror” still fails again and again year after year, decade after decade, civilian death after civilian death. That continued trail of terrorism and destruction is, as far as Britain’s involvement is concerned, still the fault of Tony Blair and other staunch pro-US individuals in the British political scene.

The best way to put an end to the distrust towards the state, both at home and abroad, is to clean the stain of dishonour – to sacrifice our former great statesman for the greater good of stability and order. Clearly, as a man who took great leaps and risks in the interests of national security, Blair himself would be the first to support the proposition as follows. The appropriate solution has already been trialled by the British Parliament in the case of other citizens whose terrorism was undeniable. Tony Blair and the others of his former cabinet should be quickly stripped of British citizenship, deported to Iraq as terrorists, and forced to face justice in the courts in that country. Once this selfless sacrifice for our country clears up our image around the world and actually protects us (unlike the pointless loss of so many brave soldiers) Americans may be then inspired to deport George W. Bush and other selfless patriots who are so willing to give their lives for the cause of national security.

In the interests of long-term internal stability, there needs to be a proper acknowledgment by the British state that the 2003 War on Iraq was an unprecedented crime based entirely on lies and deceit, and its criminal perpetrators must be investigated by an appropriately empowered committee and brought to justice. As well as continuously infuriating Muslims across the world, our inexplicable failure to make Tony Blair pay the price has the potential to turn entire generations of British people against the state, as they view almost everything it says with suspicion.

Letting politicians lie with impunity and allowing them to wander freely for years afterwards is undoing centuries of accumulated trust in political institutions within only decades, and is far more damaging to society than allowing individual soldiers to get away with war crimes. It sets the state against the people in a way that is very difficult to resolve. In the end, it entails elevated risks to government employees and others forced to act on the front lines as the public face of liars despite also being victims of these liars. One cannot even deliver the most basic policies without facing constant distrust, and the constant and increasingly common refrain that the government is lying. Such distrust ultimately leads the government employees to sympathize more with the disgruntled citizenry and less with their employer, too, creating many hairline fractures running to the very foundations of what the state actually is.

At one point or another, it is the job of a state to be pragmatic. As with this virus, the state must take decisions that serve a greater order and a greater good, and not necessarily what is comforting. Tony Blair is not useful in the UK, and would be a useful agent for Britain’s safety if placed on trial in Iraq. Whatever the outcome, it would help protect the lives of all British people around the world, who would be at decreased risk of terrorist activity. It would help restore the trust British people have in their government, and would deflate wild and potentially harmful conspiracy theories. It would function as a genuine apology for what we did, and there would be no doubt that there are consequences for abusing one’s office to tell lies.

L’Ordre can reached at lordrenet@gmail.com.

April 5, 2020 Posted by aletho | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | George W. Bush, Tony Blair, UK, United States | Leave a comment

The Thin Internal Walls of Krematorium 1 at Auschwitz

A Small Detail with Far-reaching Consequences

“… the meager thickness of these walls proves that no sturdy, panic-proof door of any kind could have been installed in them.”

By Germar Rudolf

Abstract

The room inside the old crematorium of the Auschwitz Main Camp that was a morgue according to original war-time plans is said to have been used as a homicidal gas chamber between late 1941/early 1942 and the first half of 1943. It would seem that operating a homicidal gas chamber requires the installation of gas-tight, panic-proof doors to keep both the poisonous fumes and the victims safely inside. While there is no evidence in the extant documentation pointing to the existence of any such doors, orthodox historiography points to witness testimony indicating that such doors were in fact in place. A closer scrutiny of war-time blueprints reveals that the walls of this morgue which must have supported these doors were extremely thin, hence unable to support the installation of massive steel doors.

The Impetus for This Paper

On November 20, 2019, I received the following email:

“Hello, my name is Federico Bussone, I’m from Italy. I think I have discovered an important weak point in the mainstream official story of the Auschwitz Main Camp crematorium. As far as I know, this weak point has never been highlighted by any revisionist, and so I would like to share with you my ‘discovery.’

We have to look at the original blueprint of the Crematorium I of April 10 1942 (but also the one from November 30 1940).

In both these plans, the wall of the left (short) side of the alleged gas chamber, that is, the wall with the entrance door, is REALLY THIN, it probably measures no more than 15 centimetres. As an architect, I understand well that such a partition could only have served as a dividing wall. It could have never withstand the stresses produced by the opening and closing of a heavy steel door. Let alone the blows and the pressure towards the outside exerted by the panicked prisoners.

I would like to emphasize that this type of wall, built of small solid bricks bound by mortar, became quite resistant only when built in a double row. In a single row, as it is in our case, it can be easily demolished with a little sledgehammer by a single worker, for example during house renovation.

It seems to me that this important fact has not been grasped so far. For example, the 3D models by Eric Hunt have the same (greater) thickness for all walls. The same for other drawings I have found in revisionist publications etc.

I hope this mail will be helpful!

Best regards.

Federico”

The Orthodox Narrative

After the former Polish military barracks south of the Polish city of Oswiecim had been converted into a concentration camp by German authorities following the Polish defeat in September 1939, the old munitions bunker on the grounds of that camp was converted into a crematorium for the incineration of the remains of deceased or executed inmates. In war-time and post-war literature, this building is alternately referred to as either the old crematorium or Crematorium I. The morgue of this facility is said to have been converted into a homicidal gas chamber subsequent to an initial test gassing conducted in the camp’s gaol in September of 1941.¹ This was asserted already two months prior to the end of World War Two by a combined Polish-Soviet investigative commission, which stated the following about this in its report:²

“In early 1941, a crematorium, designated as Crematorium #1, was started up in the Auschwitz camp. […] Next to this crematorium there was a gas chamber, which had, at either end, gas-tight doors with peep-holes and in the ceiling four openings with hermetic closures through which the ‘Ziklon’ [sic] for the killing of the persons was thrown. Crematorium I operated until March 1943 and existed in that form for two years.”

In preparation for the 1947 Polish show trial against former Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Höss, Polish engineer Dr. Roman Dawidowski compiled an expert report on evidence supporting homicidal gassing claims at Auschwitz, where we read on this topic:³

“One now [in late 1941⁴] began to poison people regularly with Zyklon B and to use for that purpose the Leichenhalle (morgue) of Crematorium I […]. This chamber […] on both sides had a gas-tight door.”

Jan Sehn, the Polish judge who led the investigation leading up to the Polish post-war show trials against former members of the German Auschwitz camp staff, wrote the following about this in his 1960 book on Auschwitz:⁵

“The mortuary (Leichenkeller)^[⁶^] of the first Oswiecim crematorium […] was fitted with two gas-proof doors.”

Claims about gas-tight doors in that morgue originate from witness testimony. Among them is Stanisław Jankowski, who stated regarding the doors in that room in a deposition October 3, 1980:⁷

“The two thick wooden doors of the room, one in the side wall, the other in the end wall, had been made gas-tight.”

The post-war autobiography by Rudolf Höss, written while in Polish custody awaiting his execution, contains little information about the doors of this alleged gas chamber, only that they must have been very sturdy, because:^⁸

“When the powder [sic; Zyklon B] was thrown in[to the gas chamber], there were cries of ‘Gas!’, then a great bellowing, and the trapped prisoners [Russian PoWs to be gassed] hurled themselves against both the doors. But the doors held.”

Höss moreover speaks repeatedly of the doors being “screwed” shut,^⁹ which points to a door with massive steel fixtures not found on usual doors.

In his post-war declaration writing in the summer of 1945, former SS man Pery Broad was a little more specific about the doors of this claimed homicidal gas chamber, making it clear that this was a heavy, gas-tight, panic-proof door:^¹⁰

“Suddenly the door was closed. It had been made tight with rubber and secured with iron fittings. Those inside heard the heavy bolts being secured. They were screwed to with screws, making the door air-tight. A deadly, paralysing terror spread among the victims. They started to beat upon the door, in helpless rage and despair they hammered with their fists upon it.”

While interrogated in preparation of the first Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, defendant Hans Stark made the following statements in his deposition about the doors of that room:¹¹

“As early as the autumn of 1941 gassings were carried out in a room of the small crematorium, the room having been fitted for that purpose. It could take in some 200–250 people, was higher than a normal living room, had no windows, and only one door that had been made [gas] tight and had a lock like the door of an air-raid shelter.”

The Current Material Situation

In the fall of 1944, the section of the old crematorium that contained the morgue, the washroom and the laying-out/dissecting room was converted into an air-raid shelter for the SS.¹² For this purpose, the former interior walls of that section as well as the walls separating it from the furnace room were changed – I will address this in more detail later – and probably also the doors, as documentation indicates that the shelter’s interior doors were of a “simple” nature,^¹³ hence neither gas-tight nor fragment-proof, as was initially foreseen, nor panic-proof, as would have been required for homicidal purposes.¹²

Illustration 1: Sign posted outside the old crematorium at the former Auschwitz Main Camp juxtaposing the situation before the building’s conversion to an air-raid shelter (left) to the current situation (right).

In 1947, the freshly established Polish Auschwitz-Museum authorities restructured the building, among other things by removing some of the former air-raid shelter’s internal walls. By so doing they tried to recreate the state as it was before the conversion of this facility to an air-raid shelter. During that process, a number of mistakes were made, among them the removal of a wall which did exist in the pre-shelter era, separating the alleged gas chamber from the adjacent washroom. Only one internal wall was left, which used to separate the washroom from the laying-out/dissecting room. To this very day, this wall has a “simple interior wall” as installed during the conversion to an air-raid shelter.

Only after the collapse of the Communist Eastern Bloc did the Polish Auschwitz authorities start to acknowledge the fact that the facility as presented to visitors today is not an accurate “reconstruction” of the former alleged gas chamber, although the tour guides kept misrepresenting it to visitors. A sign hinting at a few of the inaccuracies of this botched reconstruction was installed near that building only in the early 2000s, see Illustration 1. The wall originally separating the morgue (or “gas chamber”, marked “c” on the plans) from the washroom (marked “b” on the plans) is missing today.

The Revisionist Position

Starting from the assumption, caused by the Auschwitz Museum’s decade-long misrepresentation, that today’s state of the building is an accurate reconstruction of the situation during the war when homicidal gassing are said to have occurred, revisionists highlighted the fact that the extant doors (or the lack thereof) in the claimed gas chamber would never have allowed the claimed mass murder. For instance, Swedish eccentric revisionist Ditlieb Felderer wrote in 1980:¹⁴

“The doorposts [of the door separating the alleged gas chamber from the former laying-out/dissecting room] are made of wood, and the door itself is made of wood and glass. The handle and lock are so weak that they keep falling apart. The door opens inwards, into the ‘gas chamber.’ When we asked Mr. T. Szymanski, the (now retired) curator, how it was that the gassees did not just smash the window in this door and escape, he advised us that he had never investigated this door so he could not give us a definite answer!”

Illustration 2: Gas-tight steel door, type “air-raid shelter”, offered to the Auschwitz Camp, but never delivered.

Illustration 3: One of the eight wedge locks of a gas-tight steel door, type “air-raid shelter”, offered to the Auschwitz Camp, but never delivered.
The wedging of these levers into the lock position could rightly be called “screwed shut”.

The famous 1988 Leuchter Report acknowledged that the current state of the building is not original, “since one wall had been removed,” and therefore did not make any statement about the door currently visible.^¹⁵ However, at the end of a 1994 article, revisionist Robert Faurisson, ghostwriter of the Leuchter Report, added two images comparing the massive steel door of a US execution gas chamber with the flimsy wooden door with window pane which has been visible in the old crematorium since the wall from the morgue to the washroom had been knocked down in 1947. The caption to the image showing that door reads:¹⁶

“One of the three doors of an alleged NS gas chamber for the execution of hundreds of persons at once with Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) (Krematorium I, Auschwitz, Poland, beginning of the 40’s).”

The same illustration with the same misleading caption can be found in the 2000 and 2003 English editions,^¹⁷ but has been removed in the 2019 edition. It is misleading, because it was well known by the time these books were published that this door was never part of a homicidal gas chamber, even if the Auschwitz tour guides were still claiming this in the 1990s and early 2000s, and some may still be doing it today.

In 2005, the English translation of Carlo Mattogno’s monograph on Krematorium I was published.^¹⁸ While it contains most of the witness testimony quoted earlier and goes into some detail about the various restructurings this building went through, it does not specifically address the question of the doors presumably installed in that building’s morgue while allegedly used for homicidal purposes.

The same year also saw the first English (and 2nd German) edition of my Lectures on the Holocaust, where I briefly addressed the issue of access doors to the morgue, albeit with a focus on the swing door between the morgue and the furnace room, shown on several war-time floor plans.^¹⁹ The same emphasis on that swing door, with much more detail, can be found in Eric Hunt’s introductory contribution to C. Mattogno’s 2016 book Curated Lies.^²⁰ While this proves that the blueprints do not reflect any outfitting of the morgue for homicidal purposes, it can be argued that such secrecy was in fact intentional, meaning that the floor plans were simply not updated in this regard, in particular regarding the swing door, in order to conceal the criminal changes made.

Extant Documentation

In a long 1998 article, German architect Willy Wallwey, writing under the pen names of Hans Jürgen Nowak and Werner Rademacher, summarized what the extant documentation accessible in various Moscow archives reveals about gas-tight doors offered to, delivered to and installed in the various buildings at Auschwitz.^²¹ Wallwey concluded that the Auschwitz camp authorities did indeed request cost estimates for sturdy, gas-tight, and probably also panic-proof steel doors, but they were never delivered. These doors even had so-called wedge locks used to close them in an air-tight fashion, a closing mechanism that could be called “screwing” the doors shut as described by witnesses, see Illustration 3.²²

Illustration 4: Make-shift air-raid-shelter door of Krematorium I made of wood with a thin sheet metal cover, probably built by inmates in the camp’s workshop.

Illustration 5: blueprint of the wall anchor for a frame of a sturdy, gas-tight steel door.

The two existing air-raid-shelter doors made for Krematorium I in 1944 during the building’s conversion to an air-raid shelter are made of wooden planks covered by thin sheet metal, see Illustration 4. Although these doors were probably built by the local inmate workshop, so far no documentation about them has been found. This proves that not everything that was constructed at the Auschwitz Camp left a trace in the documental record, or if it did, that it has survived. Hence, it is conceivable that sturdy gas-tight doors similar to those shown in Illustrations 2f. were in fact delivered to Auschwitz and were subsequently installed there without leaving a documental trace.

The Blueprints

Illustration 6: Inventory plan of Krematorium I, dated April 10, 1942. RGVA, 502-2-146, p. 21.

Below: section enlargement of washroom with adjacent walls, rotated by 90°, with grey circles added to highlight the walls’ width of 15 cm.

While it cannot be ruled out that panic-proof, gas-tight steel doors were indeed delivered to Auschwitz and may have been installed elsewhere, it can be ruled out, based on war-time floor plans, that any such door could have been installed in the relevant door openings of the morgue of Krematorium I.

First, we need to be aware that the frame of a massive wooden or even a steel door designed to withstand a panicking crowd needs to be anchored firmly in the wall. Illustration 5 shows a hoop steel anchor with a so-called dovetail going some 14 cm (5.5 inches) into the wall.²² Needless to say, the wall itself had to be considerably thicker than 14 cm.

Turning to the war-time floor plans of this morgue, we see that the wall separating the morgue from the adjacent washroom and the wall separating it from the furnace room were both very thin: 15 cm, which is the width of a standard brick plus some plaster on both sides of it (see Illustration 6). Hence, these walls consisted only of one row of bricks set lengthwise. The wall separating the morgue from the furnace room consisted of two such walls with a gap of some 30 cm in between (for thermal insulation).

It is not possible to set a steel anchor into bricks. In such a case, bricks have to be removed, and then the anchor placed into a block of cement/concrete. However, since these walls consisted only of one row of bricks – unless they consisted only of a wooden framework of 2-by-5s plus some boards, in which case we need no longer discuss this issue – removing a brick to place an anchor embedded in cement in its stead would have left this chunk of cement held in place by nothing more than the bricks on top and at the bottom of it. Such a chunk would have become loose very quickly. Any forceful shaking of the door would have dislodged those anchors, bent the frame, and made the frame including the door fall out of the wall sooner or later.

In other words, the meager thickness of these walls proves that no sturdy, panic-proof door of any kind could have been installed in them.

The only option left for the traditionalists is to claim that these walls were reinforced to a much thicker width at the very moment the morgue is said to have been converted into a homicidal gas chamber, meaning in September 1941. Yet no evidence exists for this neither in the documental record nor in witness testimonies known to me.

As the late Dr. Robert Faurisson put it aptly:

“No doors, no destruction.”

Germar Rudolf is the author of Dissecting the Holocaust and The Chemistry of Auschwitz, plus many other books and videos. Email him at germar.rudolf@comcast.net. His personal website: http://germarrudolf.com/en/welcome-to-my-world/

______________________________________________

Notes

[1] The currently accepted orthodox narrative of the so-called first gassing is succinctly summarized by Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle 1938-1945, pp. 84-87. See the critique of this narrative by Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: The First Gassing. Rumor and Reality, 3rd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2016.

[2] Gosudarstvenni Archiv Rossiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation), Moscow, 7021-108-15, pp. 2f. Subsequently abbreviated as GARF.

[3] Archiwum Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu Instytutu Pamieci Narodowej (Archive of the Central Commission of Inquiry into the Crimes against the Polish People – National Memorial), Warsaw, NTN, 93; subsequently abbreviated as AGK. The report entered the files of the Höss trial in its Volume 11. The quoted passage is on pp. 26f.

[4] Danuta Czech set the date of the first gassing in that morgue to September 16, 1941; see op. cit. (note 1), pp. 89f.

[5] Jan Sehn , Oświęcim-Brzezinka (Auschwitz-Birkenau) Concentration camp, Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, Warsaw 1961, p. 125.

[6] That should be Leichenhalle, as it was above-ground, while “Keller” means basement/cellar.

[7] J.-C. Pressac , Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1989, p. 124.

[8] Jadwiga Bezwińska, Danuta Czech (eds.), KL Auschwitz Seen by the SS, Howard Fertig, New York, 1984, p. 93.

[9] Ibid., pp. 96, 115, 134.

[10] Ibid., p. 176.

[11] Minutes of interrogation of Hans Stark , Cologne, April 23, 1959. Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen, Ludwigsburg, ref. AR-Z 37/58 SB6, p. 947.

[12] This results from a letter dated August 26, 1944, by Heinrich Josten, head of the Auschwitz air-raid protection department, to the camp commandant, Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennii Vojennii Archiv (Russian State War Archive), Moscow, 502-1-401, p. 34. Subsequently abbreviated as RGVA.

[13] RGVA, 502-2-147, p. 12a.

[14] Ditlieb Felderer, “Auschwitz Notebook: Doors & Portholes,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 1, No. 4 (winter 1980), pp. 365-370, here p. 366.

[15] Fred Leuchter, Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2017, p. 47

[16] Ernst Gauss (ed.), Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, Grabert, Tübingen 1994, p. 109.

[17] Ernst Gauss (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, Theses & Dissertations Press, Capshaw, Ala., 2000, p. 143; Germar Rudolf (ed.), ibid., Chicago, 2003, p. 143.

[18] Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: Crematorium I and the Alleged Homicidal Gassings, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, Ill., 2005 (now available in its 2nd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2016).

[19] Germar Rudolf, Lectures on the Holocaust, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, Ill., 2005, p. 255.

[20] Carlo Mattogno, Curated Lies: Auschwitz Museum’s Misrepresentations, Distortions and Deceptions, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2016, pp. 30-32. Similar in my book The Chemistry of Auschwitz, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2017, p. 104.

[21] Hans Jürgen Nowak, Werner Rademacher, “‘Gasdichte’ Türen in Auschwitz,” Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung 2(4) (1998), pp. 248-260.

[22] RGVA 502-1-354-8; July 9, 1942; see Rudolf (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield 2019, p. 326.

April 4, 2020 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

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British Intel Tried to Make N Irish Gang ‘Shoot Up’ School, Documentary Claims

Sputnik – 23.02.2019

A new documentary, based on an interview with a self-confessed member of the Glennane Gang, gives some insights into allegations that British military intelligence was behind a shocking murder plot to cause the situation in Northern Ireland to “spiral out of control”.

In a documentary, Unquiet Graves: The Story of the Glennane Gang, John Weir, a former officer from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), alleges that British intelligence tried to persuade paramilitary group Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to attack a Catholic primary school at Belleeks in County Armagh.

Weir claimed that the UVF was urged to kill children and teachers in retaliation for the 1976 Kingsmill massacre, in which gunmen stopped a minibus carrying twelve workmen and shot them; only one person survived despite having been shot 18 times.

“The plan that was decided on was to shoot up a school in Belleeks”, he said, adding that the British intelligence plot was to make the situation in Northern Ireland “spiral out of control”. … continue

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Sky News Australia • October 5, 2019

President Trump proclaiming Education and Sharing Day 2018. (Photo Credit: The White House)

President Barack Obama presents a ceremonial copy of the Education and Sharing Day Proclamation that he issued on March 31, 2015 to a delegation from the American Friends of Lubavitch in the Oval Office, April 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) (ObamaWhiteHouse)

Why is the US Honoring a Racist Rabbi?

By Alison Wier | CounterPunch | April 7, 2014

Illustration 1: Sign posted outside the old crematorium at the former Auschwitz Main Camp juxtaposing the situation before the building’s conversion to an air-raid shelter (left) to the current situation (right).

Illustration 2: Gas-tight steel door, type “air-raid shelter”, offered to the Auschwitz Camp, but never delivered.

Illustration 3: One of the eight wedge locks of a gas-tight steel door, type “air-raid shelter”, offered to the Auschwitz Camp, but never delivered. The wedging of these levers into the lock position could rightly be called “screwed shut”.

Illustration 4: Make-shift air-raid-shelter door of Krematorium I made of wood with a thin sheet metal cover, probably built by inmates in the camp’s workshop.

Illustration 5: blueprint of the wall anchor for a frame of a sturdy, gas-tight steel door.

Illustration 6: Inventory plan of Krematorium I, dated April 10, 1942. RGVA, 502-2-146, p. 21.

Below: section enlargement of washroom with adjacent walls, rotated by 90°, with grey circles added to highlight the walls’ width of 15 cm.

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Illustration 3: One of the eight wedge locks of a gas-tight steel door, type “air-raid shelter”, offered to the Auschwitz Camp, but never delivered.
The wedging of these levers into the lock position could rightly be called “screwed shut”.