Governments should endorse a global moratorium on mRNA vaccines until all questions about their safety have been thoroughly investigated, according to the authors of a new, peer-reviewed article on the COVID-19 vaccine trials and the global vaccination campaign published last week in Cureus, Journal of Medical Science.
Cureus is a web-based peer-reviewed open-access general medical journal using prepublication peer review.
The authors surveyed published research on the pharmaceutical companies’ vaccine trials and related adverse events. They also called for the COVID-19 vaccines to be removed immediately from the childhood immunization schedule.
After the first reports from vaccine trials claimed they were 95% effective in preventing COVID-19, serious problems with method, execution and reporting in the trials became public, which the paper reviewed in detail.
Evidence also shows the products never underwent adequate safety and toxicological testing, and since the vaccine rollout, researchers have identified a significant number of adverse events (AEs) and serious adverse events (SAEs).
Authors M. Nathaniel Mead, Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., Russ Wolfinger, Ph.D., Jessica Rose, Ph.D., Kris Denhaerynck, Ph.D., Steve Kirsch and Dr. Peter McCullough detailed the vaccines’ potential serious harms to humans, vaccine control and processing issues, the mechanisms behind AEs, the immunological reasons for vaccine inefficacy and the mortality data from the registrational trials.
They concluded, “Federal agency approval of the COVID-19 mRNA injectable products on a blanket-coverage population-wide basis had no support from an honest assessment of all relevant registrational data and commensurate consideration of risks versus benefits.”
They also called for the vaccines to be immediately removed from the childhood immunization schedule and for the suspension of the boosters.
“It is unethical and unconscionable to administer an experimental vaccine to a child who has a near-zero risk of dying from COVID-19 (IFR, 0.0003%) but a well-established 2.2% risk of permanent heart damage based on the best prospective data available,” they wrote.
Finally, the authors called for a full investigation into misconduct by the pharmaceutical companies and the regulatory agencies.
It is the first peer-reviewed study to call for a moratorium on the COVID-19 mRNA products, Rose told The Defender.
“Once a proper assessment of the safety and efficacy claims was made herein — upon which the emergency use authorization (EUA)’s and ultimate final authorizations were granted — it was found that the COVID-19 injectable products were neither safe nor effective,” she added.
Lead author Mead told The Defender, “Our view is that any risk-benefit analysis must consider how much the presumed benefit in terms of reduced COVID-19 related mortality is offset by the potential increase in vaccine-induced mortality.”
Here are six takeaways from the review:
1. The COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ are reclassified gene therapies that were rushed through the regulatory process in a historically unprecedented manner
Before the seven-month authorization process for the mRNA vaccines, no vaccine had ever gone to market without undergoing testing of at least four years, with typical timelines averaging 10 years.
To speed the process, the companies skipped preclinical studies of potential toxicity from multiple doses and cut the typical 6-12 month observation period for identifying longer-term adverse effects and the established 10-15-year period for monitoring for long-term effects such as cancer and autoimmune disorders, the authors wrote.
The trials prioritized documenting effective symptom reduction over SAE and mortality. This was particularly concerning, the authors argued, because mRNA products are gene therapy products reclassified as vaccines and then given EUA for the first time ever for use against a viral disease.
However, the gene therapies’ components have not been thoroughly evaluated for safety for use as vaccines.
There is an uninvestigated and major concern that the mRNA could transform body cells into viral protein factories — with no off-switch — that produce the spike protein for a prolonged period causing chronic systemic inflammation and immune dysfunction.
The spike protein in the vaccine, the authors said, is associated with more severeimmunopathology and other AEs than the spike protein in the virus itself.
The authors suggested that massive government investment in mRNA technology, including hundreds of millions before the pandemic and tens of billions once it began, meant, “U.S. federal agencies were strongly biased toward successful outcomes for the registrational trials.”
The financial incentives along with political pressures to deliver a rapid solution likely influenced a series of flawed decisions that compromised the integrity of the trials and downplayed serious scientific concerns about risks with the technology, they added.
2. Steps were taken in trials to overestimate vaccine efficacy
Because the trials were designed to assess whether the mRNA vaccine reduced symptoms, they did not measure whether the vaccines prevented severe disease and death. Yet the vaccine makers repeatedly claimed that they do.
“No large randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials have ever demonstrated reductions in SARS-CoV-2 transmission, hospitalization, or death,” the authors wrote.
Additionally, the number of people who contracted clinical COVID-19 in both the placebo and intervention groups was “too small to draw meaningful, pragmatic, or broad-sweeping conclusions with regard to COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.”
Pfizer’s 95 % efficacy claims were based on 162 of 22,000 placebo recipients contracting PCR-confirmed COVID-19 compared to eight of 22,000 in the vaccine group. None of the placebo recipients died from COVID-19. In the Moderna trials, only one placebo death was attributed to COVID-19.
There was also a much larger percentage of “suspected COVID-19 cases” in both groups, with participants showing COVID-19 symptoms but a negative PCR test. When factoring in those cases, measures of vaccine efficacy drop to about 19%.
The trial subject pool was comprised of largely young and healthy individuals, excluding key groups — children, pregnant women, elderly and immunocompromised people — which can also obscure the vaccine’s actual efficacy and safety.
Findings from reanalyses of data from the Pfizer trials can be interpreted as showing the vaccines made “no significant difference” in reducing all-cause mortality in the vaccinated versus unvaccinated groups at 20 weeks into the trial, the authors wrote.
Even the six-month post-marketing data Pfizer presented to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed no reduction in all-cause mortality from the vaccine.
The authors reanalyzed that data, adjusting the analysis of deaths to better account for the fact that when Pfizer unblinded the study people from the placebo group took the vaccine, and found the vaccine group had a higher mortality rate (0.105%) than the unvaccinated group (0.0799%), which they said was a conservative estimate.
One of the most glaring issues with the registrational trials, they noted, was that they exclusively focused on measuring risk reduction — the ratio of COVID-19 symptom rates in the vaccine group versus the placebo group — rather than measuring absolute risk reduction, which is the likelihood someone will show COVID-19 symptoms relative to people in the population at large.
According to FDA guidelines, accounting for both approaches is crucial to avoid the misguided use of pharmaceutical products — but the data were omitted, leading to an overestimation of an intervention’s clinical utility.
While both vaccines touted an approximately 95% risk reduction figure as their efficacy figure, the absolute risk reductions for Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines were 0.7% and 1.1% respectively.
“A substantial number of individuals would need to be injected in order to prevent a single mild-to-moderate case of COVID-19,” the authors wrote.
As an example, using a conservative estimate that 119 people would need to be vaccinated to prevent infection, and assuming that COVID-19 had a 0.23% infection fatality rate, they wrote that approximately 52,000 vaccinations would be necessary to prevent a single COVID-19-related death.
However, “Given trial misconduct and data integrity problems … the true benefit is likely to be much lower,” they wrote.
And, they added, one would need to assess that benefit along with harms, which they estimate to be 27 deaths per 100,000 doses of Pfizer. That means, using the most conservative estimates, “for every life saved, there were 14 times more deaths caused by the modified mRNA injections.”
They also noted that post-rollout evidence confirmed the efficacy claims were overstated. For example, two large cohort Cleveland clinic studies showed the vaccine could not confer protection against COVID-19 — instead, in those trials, more vaccinated people were more likely to contract COVID-19.
One study showed the risk of “breakthrough” infection was significantly higher among people who were boosted and that more vaccinations resulted in a greater risk of COVID-19.
A second study showed adults who were not “up-to-date” with their shots had a 23% lower incidence of COVID-19 than their “up-to-date” colleagues.
3. The trials underestimated the adverse events, including death, despite evidence in the data.
Harms were also underreported and underestimated for a number of reasons, according to the authors, a practice that tends to be common in randomized industry-sponsored vaccine trials in general and “exceptionally evident” here.
First, because Pfizer unblinded the trial within just a few weeks of the emergency use authorization and allowed people in the placebo group to take the vaccine, there was not sufficient time to identify late-occurring harms because there was no longer a control group.
“Was this necessary, given that none of the deaths in the Pfizer trial were attributed to COVID-19 as the primary cause, and given the very low IFR [infection fatality rate] for a relatively healthy population?” they asked.
Also, trial coordinators were “haphazard” in their approach to monitoring AEs. They prioritized documenting events thought to be related to COVID-19 rather than to the vaccines for the first seven days and only recorded “unsolicited” AEs for 30-60 days. After that period, even very SAEs, like death, were not recorded. Even for the AEs recorded in the first seven days, they only solicited data from 20% of the population.
None of the trial data was independently verified. “Such secrecy may have enabled the industry to more easily present an inflated and distorted estimate of the genetic injections’ benefits, along with a gross underestimation of potential harms,” they wrote.
Subsequent analysis by Michels et al. revealed that deaths and other SAEs — like life-threatening conditions, inpatient hospitalization or extension of hospitalization, persistent or significant disability/incapacity, a congenital anomaly, or a medically significant event — did occur after the cutoff period and before the FDA advisory meeting where emergency authorization was recommended.
During the first 33 weeks of the Pfizer trials, 38 subjects died, according to Pfizer’s own data, although independent research by Michels et al. estimated that that number is only approximately 17% of the actual projected number due to missing data.
And after that, the rate of deaths continued to increase. Michaels et al. found Pfizer failed to report a substantial increase in the number of deaths due to cardiovascular events. They also found a consistent pattern of reporting delays on the date of the death on subjects’ case reports.
Overall, the review authors reported that there were “twice as many cardiac deaths proportionately among vaccinated compared to unvaccinated subjects in the Pfizer trials.”
In their discussion, the authors wrote “Based on the extended Pfizer trial findings, our person-years estimate yielded a 31% increase in overall mortality among vaccine recipients, a clear trend in the wrong direction.”
This raises serious red flags about how the registrational trials were conducted, Mead said. “Assessments of the safety profile of the COVID-19 modified mRNA injections warrant an objective precautionary perspective, any substantial upward trend in all cause mortality within the intervention arm of the trial population reflects badly on the intervention.”
4. Numbers of SAEs in the trials and post-rollout reporting are well-documented, despite claims to the contrary.
Both Pfizer and Moderna found about 125 SAEs per 100,000 vaccine recipients, or one SAE for every 800 vaccines. However, because the trials excluded more vulnerable people, the authors note, even higher proportions of SAEs would be expected in the general population.
The Fraiman et al. reanalysis of the Pfizer trial data found a significant 36% higher risk of SAEs, which included deaths and many life-threatening conditions in the vaccinated participants.
Official SAEs for other vaccines average around only 1-2 per million. Fraiman et alestimated 1,250 SEAs per million vaccines, exceeding that benchmark by “at least 600-fold.”
After the vaccine rollout, analyses of two large drug safety reporting systems in the U.S. and Europe identified signals for myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, cardio-respiratory arrest, cerebral infarction, and cerebral hemorrhage associated with both mRNA vaccines, along with ischemic stroke.
And millions of AEs have been reported to those systems.
Another study by Skidmore et al. estimated the total number of fatalities from the vaccines in 2021 alone was 289,789. Autopsy studies have also provided additional evidence of serious harms, including evidence that most COVID-19 mRNA vaccine-related deaths resulted from injury to the cardiovascular system.
In multiple autopsy studies, German pathologist Aren Burkhardt documented the presence of vaccine-mRNA-produced spike proteins in blood vessel walls and brain tissues. This research helps to explain documented vaccine-induced toxicities affecting the nervous, immune, reproductive and other systems.
The Pfizer data also showed an overwhelming number of adverse effects. According to a confidential document released in August 2022, Pfizer had documented approximately 1.6 million AEs affecting nearly every organ system, and one-third of them were classified as serious.
In Pfizer’s trial, Michels and colleagues found a nearly 4-fold increase (OR 3.7, 95%CI 1.02-13.2, p = 0.03) in serious cardiac events (e.g., heart attack, acute coronary syndrome) in the vaccine group. Neither the original trial report nor Pfizer’s Summary Clinical Safety report acknowledged or commented on this safety signal.
“The serious adverse events are all well documented,” Mead said. “Yet it’s surprising to see so many in the medical field continue to ignore or dismiss outright the latter half of the equation when considering all cause mortality trends.”
5. The failure to appropriately test for safety and toxicity poses serious problems.
Researchers have raised concerns that the mRNA technology is inherently unstable and difficult to store, which leads to batch variability and contamination linked to different rates of AEs.
Recent findings by McKernan et al. that found Pfizers’ mRNA vaccines are contaminated with plasmid DNA that shouldn’t be present — and wasn’t present in the vaccines used in the trials – raising serious safety issues.
That’s because “Process 1,” used in the trials to generate the vaccines involved in vitro transcription of synthetic DNA — essentially a “clean” process. However, that process isn’t viable for mass production, so the manufacturers used “Process 2,” which involves using E. coli bacteria to replicate the plasmids.
Removing plasmids E coli. can result in residual plasmids in the vaccines and the effects of their presence is unknown.
McKernan’s work also revealed the presence of DNA from simian virus 40 (SV40), an oncogenic DNA virus originally isolated in 1960 from contaminated polio vaccines, induces lymphomas, brain tumors, and other malignancies in laboratory animals, raising other safety concerns.
Researchers from Cambridge published a paper in Nature in December 2023, where they found an inherent defect in the modified RNA instructions for the spike protein in COVID-19 immunizations that causes the machinery that translates the gene to the spike protein to “slip” about 10% of the time
This process creates “frameshifts” that cause cells to produce “off-target” proteins in addition to the spike. These proteins, which developers either failed to look for or did not report to regulators, cause undesirable immune responses whose long-term effects are unknown.
6. There are many different possible biological mechanisms that cause AEs and vaccine ineffectiveness.
The review points readers to a series of papyrus that explain a number of different theories to explain the high number of AEs from the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
“The mechanisms of molecular mimicry, antigen cross-reactivity, pathogenic priming, viral reactivation, immune exhaustion, and other factors related to immune dysfunction all reinforce the biological plausibility for vaccine-induced pathogenesis of malignant and autoimmune diseases,” they wrote. And these mechanisms of immune activation are distinct from the body’s response to a viral infection.
They also note the toxic effects of the primary adjuvant, PEG, and of the spike protein itself.
They close their analysis of the vaccines with a complex explanation for the different immunological basis for protection provided by the vaccines versus natural immunity through infection. They explain the mechanisms for vaccine failure and problems generated by the ability for the mRNA vaccines to perpetuate the emergence of new variants.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
More than 100 candidates for public office and nearly as many current officeholders across 35 states have publicly declared that they believe the COVID-19 vaccines should be “immediately discontinued” in the interest of public safety, according to a group of medical freedom advocates.
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, an otolaryngology and sleep medicine specialist who is also president of the group Americans for Health Freedom (AHF), announced Sunday that the tally of public figures who have signed their COVID declaration is up to “106 candidates, 103 elected officials and 1 Surgeon General [Dr. Joseph Ladapo of Florida] from 35 states.”
“Many are also pledging not to take donations from Big Pharma,” she added. “Over 17,000 physicians stand behind them.”
She shared the list of the newest signatories in her announcement post on X (Twitter). Most were state-level candidates, though three are currently running for Congress.
January 28, 2024 🚨We now have 106 candidates, 103 elected officials and 1 Surgeon General from 35 states publicly stating the COVID shots must be pulled off the market. Many are also pledging not to take donations from Big Pharma. Over 17,000 physicians stand behind… pic.twitter.com/HqbSxlPfBv
“We declare, and the data confirms that COVID-19 experimental genetic therapy injections must end,” it reads. “All COVID-19 and other modified mRNA ‘vaccines’ must be immediately discontinued. We demand that Covid-19 vaccines be removed from the pediatric vaccine schedule […] We declare injury from COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ must be recognized. Compensation must be provided for those injured by these injections. Funding must be allocated to the study of these syndromes and the development of diagnostics and treatments should be pursued.”
“We declare Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech, Janssen, Astra Zeneca studies were severely flawed, and they withheld safety and efficacy information from patients and physicians. They should face legal consequences for their dereliction of scientific duty which resulted in countless unnecessary disability and deaths,” the declaration also says. “We declare governments, media, global regulatory bodies, and medical agencies, such as CDC, FDA, NIH, NIAID, MHRA, NHS, TGA, SAPRA etc., and unelected international bodies including but not limited to WHO, WEF, UN, GAVI, and EcoHealth Alliance must be held accountable for mandating policies and procedures, and directing funding for reckless gain of function research that resulted in massive harms.”
The public health establishment has been overwhelmingly averse to investigating problems with the mRNA-based COVID vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under former President (and likely 2024 Republican presidential nominee) Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative, yet concerns persist thanks to a large body of evidence affirming they carry significant health risks.
Jab defenders are quick to stress that reports submitted to VAERS are unconfirmed, as anyone can submit one, but U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.
A 2010 report submitted to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS’s) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) warned that VAERS caught “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events.” On the problem of under-reporting, the VAERS website offers only that “more serious and unexpected medical events are probably more likely to be reported than minor ones” (emphasis added).
In 2021, Project Veritas shed light on some of the reasons for such under-reporting with undercover video from inside Phoenix Indian Medical Center, a facility run under HHS’s Indian Health Service program in which emergency room physician Dr. Maria Gonzales laments that myocarditis cases go unreported “because they want to shove it under the mat,” and nurse Deanna Paris attests to seeing “a lot” of people who “got sick from the side effects” of the COVID shots, but “nobody” is reporting them to VAERS “because it takes over a half hour to write the damn thing.”
Further, VAERS is not the only data source containing red flags. Data from the Pentagon’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) shows that 2021 saw drastic spikes in a variety of diagnoses for serious medical issues over the previous five-year average, including hypertension (2,181%), neurological disorders (1,048%), multiple sclerosis (680%), Guillain-Barre syndrome (551%), breast cancer, (487%), female infertility (472%), pulmonary embolism (468%), migraines (452%), ovarian dysfunction (437%), testicular cancer (369%), and tachycardia (302%).
Leading COVID shot manufacturer Pfizer donated more than $8.5 million to political candidates, leadership PACs, trade associations, and party committees representing both parties in 2022, fueling suspicion as to why only a handful of nationally prominent GOP officeholders, such as U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, are opposed to the company’s vaccine.
Maryland-based Emergent BioSolutions this month signed a new contract with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to supply the U.S. military with its BioThrax anthrax vaccine over at least the next five years, Fierce Pharma reported.
The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract, announced Jan. 11 by the company, has a maximum value of $235.8 million. According to Yahoo Finance, “The vaccine is intended for use by all branches of the United States military as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for anthrax disease.”
Under the contract, Emergent is guaranteed a $20.1 million purchase, with future orders of an estimated $20 million or more for each of the remaining years of the initial five-year term.
After the initial term, the contract has an option for an additional five-year extension, potentially extending the deal to 2033, according to Fierce Pharma.
BioThrax is the only vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for pre-exposure prophylaxis and post-exposure prophylaxis of anthrax disease, Yahoo Finance reported. Another anthrax vaccine in the company’s portfolio, Cyfendus, is used only for post-exposure prophylaxis in adults 18 and over.
According to Yahoo Finance, anthrax is an infectious disease caused by Bacillus anthracis. It occurs naturally in soil, and commonly affects domestic and wild animals.
People can contract anthrax if they come in contact with infected animals or contaminated animal products, through skin contact, ingestion and inhalation, The Defense Post reported. It can cause organ damage, inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, and death.
In a statement, Paul Williams, senior vice president and products head at Emergent, praised the deal.
“As a part of our mission to protect and enhance lives, Emergent is proud to continue supporting and preparing our nation’s service members who have a high risk of exposure to anthrax bacteria by supplying BioThrax vaccine,” he said.
“This new contract award is a testament to the importance of Emergent’s medical countermeasures portfolio, and we look forward to delivering on our commitments to the U.S. DoD,” Williams added.
But some anthrax experts questioned the deal and the safety of the company’s two anthrax vaccines.
“Neither has been shown to be effective against inhalation of anthrax,” she said.
According to Nass, the DOD may say “they needed to maintain a ‘warm manufacturing base’” as a justification for the new contract.
University of Illinois international law professor Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, told The Defender the U.S. government may have proceeded with the contract based on a biological warfare risk it is aware of.
“It does seem to me that the Pentagon is gearing up to fight biological warfare with anthrax. That’s the only reason for that massive contract as I see it,” he said. The U.S. government still maintains stockpiles of Amerithrax, Boyle said, which he described as “super weapons-grade anthrax” that “survives for decades.”
In June 2014, as many as 75 scientists working at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) laboratories were treated — and vaccinated — after possible exposure to live anthrax bacteria which, according to The New York Times, “were supposed to have been killed.”
The laboratories were “unequipped to handle” the samples, the Times reported.
“There’s no reason for all these labs to have all this anthrax unless they’re getting ready to use it for biowarfare purposes,” Boyle said.
In October 2022, the Biden administration announced an $88 billion National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan outlining planned responses to future pandemics, public health emergencies and biological threats.
Precedence Research estimates that the global biodefense market size, which totaled $15.5 billion in 2022, will surpass $32.09 billion by 2032, while a 2021 estimate by The Insight Partners stated that the U.S. biodefense market is expected to reach $8.35 billion in 2027, up from $4.11 billion in 2019.
Boyle said that such government programs and spending violate the 1989 act he authored, which “was intended to stop the abuse of DNA genetic engineering and other forms of biological warfare weapons.”
Anthrax vaccines have caused fetal harm, ‘death and disability’
According to Nass, there is no need for an anthrax vaccine because antibiotics can be used as a treatment for exposure.
Nass told The Defender in July 2023 that if someone has a serious anthrax exposure, they typically die within several days if not treated with antibiotics.
“You can’t be sprayed with anthrax and then get vaccinated and then patiently wait a month to develop immunity. You’d be dead by then,” she said at the time, adding that the FDA requirement that the vaccine be given jointly with antibiotics is a tacit admission by the agency that the vaccine “doesn’t work.”
“Not a single person who was exposed to the anthrax letters who took antibiotics for prevention came down with anthrax,” she said at the time.
The FDA’s package insert for BioThrax also indicates several adverse reactions, including arm motion limitation in 63.7% of recipients. Six deaths and 62 serious adverse events were reported in clinical trials for BioThrax.
The insert also notes that Cyfendus, which has the same active ingredient as BioThrax, “can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant individual.”
“In an observational study, there were more birth defects in infants born to individuals vaccinated with BioThrax (a licensed anthrax vaccine with the same active ingredient as CYFENDUS) in the first trimester compared to infants born to individuals vaccinated post pregnancy or individuals never vaccinated with BioThrax,” the insert states.
Cyfendus uses two adjuvants, an aluminum adjuvant and a new synthetic adjuvant — CPG7909. And the vaccine contains a saline solution containing formaldehyde and benzethonium chloride as preservatives.
As a result, “Cyfendus can be assumed to have more side effects,” Nass told the Defender.
In July 2023, the U.S. government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) exercised a $75 million option for the purchase of new doses of Cyfendus. The FDA approved Cyfendus in July. It had previously been available since 2019 under an emergency use authorization (EUA).
Boyle told The Defender that anthrax vaccines were proven during the Gulf War to be deadly.
“I wouldn’t even call them vaccines. I would call them frankenshots,” he said. “The bottom line is that of 500,000 U.S. forces were inoculated with the previous anthrax and Botulism frankenshots, it killed 11,000 and disabled 100,000 members of the U.S. armed forces,” noting figures he cited in his 2005 book, “Biowarfare and Terrorism.”
“And those are lowball figures because the Pentagon still lies about the death and disability from the Gulf War anthrax shots, because they know they committed a Nuremberg crime on their own troops,” Boyle added.
Nass told The Defender in July that she does not believe much has changed with the currently available anthrax vaccines. Referring to Emergent, she said, “Given the history of the company’s many failures, and the lack of proper safety or efficacy testing of prior anthrax vaccines, one can only expect problems.”
One such example arises from controversies connected to Emergent’s manufacture of the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) COVID-19 vaccine. In 2021, the company made headlines when it lost a $600 million federal contract after millions of vaccine doses were ruined.
In May 2021, a U.S. House of Representatives panel investigation revealed taxpayers paid Johnson & Johnson vaccine manufacturer, Emergent BioSolutions, $271 million under vaccine contracts despite “serious deficiencies” at the Baltimore plant.
“The anthrax vaccine was never proven to be safe and effective. It is one cause of Gulf War illnesses, and recent vaccinees report symptoms resembling Gulf War illnesses,” she wrote at the time, adding that “The vaccine’s production has been substandard.”
Peer-reviewed research published in Neuromolecular Medicine in 2007 linked the aluminum adjuvant in the existing anthrax vaccine to Gulf War syndrome, with symptoms including muscle aches, joint pain, dizziness, memory lapses, headaches, fatigue, insomnia, emotional disorders, posttraumatic stress reactions, headaches and memory loss.
It also noted that anthrax adverse reactions were very similar to Gulf War illness symptoms and that many veterans reported the vaccine as the cause of this illness, which they also reported in congressional hearings, according to Nass.
During her October 2020 talk, Nass said, “The vaccines were given to at least 150,000 soldiers,” during the Gulf War, while “about 25% of soldiers sent to the Gulf developed Gulf War syndrome.”
“While it was never proven what caused this, questions were raised about the role of vaccines both in the U.S. and the U.K. Several studies showed that the more vaccines a soldier received, the likelier they were to develop Gulf War Syndrome … but these studies were ignored in the post-Gulf War push to make troops impermeable to biological warfare,” Nass said at the time.
Boyle agreed that there is a connection between the anthrax vaccines and Gulf War syndrome.
Noting that the U.S. military had mandated the vaccine at the time for its service members, he said, “I still get calls today from veterans suffering from Gulf War syndrome and asking me for advice where they can get, because they can’t get proper treatment at the Veterans Administration Hospital because they get lied to. It’s that simple.”
“They really have to go into the private sector to get proper treatment,” Boyle added.
‘Odd relationship’ between Emergent, DOD
Emergent works with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, BARDA, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to develop “countermeasures,” such as vaccines and therapeutics, for “public health threats.”
Primary purchasers for its anthrax vaccine are the CDC, which buys it for the Strategic National Stockpile, and BARDA. Those contracts alone have yielded at least $1 billion for the company.
According to Fierce Pharma, “Emergent has been a long-time supplier of anthrax countermeasures to the U.S. government. Its procurement deals have included a CDC contract worth up to $911 million in 2016 and a $258 million contract modification from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in 2020.”
And according to Yahoo Finance, “Emergent derives a substantial portion of its revenues from sales of its anthrax and smallpox vaccines to the U.S. government, which the latter procures for the strategic national stockpile,” while also selling vaccines to domestic and international non-governmental organizations and foreign governments.
Nass told The Defender, “There has been an odd relationship between this company and the DOD since the company was formed in 1998 as BioPort and was given a full indemnity by the Secretary of the Army the day before the company purchased the Michigan anthrax manufacturing facility.”
“The company has been allowed higher profits and worse quality than other products purchased by the military,” Nass added.
Kadlec participated in the June 2001 Dark Winter simulation, helped establish the Strategic National Stockpile and has directly advised Emergent BioSolutions, among other Big Pharma companies.
Emergent was founded in 1998, originally as BioPort, to distribute and produce the anthrax vaccine for the U.S. military, taking over the assets of the state-owned Michigan Biologic Products Institute.
The anthrax vaccine was developed and in limited use in the military since 1970.
Emergent reached its financial zenith early in the pandemic after earning lucrative contracts to produce Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.
Nass told The Defender in July that in 1997, the DOD made the vaccine compulsory as part of the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP) for all 2.5 million military service members — including active duty and reserve personnel and civilian contractors. The DOD subsequently implemented AVIP in 1998.
Reports of adverse reactions and dissent on the part of service members led to congressional hearings and in early 2000, the House Committee on Government Reform recommended halting the mandatory program, although it was not officially halted.
As of 2000, more than 500,000 service members had received at least one dose of the vaccine, which was designed to be administered in six doses.
The plant where the government produced the anthrax vaccine faced a series of regulatory issues and was closed in 1997, according to Nass.
When BioPort acquired the plant from the state-owned Michigan Biologic Products Institute in 1998, it rebuilt it, but it was not FDA-authorized to produce the vaccine. So for a period, the vaccines were unavailable.
Then, starting on Sept. 18, 2001 — a week after the 9/11 attacks — media outlets began reporting that a sophisticated, weaponized and fatal form of anthrax had been sent via mail to numerous news outlets and American politicians. These letters continued to appear over the next six weeks.
Subsequently, the media and figures such as John McCain linked the anthrax to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In 2008, the FBI accused U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins of being responsible for the attacks, although Ivins took his own life before he could be prosecuted. The FBI’s claims are widely doubted and its evidence has been questioned.
In 2002, shortly after the FDA approved BioPort’s new vaccine plant, the GAO issued a report to Congress on the AVIP, noting a significant number of adverse reactions to the vaccine — more than double the rate reported by the manufacturer — along with a mass exodus of military pilots and other military personnel who refused the mandate.
From 2000 to 2018, the military anthrax mandate was challenged several times in court for lacking FDA approval and licensure, and for lacking proven potency against fatal inhalation of anthrax. During this time, the DOD restricted the anthrax vaccine to a smaller group of “at-risk troops” and halted and resumed the program several times.
Prior to 2001, the DOD concluded that biological agents such as anthrax were not a threat for mass casualties due to the limited number of countries with the expertise and sophistication required to weaponize and disseminate anthrax.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
There’s a great scene in the 1986 film Manhunter in which the protagonist—an FBI behavioral sciences profiler named Will Graham—correctly postulates that the fingerprints of a remarkably twisted serial killer will be found on the corneas of his female victim. The Bureau and the guys in the latent print lab are skeptical and think that Will is himself being a weirdo, and are then astonished to discover that he is right.
To put Will Graham’s character in Jungian terms: he is an excellent detective because he possesses a keen understanding of the Shadow—that is, the archaic, aggressive, lustful, power-hungry side of human nature that lurks in all of us. All humans are capable of evil, above all those who walk around with the smug, unexamined belief that they never would be.
I was reminded of this scene today as I read an extraordinary report by “Right to Know” investigative reporter, Emily Kopp, who obtained early drafts of the DEFUSE grant proposal, authored by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak et al., and submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2018.
The documents reveal for the first time that a virologist working with the Wuhan lab planned to engineer new spike proteins – in contrast with the collaboration’s public work to insert whole spike proteins into viral backbones. Language in the proposal indicates this work may have involved unpublished viruses, generating unpublished engineered spike proteins.
This American virologist, University of North Carolina Prof. Ralph Baric, was set to engineer twenty or more “chimeric” SARS-related viral spike proteins per year of the proposal, and two to five full-length engineered SARS-related viruses. Documents previously reported by U.S. Right to Know show that some of the experimentation could secretly occur in Wuhan at a lower biosafety level than specified in the grant, apparently to save costs.
The proposal for Professor Baric to perform Dr. Frankenstein work on SARS-related viruses will come as no surprise to those who are familiar with his seminal papers on creating chimeric SARS-related viruses using gain-of-function procedures. The real fireworks revelation in an early draft of the DEFUSE proposal is the following passage:
At the time Bruttel et al. published their paper, it was met with ridicule by prominent virologists Edward Holmes and Kristian Anderson, who called it “confected nonsense” and “kindergarten molecular biology.” Holmes and Anderson would say this, wouldn’t they? With stunning criminal energy, they have been key players in concealing the lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 since February 2020.
At the risk of tooting my own horn, I was not all surprised to read about this development. As a true crime author, I’ve spent the last twenty-five years studying criminal behavior, conspiracies, and criminal investigations. For years, Peter Daszak and his virologist compadres have obviously been in the business of modifying and enhancing bat coronaviruses in order to make them infectious and pathogenic to humans. I suspect the creation of SARS-CoV-2 and its accidental or deliberate release from a lab will eventually be regarded as the greatest true crime story in history.
It’s going to take a while for our dummy politicians and knucklehead mainstream media journalists to recognize it, “but at the length, truth will out.”
Several Israeli cabinet ministers and members of parliament, including Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, attended the Return to Gaza Conference in the occupied city of Jerusalem on 28 January.
The conference – organized by the extremist Nachala settler organization and Samaria Regional Council in the occupied West Bank – calls for the reestablishment of the 22 Israeli settlements in Gaza that were evacuated under the Disengagement Law in 2005, as well as the construction of six new settlements.
At the conference, a map was displayed showing where the evacuated settlements once stood and where the organizers wish to establish six new ones. The map includes settlements in Gaza City, north of the strip, and in the southern city of Khan Yunis – which have been ravaged by Israel’s assault on the enclave.
Over a million Palestinians have been displaced from north, central, and south Gaza and pushed towards the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, where they remain stranded. Israel is actively pursuing this policy, as thousands more were ordered to evacuate Khan Yunis on Sunday.
“The only humane solution for Gaza is the mass deportation of its inhabitants … If we don’t want another October 7, we need to return home and control the land,” Ben Gvir said at the conference.
Twelve Israeli ministers, including several from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, signed a pledge for permanent annexation and settlement in Gaza during the event.
“Israel has not abandoned its wanton plan to ‘return to Gaza’ meaning the permanent acquisition of occupied territory and its colonization. Organizers of the … conference enjoy generous public funding, and represent the proliferation of ideological zealotry,” said Itay Epshtain, a Senior Humanitarian Law and Policy Consultant.
Ephstain also noted that many of the ministers attending the conference were those listed by South Africa in connection with public incitement to genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“That Israeli officials would convene a high level meeting to plan an act of aggression – the acquisition of occupied territory and its colonization – is an early indication of intent to breach the provisional measures order by the ICJ,” he added.
An Israeli settler explained during the conference that “the location of the planned settlements for Gaza has been strategically chosen to allow greater military control of the territory.”
Israel has been actively driving Palestinians out of their homes and towards Egypt, and is now reportedly planning an operation to seize the Gaza side of the Egyptian border, a strip of land known as the Salah al-Din Axis or Philadelphi Corridor.
Tel Aviv is also pursuing plans for a permanent Israeli buffer zone in Gaza.
Netanyahu recently said that Israel does not wish to maintain a permanent presence in Gaza after the war, but has expressed the need for indefinite Israeli security control.
Hamas, whose military wing remains active across the strip, has vowed that Gaza will be the “cemetery” of Israel’s plans.
The Israeli military withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005 under the Disengagement Law, approved that year by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The following year, Hamas emerged victorious over the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Fatah party in elections, and in 2007 assumed internal control over the enclave, while the Israeli military retained external control.
The Disengagement Law also resulted in the dismantling and evacuation of 22 Israeli settlements in Gaza, referred to as the Gush Katif settlement bloc.
In October, a leaked Israeli intelligence document revealed Tel Aviv’s detailed plan to reoccupy and ethnically cleanse Gaza – with the goal of pushing its entire population into Egypt’s Sinai desert.
Nearly half of the Israeli population support resettlement in Gaza, according to recent polling.
Last month, unnamed western officials toldThe Times of Israel that Israeli reoccupation of Gaza is the most likely scenario.
Nitrogen 2000 is a 45 minute documentary on the Dutch Farmer struggle of 2019-23. 70% of Holland is owned by small cattle farmers and since 2019, the Dutch government has been advocating a 50% forced buy out of their land. This amounts to a nationalization of a third of the territory of Holland. Will this plan play out? Will the farmers be able to resist this encroachment? Watch and share the film to raise awareness of this important issue.
ENCOURAGING UPDATE: Dutch Agriculture Minister Adema puts bomb on nitrogen policy: ‘Totally out of control model of reality’ https://lc-nl.translate.goog/frieslan…
In the U.S., local health departments and media reported about 16 cases of measles between December 2023 and January. The outbreaks occurred in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Georgia and Washington.
But Dr. Liz Mumper, a pediatrician, told The Defender it doesn’t make sense to assume the unvaccinated are to blame. She said cyclical outbreaks still occur even in populations with nearly 100% vaccination, such as college students.
Dr. Paul Thomas, a retired pediatrician and author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health-from Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Years Paperback,” told The Defender some cases of measles are reported every year. Despite the hype around the recent outbreaks, he said, “There have not been any significant measles outbreaks in the U.S. for decades.”
The largest recent national spike in measles cases occurred in 2019 when 1,274 cases were reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was the worst year for measles in the U.S. since 1992.
Since 2019, the number of cases reported has been significantly lower: In 2020, there were 13 cases, in 2021, 49 cases, in 2022 there were 121 cases and in 2023, there were 56 cases. The post-2019 numbers also tend to be lower than the numbers from 2000-2018, which averaged around 200 per year.
Credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Measles is a contagious childhood viral disease characterized by a cough, runny nose and fever, followed by a generalized rash.
It was declared to be eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 — meaning there was no continuous transmission.
Mortality from measles in the U.S. declined significantly during the 20th century — 98% from 1900 to 1963, before the measles vaccine was introduced — due to advances in living conditions, healthcare and nutrition, according to Physicians for Informed Consent.
Since 2000, there have been only four measles deaths in the Americas — three in 2000 and one in 2022, according to a November 2023 CDC report.
“Measles can be deadly if a child does not have access to safe water and medical care,” Mumper said. “In developed countries, fatalities from measles are very rare.”
Effective treatments include vitamin A in high doses and attention to hydration status, Mumper said.
“Many natural methods to help the body fight viruses, like extra vitamin D and vitamin C are effective but not widely recommended by mainstream medicine,” she added.
Prior to the introduction of the vaccine in the U.S. in 1963, most people contracted measles and gained lifetime immunity, and the number of deaths had dropped to 0.9 per 100,000 for children under age 10.
The vaccines significantly reduced the number of reported measles cases, with efficacy rates that can be upwards of 95%, Thomas said. However, he added immunity from the vaccines wanes over time.
“From a mechanistic standpoint, the lifelong 100% natural immunity comes when measles is caught through respiratory spread. Giving a vaccine by injection may be an inherently poor substitute for Mother Nature,” Mumper said.
Approximately 83% of children globally received one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine by their first birthday in 2022.
Hotez, Offit blame the ‘anti-vaxers’ for measles outbreaks
Although case numbers have declined in the U.S. since 2020, and the recently reported cases were either among adults or children who may be too young to have completed the MMR vaccine schedule, news reports about the outbreaks consistently link them to lower post-pandemic vaccination rates among kindergarteners.
The CDC recommends two doses of the MMR vaccine, with the first dose at 12 to 15 months old and the second dose between ages 4 and 6.
The agency reported that from the 2019-20 school year to the 2021-22 school year vaccination rates for state-required vaccines among kindergarten children declined from approximately 95% to approximately 93%, and the exemption rate increased to 3.0%.
CDC data going back to 2011 show that rates typically vary from year-to-year, but consistently stay above 93%.
Thomas said the drop has been minimal and “given the loss of immunity in both children and adults in the vaccinated, this minor reduction in MMR uptake by children is not going to make a difference [in infection rates].”
Dr. Peter Hotez, a go-to “expert” for mainstream media on vaccines — and a vaccine developer and patent holder himself, who has repeatedly smeared vaccine safety advocates as “anti-science aggressors” — told ABC and CBS News that he thought the sporadic outbreaks were likely a result of lowered vaccination rates and that they were going to get worse.
“We’re just seeing now, this is the tip of the iceberg,” Hotez said. “We’re going to be seeing this in communities across the United States in the coming weeks and months because of the spillover of the U.S. anti-vaccine movement of childhood immunizations.”
According to ABC — quoting Hotez, Dr. Paul Offit and the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Gregory Poland — this is due to vaccine “misinformation” linking vaccines and autism, combined with the politicization of the COVID-19 vaccines, which Hotez said caused “an acceleration of anti-vaccine sentiments.”
Hotez has been making these arguments for years, writing a New York Times op-ed in 2020 claiming there is no link between vaccines and autism and blaming unvaccinated people for infectious disease outbreaks.
Offit said given the vaccine’s efficacy, it was “unconscionable” for parents to forgo vaccination for their children.
But there is a significant and growing body of evidence suggesting the MMR vaccine can cause autism in certain susceptible children. That includes evidence that U.S. Department of Justice lawyers suppressed testimony by their own expert witness making the link, and evidence from whistleblower William Thompson, Ph.D., that the CDC covered up its own data showing a link between vaccines and autism.
The study indicated that since measles was declared eradicated in 2000, there have been 18 published studies of 1,416 measles cases — 43.2% of the cases occurred in vaccinated people and no hospitalizations or deaths were reported.
McCullough concluded:
“Large fractions of ‘preventable disease outbreaks’ involving measles and pertussis occur because vaccines fail to provide adequate protection. Given the neuropsychiatric concerns over the MMR vaccine and the stochastic risk of allergic/immunologic reactions to any injection including components of (DTaP, Tdap) or MMR, the parental movement for vaccine choice is well justified.
“For measles and pertussis, the vaccines convey imperfect protection and breakthrough infection (vaccine failure) should receive considerable ‘blame’ by public health researchers.”
Mumper said the vaccine schedule has changed, lowering efficacy. “Vaccine efficacy was calculated to be ~94% when the first dose was given at 15 months,” she said.
“Now babies are scheduled to get the first dose at 12 months (only 85% efficacy) and their second dose at kindergarten.”
Mumper added, “People with different genotypes respond differently to MMR vaccines, so there is variable measles transmission depending on the individual’s immune response. Up to 10% of the population does not develop enough protective antibodies.”
New outbreaks lead push for adults to get another MMR
Derek Gatherer, Ph.D., a lecturer in biomedical and life sciences at Lancaster University who is funded by the U.K. government to study “vaccine hesitancy,” said the solution to the problem of measles outbreaks is more vaccination — for adults.
Gatherer published a recent article in The Conversation blaming the vaccine-hesitant for the outbreaks. He argued that even adults who are already vaccinated should consider getting more MMR jabs.
“Measles is the most infectious disease known to science — adults should consider getting another MMR vaccine,” he declared.
Gatherer conceded that the measles risk to adults is extremely small, but said “adult MMR is still worthwhile as it goes beyond just protecting the person who receives the vaccination,” stopping asymptomatic infections from spreading.
Thomas said it is not common to recommend booster shots to adults for illnesses they were vaccinated for as children. “However,” he added, “the pharmaceutical industry, backed by the CDC, has been looking at the adult population as an untapped resource to expand market share and penetration.”
Reports of cases rising in the UK
In the U.K., measles was considered eliminated in 2016, but it resurfaced in 2018.
U.K. MMR vaccination rates average 85%, down from a peak of 88.6% in 2014, with some locations reporting rates as low as 74%.
According to The Guardian, “Most experts agree that misinformation about the MMR jab is very unlikely to play a significant role in declining vaccination rates.
“It is too easy to blame anti-vaccine sentiment for the measles outbreaks,” Helen Bedford, professor of children’s health at the University College London Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health told the paper. “Although some mistrust of vaccines may play a small part, research shows that parental vaccine confidence remains high.”
England’s National Health Service is launching an MMR vaccination campaign, the BBC reported, contacting 4 million parents via text, email or letter to inform them their child has not had one or two doses of the vaccine.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
In finding there is a plausible case against Israel, the International Court of Justice treated with contempt the argument from Israel that the case should be dismissed as it is exercising its right of self-defence. This argument took up over half of Israel’s pleadings. Not only did the court find there is a plausible case of genocide, the court only mentioned self-defence once in its interim ruling – and that was merely to note that Israel had claimed it. Para 41:
That the ICJ has not affirmed Israel’s right to self-defence is perhaps the most important point in this interim order. It is the dog that did not bark. The argument which every western leader has been using is spurned by the ICJ.
Now the ICJ did not repeat that an occupying power has no right of self-defence. It did not need to. It simply ignored Israel’s specious assertion.
It could do that because what it went on to iterate went way beyond any plausible assertion of self-defence. What struck me most about the ICJ ruling was that the Order went into far more detail about the evidence of genocide than it needed to. Its description was stark.
Here Para 46 is crucial
The reason this is so crucial, is that the Court is not saying that South Africa asserts this. The Court is saying these are the facts. It is a finding of fact by the Court. I cannot emphasise too strongly the importance of that description by the court of the state of affairs in Gaza.
The Court then goes on to detail accounts by the United Nations of the factual situation, quoting three different senior officials at length, including Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General of UNRWA:
This of course explains why the immediate response to the ICJ ruling was a coordinated attack by Israel and the combined imperialist powers on UNRWA, designed to accelerate the genocide by stopping aid, to provide a propaganda counter-narrative to the ICJ judgment, and to reduce the credibility of UNRWA’s evidence before the court.
The Court works very closely with the UN and is very much an entrenched part of the UN system. It has a particularly close relationship with the UN General Assembly – many of the Court’s cases are based on requests from the UN General Assembly. In a fortnight’s time the Court will be starting its substantive hearings on the legal position in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, at the request of the UNGA. There are five specific references to the UNGA in the Order.
The Court spent a great deal of time outlining the facts of the unfolding genocide in the Gaza Strip. It did not have to do so in nearly so much detail, and far too little attention has been paid to this. I was equally surprised by how much detail the court gave on the evidence of genocidal intent by Israel.
It is especially humiliating for Israel that the Court quoted the Israeli Head of State, the President of Israel himself, as giving clear evidence of genocidal intent, along with two other government ministers.
Again, this is not the Court saying that South Africa has alleged this. It is a finding of fact by the Court. The ICJ has already found to be untrue Israel’s denial in court of incitement to genocide.
Now think of this: the very next day after President Herzog made a genocidal statement, as determined by the International Court of Justice, he was met and offered “full support” by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission and Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament.
When you take the detail of what the Court has found to be the actual facts of the case, in death and destruction and in intent, I have no doubt that this is a court which is currently minded to find Israel guilty of genocide once the substantive case comes before the Court.
All of Israel’s arguments were lost. Every one. The substantial effort Israel put into having the case dismissed on procedural grounds was brushed aside. So was self-defence. And in its findings of the facts, the Court plainly found to be untrue the Israeli lies about avoidance of civilian casualties, the responsibility of Hamas for the damage to infrastructure, and the access of relief aid to Gaza.
Those are the facts of what happened.
Do not be confused by the absence of the word “ceasefire” from the Court order. What the Court has ordered is very close to that. It has explicitly ordered the Israeli military to stop killing Palestinians.
That is absolutely clear. And while I accept it is tautologous, in the sense it is ordering Israel to obey a Convention which Israel is already bound to follow, there could be no clearer indication that the Court believes that Israel is not currently obeying it.
So what happens now?
Well, Israel has responded by killing over 180 Palestinian civilians since the Order was given from the International Court of Justice. If that continues, South Africa may return to the Court for more urgent measures even before the ordered monthly report from Israel is due. Algeria has announced it will take the Order to the UN Security Council for enforcement.
I doubt the United States will veto. There has been a schizophrenic reaction from Israel and its supporters to the ICJ Order. On the one hand, the ICJ has been denounced as antisemitic. On the other hand the official narrative has been (incredibly) to claim Israel actually won the case, while minimising the coverage in mainstream media. This has been reinforced by the massive and coordinated attack on UNRWA, to create alternative headlines.
It is difficult to both claim that Israel somehow won, and at the same time seek to block UNSC enforcement of the Order. My suspicion is that there will be a continuing dual track: pretending that there is no genocide and Israel is obeying the “unnecessary” order, while at the same time attacking and ridiculing the ICJ and the wider UN.
No matter what the ICJ said, Israel would not have stopped the genocide; that is the simple truth. The immediate reaction of the US and allies to the Order has been to try to accelerate the genocide by crippling the UN’s aid relief work. I confess I did not expect anything quite that vicious and blatant.
The wheels of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The ICJ having flagged up a potential genocide so strongly, it may well fall to judges in individual nations to restrain international support for the genocide. As I explained in detail, the Genocide Convention has been incorporated into UK law by the International Criminal Court Act of 2001.
There will, beyond any doubt, have been minutes issued by FCDO legal advisers warning of ministers being at risk of personal liability in UK law for complicity in genocide now, should arms shipments and other military and intelligence cooperation with the Israeli genocide continue. In the US, hearings started already in California on a genocide complicity suit brought against Joe Biden.
Of course I wish this would all work faster. It will not. The UN General Assembly may suspend Israel from the UN. There are other useful actions to be taken. But this is a long slog, not a quick fix, and people like you and I continue to have a vital role, as everybody does, in using the power of the people to wrest control from a vicious political class of killers.
This was a good win. I am pleased that this course for which I advocated and lobbied has worked and increased pressure on the Zionists, and that my judgment that the International Court of Justice is not just a NATO tool like the corrupt International Criminal Court, has been vindicated.
It cannot help the infants killed and maimed last night or those to die in the coming few days. But it is a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
According to an NBC News report, over a 20-year period about 3,000 gallons of chemical waste leaked out of damaged storage drums and poisoned the groundwater.
For more than 20 years the US Navy has been aware of multiple environmental contaminants at one of their bases, the news agency said. One seemingly healthy veteran recently died last month after being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia which can be caused by radiation exposure, the National Cancer Institute said.
Gilbert Wyand, the veteran, had lived and worked at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard in California in the 1980s. After Wyand’s cancer diagnosis, his son found a Navy report published in June of 2023 that shows the Navy has been aware of radiation at the shipyard for at least two decades.
Initial contamination at the shipyard occurred from the 1940s to the 1960s due to workers disposing of toxic waste, according to the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) report that Wyand’s son found. Following that, between the 1960s and until 1980 about 3,000 gallons of chemical waste leaked out of damaged storage drums into the ground.
That chemical waste poisoned the groundwater with high levels of dichloroethene, trichloroethylene, vinyl chloride and benzene, according to a Navy report from 2000. In 2008, Navy officials confirmed that the levels of radium and strontium far exceeded the remediation goals set for public safety.
The Navy veteran could have been exposed to radium-226 and strontium-90, which are radionuclides that have been linked to leukemia and other cancers. But Wyand and other veterans were not alerted about the potential risk of exposure because there is no system in place to notify veterans of potential exposure after a base closes, according to a spokesperson.
The fact that there is no outreach system in place means that tens of thousands of veterans who worked at the shipyard could have been exposed to deadly radiation and are unaware, American news report adds.
“We encourage any veteran who believes they were exposed to toxins during their military service to coordinate with their local Veterans Affairs office,” a US Navy spokesperson said.
The Pentagon is exploring how new biotechnological innovations — including mRNA vaccines, CRISPR gene-editing and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) — could change the nature of future warfare, investigative journalist Lee Fang reported Thursday.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) used to consider biotech-based warfare too risky or even eugenicist, according to a new report produced for the agency by the RAND Corporation. But recent advances “change strategic choices for the human body as a warfighting domain,” the authors of the report wrote.
The report — “Plagues, Cyborgs, and Supersoldiers: The Human Domain of War” — presents a series of future war scenarios based on advances in engineered bioweapons, the Internet of Bodies and genomics that the authors said “might seem fantastical,” but are “not far-fetched,” given rapid advances in 21st-century biotechnology.
The report recommends that military planning anticipate these future war scenarios.
“We see a complex, high-threat landscape emerging where future wars are fought with humans controlling hyper-sophisticated machines with their thoughts,” where “synthetically generated, genomically targeted plagues” disrupt the American military-industrial base and the future soldier is an “enhanced warfighter” who can survive in extreme conditions, the report warns.
Fang told The Defender, “These Pentagon research reports read like science fiction, but they provide crucial insight into how the military sees future conflict and exerts pressure on lawmakers on crucial policy issues.”
The scenarios: engineered pathogens, Internet of Bodies and enhanced genomics
The report posits scenarios with future COVID-19-like pandemics that emerge from engineered pathogens, and considers them in the context of war with China and Russia.
The authors argue the U.S. would be at a major disadvantage without serious prior investment in its own biotech weapons and a strategy to curb the development of such weapons by competing global powers.
The first hypothetical scenario, referred to as a “vignette” in the report, takes place in 2028, when a new and highly infectious “SARS-CoV-3” spreads in the South China Sea and then on U.S. Navy vessels, forcing them to cease operations. U.S. agencies get caught up in infighting over which agency should investigate the causes and spearhead the response.
China, which appears to be immune to the virus, launches an assault on Taiwan, and the disabled U.S. fleet is unable to respond.
The World Health Organization credits Chinese social distancing with its slow spread, unaware that the Chinese military and population were unwittingly vaccinated against the new version of the disease, released as a bioweapon.
This scenario was initially conceived by Pentagon researchers, Fang wrote, who “believe that a ‘coronavirus bioweapon’ may lurk on the horizon.”
In another scenario — “Pandemic Geopolitics” — a new airborne pathogen with a long contagious period and an astronomical mortality rate of 2.5% begins circulating in 2033, killing 1 million Americans in four months with 6.5 more million projected to die.
China and Russia in this scenario have vaccines in advance and use the opportunity to expand their borders. The U.S. and Europe lack the capacity for a military response.
The report then turns to an Internet of Bodies scenario that Fang wrote is “seemingly inspired by the decline of Sen. Dianne Feinstein,” and set in a more distant future.
Elderly congressional leaders fear a loss of power due to rumors of their cognitive decline. To appear more competent, they have BCI devices implanted in their brains to boost their physical and cognitive functioning. However, the devices malfunction, the politicians act erratically and foreign allies begin to distance themselves from the U.S.
In yet another scenario, government employees use artificial lenses for their eyes that have recording devices and storage. However, the technology also is used to collect and leak sensitive information, unbeknownst to the U.S. government.
BCI could offer benefits to the “warfighter,” for example allowing commanders and their forces to communicate directly. However, the report cautions that BCI devices can also be hacked.
The U.S. currently leads Internet of Bodies technology development, at least according to the number of patents that have been filed, but the authors warned that “China is quickly catching up.”
The authors posit a distant future where genomic surveillance is used to select the most appropriate military recruits and another where genetic modifications are used to create “super soldiers.”
U.S. should plan to integrate biological warfighting
The report makes recommendations inspired by missteps the authors see regarding the handling of the COVID-19 response, and advises the Pentagon to consider the risks and benefits of emerging technologies.
Fang wrote:
“In a not-so-veiled shot at those who denied the COVID-19 lab leak theory as ‘disinformation,’ they note that in the event of an engineered coronavirus bioweapon, most scientists ‘would likely’ presume that the virus had a natural or zoonotic origin, disputing claims of a manufactured attack. This ‘ambiguity could serve a nation-state well,’ the report argues.”
The existing United Nations Biological Weapons Convention should be revised to address new issues raised by new technologies, the authors recommend. But they also called such treaties “intractable” — because some countries don’t comply — and recommended “bilateral treaties” governing bioweapons.
According to Fang, “The report takes aim at Congress, criticizing the recent repeal of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members. It urges lawmakers to resist ‘anti-vaccine populism’ to ensure military readiness.”
The authors recommended sanctions on foreign powers misusing biotechnology and that the Pentagon begin using genetic screening.
Finally, they said the DOD should develop guidelines for integrating biological warfighting into its suite of military capabilities.
Despite the science fiction-esque nature of the scenarios RAND poses in the report, Fang said it is important to track such policy documents, because similar past reports have foreshadowed future government action that did come to pass.
He wrote:
“Over a decade ago, In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA, published a report looking at the opportunities posed by social media and suggested that major platforms could be analyzed with artificial intelligence for sentiment analysis and advanced intelligence gathering.
“Soon after, the agency began funding several specialized startups to analyze protests and political movements using platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Some of the CIA-backed firms have gone on to engage in sophisticated forms of surveillance.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) just ruled against Israel and determined that South Africa successfully argued that Israel’s conduct plausibly could constitute genocide. The Court imposes several injunctions against Israel and reminds Israel that its rulings are binding, according to international law.
In its order, the court fell short of South Africa’s request for a ceasefire, but this ruling, however, is overwhelmingly in favor of South Africa’s case and will likely increase international pressure for a ceasefire as a result.
On the question of whether Israel’s war in Gaza is genocide, that will still take more time, but today’s news will have significant political repercussions. Here are a few thoughts.
This is a devastating blow to Israel’s global standing. To put it in context, Israel has worked ferociously for the last two decades to defeat the BDS movement — Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions — not because it will have a significant economic impact on Israel, but because of how it could delegitimize Israel internationally. However, the ruling of the ICJ that Israel is plausibly engaged in genocide is far more devastating to Israel’s legitimacy than anything BDS could have achieved.
Just as much as Israel’s political system has been increasingly — and publicly — associatedwith apartheid in the past few years, Israel will now be similarly associated with the charge of genocide. As a result, those countries that have supported Israel and its military campaign in Gaza, such as the U.S. under President Biden, will be associated with that charge, too.
The implications for the United States are significant. First because the court does not have the ability to implement its ruling. Instead, the matter will go to the United Nations Security Council, where the Biden administration will once again face the choice of protecting Israel politically by casting a veto, and by that, further isolate the United States, or allowing the Security Council to act and pay a domestic political cost for “not standing by Israel.”
So far, the Biden administration has refused to say if it will respect ICJ’s decision. Of course, in previous cases in front of the ICJ, such as Myanmar, Ukraine and Syria, the U.S. and Western states stressed that ICJ provisional measures are binding and must be fully implemented.
The double standards of U.S. foreign policy will hit a new low if, in this case, Biden not only argues against the ICJ, but actively acts to prevent and block the implementation of its ruling. It is perhaps not surprising that senior Biden administration officials have largely ceased using the term “rules-based order” since October 7.
It also raises questions about how Biden’s policy of bear-hugging Israel may have contributed to Israel’s conduct. Biden could have offered more measured support and pushed back hard against Israeli excesses — and by that, prevented Israel from engaging in actions that could potentially fall under the category of genocide. But he didn’t.
Instead, Biden offered unconditional support combined with zero public criticism of Israel’s conduct and only limited push-back behind the scenes. A different American approach could have shaped Israel’s war efforts in a manner that arguably would not have been preliminarily ruled by the ICJ as plausibly meeting the standards of genocide.
This shows that America undermines its own interest as well as that of its partners when it offers them blank checks and complete and unquestionable protection. The absence of checks and balances that such protection offers fuels reckless behavior all around.
As such, Biden’s unconditional support may have undermined Israel, in the final analysis.
This ruling may also boost those arguing that all states that are party to the Genocide Convention have a positive obligation to prevent genocide. The Houthis, for instance, have justified their attacks against ships heading to Israeli ports in the Red Sea, citing this positive obligation. What legal implications will the court’s ruling have as a result on the U.S. and UK’s military action against the Houthis?
The implications for Europe will also be considerable. The U.S. is rather accustomed to and comfortable with setting aside international law and ignoring international institutions. Europe is not.
International law and institutions play a much more central role in European security thinking. The decision will continue to split Europe. But the fact that some key EU states will reject the ICJ’s ruling will profoundly contradict and undermine Europe’s broader security paradigm.
One final point: The mere existence of South Africa’s application to the ICJ appears to have moderated Israel’s war conduct. Any plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza and send its residents to third countries appear to have been somewhat paused, presumably because of how such actions would boost South Africa’s application. If so, it shows that the Court, in an era where the force of international law is increasingly questioned, has had a greater impact in terms of deterring unlawful Israeli actions than anything the Biden administration has done.
Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
As reports emerged of US discussions to withdraw troops from Iraq, author and defense expert Michael Maloof joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program Friday to recount the United States’ controversial decision to intervene in the country in 2003.
“I was in the Pentagon at the time, and I was intricately involved in that whole fiasco of whether or not we should invade Iraq,” said the former senior security policy analyst in the office of the US Secretary of Defense. “I was one of the very few who was sending memos up to [former Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz’s office – who was then deputy secretary – saying, ‘We don’t have that evidence of WMD [weapons of mass destruction], contrary to what CIA is saying, because we monitored Iraq for years through export controls and what have you.”
“All of a sudden [the] CIA in October of 2002 comes out with this NIE, or National Intelligence Estimate, saying, ‘Oh, they’ve got WMD,’” recalled Maloof. “Well, we all sort of pinched ourselves and said, ‘No, they don’t. We don’t have that evidence.’”
Maloof said he was contacted by officials from Syria and Lebanon worried about the destabilizing effects regime change in Iraq would have on the greater region. The analyst worked to express his grave concerns to peers at the Defense Department, insisting the claims of weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism were unfounded.
But he eventually came to understand that high US officials had other reasons for supporting the invasion.
“What I learned later is that Wolfowitz, even before he became Deputy Secretary of Defense, had advocated when he was at Johns Hopkins [University] for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein,” Maloof explained. “Why? Because they were enemies at that time of Israel.”
“We were looking at the Middle East completely through the prism of Israel, and we still do. And look where it’s gotten us.”
Observers have long noted the overlap between ideological Zionists, who prioritize defense of Israel, and neoconservatives, who support a muscular and interventionist US foreign policy. Wolfowitz was a strong Zionist as was Bill Kristol, a prominent supporter of the Iraq War who’s often considered the leader of the modern neoconservative movement in the United States.
Current US Secretary of State Antony Blinken argued on behalf of Israel during his time as a student at Harvard University, and US President Joe Biden has repeatedly proclaimed he is a “Zionist” even though he’s of non-Jewish heritage.
Although some believed the invasion of Iraq would be in Israel’s interest, Maloof argued the destabilizing legacy of the intervention has imperiled the entire region.
“This still haunts me to this day because there were some of us who were really concerned about what this would lead to,” said the analyst. “We at the time suggested that such a war [and] the fall of Saddam Hussein would actually create a political vacuum in that region and then allow the Iranians to gain greater influence, which they were vying for at that time.” Iran is an outspoken opponent in the Middle East of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
“This was a disaster ready to happen and it’s now occurred,” added Maloof. “And we’re just digging a deeper, deeper hole, wondering why we can’t get out of it. But, it’s insanity on steroids. And so, and as a consequence of my actions, I got ostracized. And ultimately, I was forced to leave.”
Maloof said a similar mindset was responsible for US intervention in the Syrian Civil War, which has given rise to the CIA’s $1 billion Timber Sycamore program, one of the most expensive covert efforts in the agency’s history.
“When we went into Iraq in 2003 the whole plan was that would be the hub, the US hub from which the United States would then work on regime change in Syria, Iran then Saudi Arabia and Libya because they were all opposed to Israel,” said the expert. “And that’s why we built the largest embassy in the world in Baghdad at the time that was virtually vacant.”
BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 13, 2021
By a strange paradox, most Kennedy researchers who believe that Oswald was “just a patsy” spend an awful lot of time exploring his biography. This is about as useful as investigating Osama bin Laden for solving 9/11. Any serious quest for the real assassins of JFK should start by investigating the man who shot Oswald at pointblank in the stomach at 11:21 a.m. on September 24, 1963 in the Dallas Police station, thereby sealing the possibility that a judicial inquiry would draw attention to the inconsistencies of the charge against him, and perhaps expose the real perpetrators. One would normally expect the Dallas strip-club owner Jack Ruby to be the most investigated character by Kennedy truthers. But that is not the case. … continue
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