As Moderna’s Covid-19 Vaccine Takes The Lead, Its Chief Medical Officer’s Recent Promotion of “Gene-Editing Vaccines” Comes to Light
By Whitney Webb | The Last American Vagabond | May 18, 2020
Moderna’s chief medical officer has described the company’s products as “hacking the software of life” and permanently altering a person’s genetic code. If Moderna is poised to bring the first Covid-19 vaccine to market, a deeper look at his comments and his employer are warranted.
More and more frequently, government officials, political pundits and self-appointed “global health experts” like billionaire Bill Gates have been instructing the public that mass gatherings and any semblance of “normalcy” will not return until a vaccine for the novel coronavirus Covid-19 is created and subsequently distributed to the masses. In recent weeks, it has quickly become apparent that the leading Covid-19 vaccine candidate is the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine being developed by Boston-based Moderna Inc.
Today, Moderna announced that its vaccine candidate, named mRNA-1273, “appeared to produce an immune response in eight people who received it.” Moderna’s response is odd given that the “study” in question is focused on safety and “is actually not designed to measure effectiveness of the vaccine,” according to a report in TIME. Notably, none of the study’s findings on vaccine safety were reported aside from claims it was “generally safe.” It is also worth noting that this “safety-focused” study only began in March and thus, to date, represents only an examination of the vaccine’s effects in the very short term.
Major media outlets in multiple countries ran with the headlines trumpeting that Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine “shows promising early results” and has presented “encouraging early signs” because of its purported ability to produce Covid-19 antibodies in humans. In addition, these media reports failed to raise other simple yet necessary questions such as how a sample size of only eight people can translate into scientific findings of any real significance without further testing involving larger sample sizes. They also failed to note that the study in question is not even finished as a U.S. government press release noted that the findings in question are merely “interim results.” In addition, the study is being led by the U.S.’ National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), itself headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is a key figure in the U.S. government’s coronavirus response.
Though it is unclear if these “encouraging early signs” will be replicated in future tests of larger samples that are actually designed to test the vaccine’s effectiveness, the news is surely welcome to Moderna, given that their past mRNA vaccines failed to produce hardly any immune response at all, explaining why the company has never brought an mRNA vaccine to market in its entire history as a company.
However, since at least last fall, Moderna has sought to resolve this issue by adding “nanoparticles” to its mRNA vaccine, a modification financed by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Moderna is a “strategic ally” of DARPA and has received millions from DARPA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation several years prior to the current coronavirus crisis. DARPA’s plans for nanoparticles and nanotechnology and their potentially Orwellian applications were the subject of a recent The Last American Vagabond report.
Thanks to the “interim results” of this new study, Moderna is set to take the lead in the race to gain government approval for a Covid-19 vaccine. Moderna had already pulled ahead of other Covid-19 vaccine candidates in recent weeks, being the first vaccine in the U.S. to go the human trials (after it was allowed to skip animal trials) and also enjoying strong support from the U.S. government. For instance, Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine recently received fast-track approval from the Food and Drug administration (FDA) after receiving the “green light” to proceed to Phase 2 testing prior to the results of Phase 1 being published. Moderna’s president, Dr. Stephen Hoge, recently said the company now expects to begin the final third phase of testing sometime this summer.
In addition to support from the FDA, Moderna has also received considerable U.S. government funding ($438 million) from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a division of HHS overseen by HHS’ Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Robert Kadlec. Moderna has also stated that it is directly collaborating with the U.S. government to bring its vaccine candidate to market.
Moderna’s considerable lead has also been the result of backing that it received in January from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which was founded in 2017 by the governments of Norway and India along with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine has also received additional millions from long-time Moderna backer Bill Gates. Gates recently authored an article where he described Moderna’s mRNA vaccine for Covid-19 as the “most exciting” and discussed it at length.
Gates’ affinity for Moderna may owe to the fact that Moderna’s co-founder, MIT’s Robert Langer, is a Gates associate whose lab developed the Gates-funded “quantum dot ‘tattoo’” vaccine identification marker that is “visible using a special smartphone camera app and filter” and was described by Science Alert as “a low-risk tracking system.” Another Langer-Gates partnership is a “birth control microchip” inserted to the body that releases contraceptives and can be turned on and off wirelessly.
Meet Dr. Zaks
With Moderna taking a firm lead relative to the other Covid-19 vaccine hopefuls, it is worth taking a closer look at the man who has overseen its development, Moderna’s current Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tal Zaks. Zaks, an Israeli citizen who began his career at GlaxoSmithKline, oversees “preclinical development, clinical development and regulatory affairs” for Moderna and all of its subsidiaries.
In a 2017 TED Talk, two years after joining Moderna, Zaks spoke at length about how he views mRNA vaccines and their modality, including those he produces at Moderna. In a speech entitled “The disease-eradicating potential of gene editing,” Zaks’ description of Moderna’s mRNA products as, making permanent edits to human genes, clashes with often touted claims that the genetic material in mRNA vaccines “degrade” over time and do not permanently alter human genetics like DNA vaccines.
Beginning his talk, Zaks states that Moderna and similar companies “are actually hacking the software of life and that it’s changing the way we think of and treat disease.” He describes mRNA as “critical information that determines what a cell will actually do” and then states that, if one could “introduce a line of code or change a line of code” in a person’s genome, that has “profound implications for everything.” He then falsely claims that Moderna’s products at the time were proven to “work in people” as the company, prior to Covid-19, was never able to convince the federal government to license its mRNA vaccines for human use due to their lack of effectiveness.
Zaks further described his view of well-known diseases like cancer as being caused by “screwed-up DNA” that can be “fixed” with Moderna mRNA vaccines, which he also refers to in the talk as “information therapy” given that he says Moderna’s vaccines work by altering the “operating systems” of human cells, i.e. their genetic code.
The summary of Zaks’ talk encapsulates his view as the following simple question: “If our cells are the hardware and our genetic material the operating system, what if we could change a few lines of code?” — seemingly suggesting that the permanent introduction of changes into the human genome is as simple as troubleshooting or programming a computer or phone application. It also says that Zaks considers the future of “personalized medicine” to be “gene-editing vaccines tailored to each patient’s immune system.” The Ted Talk recommended after viewing Zaks’ speech on the Ted Talk website notably broaches a key point that Zaks overlooks, namely that gene-editing can “change an entire species – forever.”
Zaks’ statements are noteworthy and concerning for several reasons, including the fact that DARPA — Moderna’s “strategic ally” — is also openly funding research aimed at “reprogramming genes” and “manipulat[ing] genes or control[ling] gene expression to combat viruses and help human bodies withstand infection” caused by Covid-19. The DARPA-backed project would use a method that is known to cause severe genetic damage that has actually been shown to aggravate the conditions it was meant to cure.
With such permanent gene-altering technology on the fast-track to become the first Covid-19 vaccine widely available for use, it is deeply concerning that this experimental vaccine with potentially far-reaching consequences is being rammed through thanks to fervent support from both the U.S. government and controversial philanthropists that apparently have little interest in studies examining the mRNA vaccine’s long-term effects. Given that the stage has already been set for mandatory vaccinations that will be “distributed” throughout the U.S. by the military, now is the time to vigorously raise awareness about the Moderna vaccine’s gravely under-reported ability to “hack the software of life” in ways that could harm public health.
Bats, Gene Editing and Bioweapons: Recent DARPA Experiments Raise Concerns Amid Coronavirus Outbreak
DARPA recently spent millions on research involving bats and coronaviruses, as well as gene editing “bioweapons” prior to the recent coronavirus outbreak. Now, “strategic allies” of the agency have been chosen to develop a genetic material-based vaccine to halt the potential epidemic.
By Whitney Webb | The Last American Vagabond | January 30, 2020
WASHINGTON D.C. – In recent weeks, concern over the emergence of a novel coronavirus in China has grown exponentially as media, experts and government officials around the world have openly worried that this new disease has the potential to develop into a global pandemic.
As concerns about the future of the ongoing outbreak have grown, so too have the number of theories speculating about the outbreak’s origin, many of which blame a variety of state actors and/or controversial billionaires. This has inevitably led to efforts to clamp down on “misinformation” related to the coronavirus outbreak from both mainstream media outlets and major social media platforms.
However, while many of these theories are clearly speculative, there is also verifiable evidence regarding the recent interest of one controversial U.S. government agency in novel coronaviruses, specifically those transmitted from bats to humans. That agency, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), began spending millions on such research in 2018 and some of those Pentagon-funded studies were conducted at known U.S. military bioweapons labs bordering China and resulted in the discovery of dozens of new coronavirus strains as recently as last April. Furthermore, the ties of the Pentagon’s main biodefense lab to a virology institute in Wuhan, China — where the current outbreak is believed to have begun — have been unreported in English language media thus far.
While it remains entirely unknown as to what caused the outbreak, the details of DARPA’s and the Pentagon’s recent experimentation are clearly in the public interest, especially considering that the very companies recently chosen to develop a vaccine to combat the coronavirus outbreak are themselves strategic allies of DARPA. Not only that, but these DARPA-backed companies are developing controversial DNA and mRNA vaccines for this particular coronavirus strain, a category of vaccine that has never previously been approved for human use in the United States.
Yet, as fears of the pandemic potential of coronavirus grow, these vaccines are set to be rushed to market for public use, making it important for the public to be aware of DARPA’s recent experiments on coronaviruses, bats and gene editing technologies and their broader implications.
Examining the recent Wuhan-Bioweapon narrative
As the coronavirus outbreak has come to dominate headlines in recent weeks, several media outlets have promoted claims that the reported epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan, China was also the site of laboratories allegedly linked to a Chinese government biowarfare program.
However, upon further examination of the sourcing for this serious claim, these supposed links between the outbreak and an alleged Chinese bioweapons program have come from two highly dubious sources.
For instance, the first outlet to report on this claim was Radio Free Asia, the U.S.-government funded media outlet targeting Asian audiences that used to be run covertly by the CIA and named by the New York Times as a key part in the agency’s “worldwide propaganda network.” Though it is no longer run directly by the CIA, it is now managed by the government-funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which answers directly to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was CIA director immediately prior to his current post at the head of the State Department.
In other words, Radio Free Asia and other BBG-managed media outlets are legal outlets for U.S. government propaganda. Notably, the long-standing ban on the domestic use of U.S. government propaganda on U.S. citizens was lifted in 2013, with the official justification of allowing the government to “effectively communicate in a credible way” and to better combat “al-Qaeda’s and other violent extremists’ influence.”
Returning to the subject at hand, Radio Free Asia’s recent report on the alleged origins of the outbreak being linked to a Chinese state-linked virology center cited only Ren Ruihong, the former head of the medical assistance department at the Chinese Red Cross, for that claim. Ruihong has been cited as an expert in several Radio Free Asia reports on disease outbreaks in China, but has not been cited as an expert by any other English-language media outlet.
Ruihong told Radio Free Asia that:
“It’s a new type of mutant coronavirus.They haven’t made public the genetic sequence, because it is highly contagious…Genetic engineering technology has gotten to such a point now, and Wuhan is home to a viral research center that is under the aegis of the China Academy of Sciences, which is the highest level of research facility in China.”
Though Ruihong did not directly say that the Chinese government was making a bioweapon at the Wuhan facility, she did imply that genetic experiments at the facility may have resulted in the creation of this new “mutant coronavirus” at the center of the outbreak.
With Radio Free Asia and its single source having speculated about Chinese government links to the creation of the new coronavirus, the Washington Times soon took it much farther in a report titled “Virus-hit Wuhan has two laboratories linked to Chinese bio-warfare program.” That article, much like Radio Free Asia’s earlier report, cites a single source for that claim, former Israeli military intelligence biowarfare specialist Dany Shoham.
Yet, upon reading the article, Shoham does not even directly make the claim cited in the article’s headline, as he only told the Washington Times that: “Certain laboratories in the [Wuhan] institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese BW alignment (emphasis added).”
While Shoham’s claims are clearly speculative, it is telling that the Washington Times would bother to cite him at all, especially given the key role he played in promoting false claims that the 2001 Anthrax attacks was the work of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Shoham’s assertions about Iraq’s government and weaponized Anthrax, which were used to bolster the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, have since been proven completely false, as Iraq was found to have neither the chemical or biological “weapons of mass destruction” that “experts” like Shoham had claimed.
Beyond Shoham’s own history of making suspect claims, it is also worth noting that Shoham’s previous employer, Israeli military intelligence, has a troubling past with bioweapons. For instance, in the late 1990s, it was reported by several outlets that Israel was in the process of developing a genetic bioweapon that would target Arabs, specifically Iraqis, but leave Israeli Jews unaffected.
Given the dubious past of Shoham and the clearly speculative nature of both his claims and those made in the Radio Free Asia report, one passage in the Washington Times article is particularly telling about why these claims have recently surfaced:
“One ominous sign, said a U.S. official, is that the false rumors since the outbreak began several weeks ago have begun circulating on the Chinese Internet claiming the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons. That could indicate China is preparing propaganda outlets to counter future charges the new virus escaped from one of Wuhan’s civilian or defense research laboratories (emphasis added).”
However, as seen in that very article, accusations that the coronavirus escaped from a Chinese-state-linked laboratory is hardly a future charge as both the Washington Times and Radio Free Asia have already been making that claim. Instead, what this passage suggests is that the reports in both Radio Free Asia and the Washington Times were responses to the claims circulating within China that the outbreak is linked to a “U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons.”
Though most English-language media outlets to date have not examined such a possibility, there is considerable supporting evidence that deserves to be examined. For instance, not only was the U.S. military, including its controversial research arm — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), recently funding studies in and near China that discovered new, mutant coronaviruses originating from bats, but the Pentagon also became recently concerned about the potential use of bats as bioweapons.
Bats as bioweapons
As the ongoing coronavirus outbreak centered in China has spread to other countries and been blamed for a growing number of deaths, a consensus has emerged that this particular virus, currently classified as a “novel [i.e. new] coronavirus,” is believed to have originated in bats and was transmitted to humans in Wuhan, China via a seafood market that also traded exotic animals. So-called “wet” markets, like the one in Wuhan, were previously blamed for past deadly coronavirus outbreaks in China, such as the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
In addition, one preliminary study on the coronavirus responsible for the current outbreak found that the receptor, Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), is not only the same as that used by the SARS coronavirus, but that East Asians present a much higher ratio of lung cells that express that receptor than the other ethnicities (Caucasian and African-American) included in the study. However, such findings are preliminary and the sample size is too small to draw any definitive conclusions from that preliminary data.
Two years ago, media reports began discussing the Pentagon’s sudden concern that bats could be used as biological weapons, particularly in spreading coronaviruses and other deadly diseases. The Washington Post asserted that the Pentagon’s interest in investigating the potential use of bats to spread weaponized and deadly diseases was because of alleged Russian efforts to do the same. However, those claims regarding this Russian interest in using bats as bioweapons date back to the 1980s when the Soviet Union engaged in covert research involving the Marburg virus, research that did not even involve bats and which ended with the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
Like much of the Pentagon’s controversial research programs, the bats as bioweapons research has been framed as defensive, despite the fact that no imminent threat involving bat-propagated bioweapons has been acknowledged. However, independent scientists have recently accused the Pentagon, particularly its research arm DARPA, of claiming to be engaged in research it says is “defensive” but is actually “offensive.”
The most recent example of this involved DARPA’s “Insect Allies” program, which officially “aims to protect the U.S. agricultural food supply by delivering protective genes to plants via insects, which are responsible for the transmission of most plant viruses” and to ensure “food security in the event of a major threat,” according to both DARPA and media reports.
However, a group of well-respected, independent scientists revealed in a scathing analysis of the program that, far from a “defensive” research project, the Insect Allies program was aimed at creating and delivering a “new class of biological weapon.” The scientists, writing in the journal Science and led by Richard Guy Reeves, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, warned that DARPA’s program — which uses insects as the vehicle for as horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents (HEGAAS) — revealed “an intention to develop a means of delivery of HEGAAs for offensive purposes (emphasis added).”
Whatever the real motivation behind the Pentagon’s sudden and recent concern about bats being used as a vehicle for bioweapons, the U.S. military has spent millions of dollars over the past several years funding research on bats, the deadly viruses they can harbor — including coronaviruses — and how those viruses are transmitted from bats to humans.
For instance, DARPA spent $10 million on one project in 2018 “to unravel the complex causes of bat-borne viruses that have recently made the jump to humans, causing concern among global health officials.” Another research project backed by both DARPA and NIH saw researchers at Colorado State University examine the coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in bats and camels “to understand the role of these hosts in transmitting disease to humans.” Other U.S. military-funded studies, discussed in detail later in this report, discovered several new strains of novel coronaviruses carried by bats, both within China and in countries bordering China.
Many of these recent research projects are related to DARPA’s Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats, or PREEMPT program, which was officially announced in April 2018. PREEMPT focuses specifically on animal reservoirs of disease, specifically bats, and DARPA even noted in its press release in the program that it “is aware of biosafety and biosecurity sensitivities that could arise” due to the nature of the research.
DARPA’s announcement for PREEMPT came just a few months after the U.S. government decided to controversially end a moratorium on so-called “gain-of-function” studies involving dangerous pathogens. VICE News explained “gain-of-function” studies as follows:
“Known as ‘gain-of-function’ studies, this type of research is ostensibly about trying to stay one step ahead of nature. By making super-viruses that are more pathogenic and easily transmissible, scientists are able to study the way these viruses may evolve and how genetic changes affect the way a virus interacts with its host. Using this information, the scientists can try to pre-empt the natural emergence of these traits by developing antiviral medications that are capable of staving off a pandemic (emphasis added).”
In addition, while both DARPA’s PREEMPT program and the Pentagon’s open interest in bats as bioweapons were announced in 2018, the U.S. military — specifically the Department of Defense’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program — began funding research involving bats and deadly pathogens, including the coronaviruses MERS and SARS, a year prior in 2017. One of those studies focused on “Bat-Borne Zoonotic Disease Emergence in Western Asia” and involved the Lugar Center in Georgia, identified by former Georgian government officials, the Russian government and independent, investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva as a covert U.S. bioweapons lab.
It is also important to point out the fact that the U.S. military’s key laboratories involving the study of deadly pathogens, including coronaviruses, Ebola and others, was suddenly shut down last July after the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified major “biosafety lapses” at the facility.
The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland — the U.S. military’s lead laboratory for “biological defense” research since the late 1960s — was forced to halt all research it was conducting with a series of deadly pathogens after the CDC found that it lacked “sufficient systems in place to decontaminate wastewater” from its highest-security labs and failure of staff to follow safety procedures, among other lapses. The facility contains both level 3 and level 4 biosafety labs. While it is unknown if experiments involving coronaviruses were ongoing at the time, USAMRIID has recently been involved in research borne out of the Pentagon’s recent concern about the use of bats as bioweapons.
The decision to shut down USAMRIID garnered surprisingly little media coverage, as did the CDC’s surprising decision to allow the troubled facility to “partially resume” research late last November even though the facility was and is still not at “full operational capability.” The USAMRIID’s problematic record of safety at such facilities is of particular concern in light of the recent coronavirus outbreak in China. As this report will soon reveal, this is because USAMRIID has a decades-old and close partnership with the University of Wuhan’s Institute of Medical Virology, which is located in the epicenter of the current outbreak.
The Pentagon in Wuhan?
Beyond the U.S. military’s recent expenditures on and interest in the use of bats of bioweapons, it is also worth examining the recent studies the military has funded regarding bats and “novel coronaviruses,” such as that behind the recent outbreak, that have taken place within or in close proximity to China.
For instance, one study conducted in Southern China in 2018 resulted in the discovery of 89 new “novel bat coronavirus” strains that use the same receptor as the coronavirus known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). That study was jointly funded by the Chinese government’s Ministry of Science and Technology, USAID — an organization long alleged to be a front for U.S. intelligence, and the U.S. National Institute of Health — which has collaborated with both the CIA and the Pentagon on infectious disease and bioweapons research.
The authors of the study also sequenced the complete genomes for two of those strains and also noted that existing MERS vaccines would be ineffective in targeting these viruses, leading them to suggest that one should be developed in advance. This did not occur.
Another U.S. government-funded study that discovered still more new strains of “novel bat coronavirus” was published just last year. Titled “Discovery and Characterization of Novel Bat Coronavirus Lineages from Kazakhstan,” focused on “the bat fauna of central Asia, which link China to eastern Europe” and the novel bat coronavirus lineages discovered during the study were found to be “closely related to bat coronaviruses from China, France, Spain, and South Africa, suggesting that co-circulation of coronaviruses is common in multiple bat species with overlapping geographical distributions.” In other words, the coronaviruses discovered in this study were identified in bat populations that migrate between China and Kazakhstan, among other countries, and is closely related to bat coronaviruses in several countries, including China.
The study was entirely funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, specifically the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) as part of a project investigating coronaviruses similar to MERS, such as the aforementioned 2018 study. Yet, beyond the funding of this 2019 study, the institutions involved in conducting this study are also worth noting given their own close ties to the U.S. military and government.
The study’s authors are affiliated with either the Kazakhstan-based Research Institute for Biological Safety Problems and/or Duke University. The Research Institute for Biological Safety Problems, though officially a part of Kazakhstan’s National Center for Biotechnology, has received millions from the U.S. government, most of it coming from the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. It is the Kazakhstan government’s official depository of “highly dangerous animal and bird infections, with a collection of 278 pathogenic strains of 46 infectious diseases.” It is part of a network of Pentagon-funded “bioweapons labs” throughout the Central Asian country, which borders both of the U.S.’ top rival states — China and Russia.
Duke University’s involvement with this study is also interesting given that Duke is a key partner of DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program, which officially aims “to dramatically accelerate discovery, integration, pre-clinical testing, and manufacturing of medical countermeasures against infectious diseases.” The first step of the Duke/DARPA program involves the discovery of potentially threatening viruses and “develop[ing] methods to support viral propagation, so that virus can be used for downstream studies.”
Duke University is also jointly partnered with China’s Wuhan University, which is based in the city where the current coronavirus outbreak began, which resulted in the opening of the China-based Duke Kunshan University (DKU) in 2018. Notably, China’s Wuhan University — in addition to its partnership with Duke — also includes a multi-lab Institute of Medical Virology that has worked closely with the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases since the 1980s, according to its website. As previously noted, the USAMRIID facility in the U.S. was shut down last July for failures to abide by biosafety and proper waste disposal procedures, but was allowed to partially resume some experiments late last November.
The Pentagon’s Dark History of Germ Warfare
The U.S. military has a troubling past of having used disease as a weapon during times of war. One example involved the U.S.’ use of germ warfare during the Korean War, when it targeted both North Korea and China by dropping diseased insects and voles carrying a variety of pathogens — including bubonic plague and hemorrhagic fever — from planes in the middle of the night. Despite the mountain of evidence and the testimony of U.S. soldiers involved in that program, the U.S. government and military denied the claims and ordered the destruction of relevant documentation.
In the post World War II era, other examples of U.S. research aimed at developing biological weapons have emerged, some of which have recently received media attention. One such example occurred this past July, when the U.S. House of Representatives demanded information from the U.S. military on its past efforts to weaponize insects and Lyme disease between 1950 and 1975.
The U.S. has claimed that it has not pursued offensive biological weapons since 1969 and this has been further supported by the U.S.’ ratification of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which went into effect in 1975. However, there is extensive evidence that the U.S. has continued to covertly research and develop such weapons in the years since, much of it conducted abroad and outsourced to private companies, yet still funded by the U.S. military. Several investigators, including Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, have documented how the U.S. produces deadly viruses, bacteria and other toxins at facilities outside of the U.S. — many of them in Eastern Europe, Africa and South Asia — in clear violation of the BWC.
Aside from the military’s own research, the controversial neoconservative think tank, the now defunct Project for a New American Century (PNAC), openly promoted the use of a race-specific genetically modified bioweapon as a “politically useful tool.” In what is arguably the think tank’s most controversial document, titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” there are a few passages that openly discuss the utility of bioweapons, including the following sentences:
“… combat likely will 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.”
Though numerous members of PNAC were prominent in the George W. Bush administration, many of its more controversial members have again risen to political prominence in the Trump administration.
Several years after “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” was published, the U.S. Air Force published a document entitled “Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens,” which contains the following passage:
“The JASON group, composed of academic scientists, served as technical advisers to the U. S. government. Their study generated six broad classes of genetically engineered pathogens that could pose serious threats to society. These include but are not limited to binary biological weapons, designer genes, gene therapy as a weapon, stealth viruses, host-swapping diseases, and designer diseases (emphasis added).”
Concerns about Pentagon experiments with biological weapons have garnered renewed media attention, particularly after it was revealed in 2017 that DARPA was the top funder of the controversial “gene drive” technology, which has the power to permanently alter the genetics of entire populations while targeting others for extinction. At least two of DARPA’s studies using this controversial technology were classified and “focused on the potential military application of gene drive technology and use of gene drives in agriculture,” according to media reports.
The revelation came after an organization called the ETC Group obtained over 1,000 emails on the military’s interest in the technology as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Co-director of the ETC Group Jim Thomas said that this technology may be used as a biological weapon:
“Gene drives are a powerful and dangerous new technology and potential biological weapons could have disastrous impacts on peace, food security and the environment, especially if misused, The fact that gene drive development is now being primarily funded and structured by the US military raises alarming questions about this entire field.”
Though the exact motivation behind the military’s interest in such technology is unknown, the Pentagon has been open about the fact that it is devoting much of its resources towards the containment of what it considers the two greatest threats to U.S. military hegemony: Russia and China. China has been cited as the greatest threat of the two by several Pentagon officials, including John Rood, the Pentagon’s top adviser for defense policy, who described China as the greatest threat to “our way of life in the United States” at the Aspen Security Forum last July.
Since the Pentagon began “redesigning” its policies and research towards a “long war” with Russia and China, the Russian military has accused the U.S. military of harvesting DNA from Russians as part of a covert bioweapon program, a charge that the Pentagon has adamantly denied. Major General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military’s radiation, chemical and biological protection unit who made these claims, also asserted that the U.S. was developing such weapons in close proximity to Russian and Chinese borders.
China has also accused the U.S. military of harvesting DNA from Chinese citizens with ill intentions, such as when 200,000 Chinese farmers were used in 12 genetic experiments without informed consent. Those experiments had been conducted by Harvard researchers as part of a U.S. government-funded project.
Hand inserts a molecule into DNA concept design.
DARPA and its partners chosen to develop coronavirus vaccine
Last Thursday, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced that it would fund three separate programs in order to promote the development of a vaccine for the new coronavirus responsible for the current outbreak.
CEPI — which describes itself as “a partnership of public, private, philanthropic and civil organizations that will finance and co-ordinate the development of vaccines against high priority public health threats” — was founded in 2017 by the governments of Norway and India along with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its massive funding and close connections to public, private and non-profit organizations have positioned it to be able to finance the rapid creation of vaccines and widely distribute them.
CEPI’s recent announcement revealed that it would fund two pharmaceutical companies — Inovio Pharmaceuticals and Moderna Inc. — as well as Australia’s University of Queensland, which became a partner of CEPI early last year. Notably, the two pharmaceutical companies chosen have close ties to and/or strategic partnerships with DARPA and are developing vaccines that controversially involve genetic material and/or gene editing. The University of Queensland also has ties to DARPA, but those ties are not related to the university’s biotechnology research, but instead engineering and missile development.
For instance, the top funders of Inovio Pharmaceuticals include both DARPA and the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the company has received millions in dollars in grants from DARPA, including a $45 million grant to develop a vaccine for Ebola. Inovio specializes in the creation of DNA immunotherapies and DNA vaccines, which contain genetically engineered DNA that causes the cells of the recipient to produce an antigen and can permanently alter a person’s DNA. Inovio previously developed a DNA vaccine for the Zika virus, but — to date — no DNA vaccine has been approved for use in humans in the United States. Inovio was also recently awarded over $8 million from the U.S. military to develop a small, portable intradermal device for delivering DNA vaccines jointly developed by Inovio and USAMRIID.
However, the CEPI grant to combat coronavirus may change that, as it specifically funds Inovio’s efforts to continue developing its DNA vaccine for the coronavirus that causes MERS. Inovio’s MERS vaccine program began in 2018 in partnership with CEPI in a deal worth $56 million. The vaccine currently under development uses “Inovio’s DNA Medicines platform to deliver optimized synthetic antigenic genes into cells, where they are translated into protein antigens that activate an individual’s immune system” and the program is partnered with U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and the NIH, among others. That program is currently undergoing testing in the Middle East.
Inovio’s collaboration with the U.S. military in regards to DNA vaccines is nothing new, as their past efforts to develop a DNA vaccine for both Ebola and Marburg virus were also part of what Inovio’s CEO Dr. Joseph Kim called its “active biodefense program” that has “garnered multiple grants from the Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and other government agencies.”
CEPI’s interest in increasing its support to this MERS-specific program seems at odds with its claim that doing so will combat the current coronavirus outbreak, since MERS and the novel coronavirus in question are not analogous and treatments for certain coronaviruses have been shown to be ineffective against other strains.
It is also worth noting that Inovio Pharmaceuticals was the only company selected by CEPI with direct access to the Chinese pharmaceutical market through its partnership with China’s ApolloBio Corp., which currently has an exclusive license to sell Inovio-made DNA immunotherapy products to Chinese customers.
The second pharmaceutical company that was selected by CEPI to develop a vaccine for the new coronavirus is Moderna Inc., which will develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus of concern in collaboration with the U.S. NIH and which will be funded entirely by CEPI. The vaccine in question, as opposed to Inovio’s DNA vaccine, will be a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine. Though different than a DNA vaccine, mRNA vaccines still use genetic material “to direct the body’s cells to produce intracellular, membrane or secreted proteins.”
Moderna’s mRNA treatments, including its mRNA vaccines, were largely developed using a $25 million grant from DARPA and it often touts is strategic alliance with DARPA in press releases. Moderna’s past and ongoing research efforts have included developing mRNA vaccines tailored to an individual’s unique DNA as well as an unsuccessful effort to create a mRNA vaccine for the Zika Virus, which was funded by the U.S. government.
Both DNA and mRNA vaccines involve the introduction of foreign and engineered genetic material into a person’s cells and past studies have found that such vaccines “possess significant unpredictability and a number of inherent harmful potential hazards” and that “there is inadequate knowledge to define either the probability of unintended events or the consequences of genetic modifications.” Nonetheless, the climate of fear surrounding the coronavirus outbreak could be enough for the public and private sector to develop and distribute such controversial treatments due to fear about the epidemic potential of the current outbreak.
However, the therapies being developed by Inovio, Modern and the University of Queensland are in alignment with DARPA’s objectives regarding gene editing and vaccine technology. For instance, in 2015, DARPA geneticist Col. Daniel Wattendorf described how the agency was investigating a “new method of vaccine production [that] would involve giving the body instructions for making certain antibodies. Because the body would be its own bioreactor, the vaccine could be produced much faster than traditional methods and the result would be a higher level of protection.”
According to media reports on Wattendorf’s statements at the time, the vaccine would be developed as follows:
“Scientists would harvest viral antibodies from someone who has recovered from a disease such as flu or Ebola. After testing the antibodies’ ability to neutralize viruses in a petri dish, they would isolate the most effective one, determine the genes needed to make that antibody, and then encode many copies of those genes into a circular snippet of genetic material — either DNA or RNA, that the person’s body would then use as a cookbook to assemble the antibody.”
Though Wattendorf asserted that the effects of those vaccines wouldn’t be permanent, DARPA has since been promoting permanent gene modifications as a means of protecting U.S. troops from biological weapons and infectious disease. “Why is DARPA doing this? [To] protect a soldier on the battlefield from chemical weapons and biological weapons by controlling their genome — having the genome produce proteins that would automatically protect the soldier from the inside out,” then-DARPA director Steve Walker (now with Lockheed Martin) said this past September of the project, known as “Safe Genes.”
Conclusion
Research conducted by the Pentagon, and DARPA specifically, has continually raised concerns, not just in the field of bioweapons and biotechnology, but also in the fields of nanotechnology, robotics and several others. DARPA, for instance, has been developing a series of unsettling research projects that ranges from microchips that can create and delete memories from the human brain to voting machine software that is rife with problems.
Now, as fear regarding the current coronavirus outbreak begins to peak, companies with direct ties to DARPA have been tasked with developing its vaccine, the long-term human and environmental impacts of which are unknown and will remain unknown by the time the vaccine is expected to go to market in a few weeks time.
Furthermore, DARPA and the Pentagon’s past history with bioweapons and their more recent experiments on genetic alteration and extinction technologies as well as bats and coronaviruses in proximity to China have been largely left out of the narrative, despite the information being publicly available. Also left out of the media narrative have been the direct ties of both the USAMRIID and DARPA-partnered Duke University to the city of Wuhan, including its Institute of Medical Virology.
Though much about the origins of the coronavirus outbreak remains unknown, the U.S. military’s ties to the aforementioned research studies and research institutions are worth detailing as such research — while justified in the name of “national security” — has the frightening potential to result in unintended, yet world-altering consequences. The lack of transparency about this research, such as DARPA’s decision to classify its controversial genetic extinction research and the technology’s use as a weapon of war, compounds these concerns. While it is important to avoid reckless speculation as much as possible, it is the opinion of this author that the information in this report is in the public interest and that readers should use this information to reach their own conclusions about the topics discussed herein.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media & The Last American Vagabond. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
Guardian sells space to war-profiteers to promote war
By Kit | OffGuardian | September 24, 2016
It seems like all I do these days is skim through the “about” pages of an endless list of NGOs with countless varieties of the same name, looking for the same half-a-dozen funds, endowments, organisations, slogans, mottos and buzzwords that always appear. It’s got to the point where it’s simply a matter of ticking off the items on a shopping list.
The National Endowment for Democracy… check.
The International Monetary Fund… check.
George Soros… check.
It’s always the same. It has come to the point where, if the “Our Partners” section of an organization with a vaguely benign-sounding name, along the lines of Middle East Fund for Democracy and Liberty or somethingorother, DIDN’T contain a reference to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation or the World Bank… I just wouldn’t be able to contain my shock.
Checking up on the sources and organisations behind this opinion piece on the Guardian yesterday morning (September 23rd) did not shock me, in the least.
It headlines:
Enough is enough. It’s time to protect aid workers
Before insisting, in the subhead:
Attacks on those who respond to global emergencies must be stopped – and the perpetrators must be held accountable
The article, written by Patricia McIlreavy, is long on generals but short on specifics. Long on problems, but short on solutions. It doesn’t discuss the war in Syria, except in the most simplistic terms. It doesn’t lay blame for any “attacks” at the feet of anyone specific, it just condemns attacks in general. The gaping maw of the unsaid echoes into infinity. Its final paragraph:
There comes a time when enough is enough, when even the most altruistic among us become angry. That time is now. World leaders must recognise and respect those who rush in to help when all others turn away, and provide humanitarians the protection they need and deserve.
Stop the attacks, and hold accountable those who seek to harm us. The time for talk is over.
It’s perfectly clear what she means, she just can’t actually say it. When she talks about “altruism” becoming anger, when she says the time for talk is over, she is talking about war. She is proposing that UN “peacekeepers” or NATO troops or a “coalition of the willing” or any and all of the above march into Syria and “protect” NGO employees…by attacking the Syrian government, and almost certainly coming into conflict with the Russian military.
But who is this author making this argument and what is the organisation she represents? What is the section of the Guardian which showcases such articles? And what is the foundation that “sponsored” this material in the Guardian ?
Let us tackle these one at a time.
1. The Author’s Foundation
The author, the Guardian tells us, is Patricia McIlreavy, the vice-president of Humanitarian Policy and Practice at InterAction.
“What is InterAction?”, you ask?
InterAction is an alliance organization in Washington, D.C. of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Our 180-plus members work around the world. What unites us is a commitment to working with the world’s poor and vulnerable, and a belief that we can make the world a more peaceful, just and prosperous place – together.
InterAction serves as a convener, thought leader and voice of our community. Because we want real, long-term change, we work smarter: We mobilize our members to think and act collectively, because we know more is possible that way. We also know that how we get there matters. So we set high standards. We insist on respecting human dignity. We work in partnerships.
Doesn’t that sound nice? Working in partnerships, protecting the vulnerable, human dignity. That’s all good stuff, right? Shame on you for thinking it’s nothing but empty marketing and PR sloganeering.
I mean, just because the author of the article used to work at USAID, and just because their CEO worked for the Obama and Clinton administrations and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and just because their President used to work for the World Bank and also worked for the Obama administration… wait a minute…
2. The Section
The Guardian’s “Global development professionals network” was first launched in 2012. It is subsidiary to their “Global Development website”, which was launched a year earlier. Their purpose, to quote their own description, is to provide:
A space for NGOs, aid workers and development professionals to share knowledge and expertise
It is, to read between the words of that sentence, a space for the Guardian to publish opinion pieces and press releases from US and UK government-backed NGOs, whilst taking no direct editorial responsibility for this blatant issuing of propaganda. It is much the same as the New East Network in this regard.
In case you were wondering where they get their funding for this:
Like the main Guardian global development website, the professional network is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as by a range of sponsors.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is on the list of predictable names I referenced at the beginning of this article. Wherever there is creepy Orwellian propaganda pushing for odd social controls in the name of “justice” (be it common core education, or remote control contraception) you will find Bill and Melinda Gates. The foundation is also, of course, a corrupt tax dodge.
Now, you might be worried about the impartiality of a newspaper that is part-funded by the richest man that has ever existed, and other (unnamed) “sponsors”, but don’t be concerned because:
All our journalism remains independent of sponsorship and follows GNM’s published editorial code.
… and…
Any content produced by, or in partnership with our funding partners, will be clearly labelled.
So that’s alright then.
3. The Sponsor
Here we come to the worst part. The part that, only two years ago, would have shocked me. The article was apparently “supported by” a private corporation: Crown Agents, who describe themselves thus:
We are an international development company that partners with governments, aid agencies, NGOs and companies in nearly 100 countries. Taking on clients’ fundamental challenges, we make lasting change to the systems and organisations that are vital for people’s well-being and prosperity.
We bring an agile and resourceful approach to complex development issues.
Which, when translated from neo-liberal BS language into actual English, means they act as a bridgehead in allowing corporations to move into third world countries and make a fortune by buying up public assets from corrupt or incompetent governments. Take a look at their latest projects for proof. When they’re not helping the Americans privatize Pakistan’s state assets, they’re “facilitating” Ukraine’s joining of the WTO. Interestingly they also enjoyed a very large contract for “rebuilding” peace in Libya.
They are all over the so-called developing world, “boosting revenues”, “fighting corruption” and “reforming financial practices”. They do all this in cooperation with their partners at the US government, the UK government and certain (unnamed) “private foundations.”
To be very clear about this – Crown Agents is NOT an NGO. They are not a charity, or an aid organisation, or a barely-there disguise of some alphabet agency. They are a private business, they make money, they are FOR PROFIT.
The same company which made money off the aftermath of the Libyan war, is now sponsoring an article calling for war in Syria. It is an undeclared agenda, a classic conflict of interest, and totally disgusting. That it takes place in a supposedly “liberal paper”, with supposedly “progressive values”, in the name of charity and humanitarianism, is the height of modern hypocrisy.
The Guardian is selling space in their paper to for-profit companies, who publish pro-war opinion pieces, trying to incite public support for a war that will make them money.
That would have been shocking once upon a time.
The Guardian on Nicaragua : high-intensity disinformation warfare
Tortilla con Sal | June 1, 2015
Among NATO’s psychological warfare outlets the UK Guardian occupies a special place as the fake-progressive mouthpiece of neocolonial English language news media. In recent years, Guardian writers and editors have been persistent propaganda shills for Nazi militias and death squads in Ukraine and for Al Qaeda and related terror groups in both Libya and Syria. No surprise then that it should also have an almost endless record of propaganda attacks against the main member countries of ALBA – Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The latest disinformation offering has been an article by Nina Lakhani in the Guardian’s development pages targeting Nicaragua’s education system. The article’s title “Poverty in Nicaragua drives children out of school and into the workplace” could be applied to almost any country in the majority world as well as to countries in North America and Europe. It’s also worth noting that the Guardian’s development pages are funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
A recent survey of projects funded by the Microsoft tycoons’ NGO between 2003 and 2013 in Africa found out that only 12% of the USD 3 billion granted went directly to the target populations. The rest was invested in research centers for the expansion of European and US-American agribusiness corporations. Self-evidently, the Guardian has a vested interest in promoting a neocolonial perspective skewed in favour of corporate funded non-governmental views and against sovereign governments, especially anti-imperialist governments like those of the ALBA countries.
This particular Guardian article offers a helpful concrete example of how certain kinds of anti-ALBA country propaganda can work while still staying within the bounds of apparently progressive ideas and argument. Nicaragua’s Sandinista government education has transformed education in Nicaragua in many positive ways despite very significant difficulties. But the Guardian article tries to make the absolutely false case that Nicaragua has practically abandoned a large number of it’s school age population and lacks a serious commitment to improving the country’s education system. The article uses various propaganda tricks that depend entirely on readers’ likely ignorance of Nicaragua and the region.
Nina Lakhani starts her false argument with quotes from childen in Bluefields, a city on Nicaragua’s impoverished Caribbean Coast. One quote goes “My family can’t afford the books”. But nowhere in her article does Nina Lakhani report that in January 2007, the very first decision of the incoming Sandinista government under Daniel Ortega was to make health and education services free. No child in Nicaragua’s public school system needs to pay for their schoolbooks. School directors breaching the principle of free education face dismissal. Does Lakhani offer a quote from a local school director? Of course not.
Similarly, Nina Lakhani’s disinformation exercise completely omits reporting mass national programmes by Nicaragua’s Sandinista government to guarantee at least one meal a day for children in school, to ensure the poorest children have shoes and a backpack for their books, to rehabilitate classrooms and classroom furniture, to consolidate literacy skills and to improve dental health. Apart from those important omissions, perhaps the most reprehensible feature of the Guardian article is that it cites figures that are mostly five years or more out of date.
This use of obsolete statistics effectively ignores the Nicaraguan government’s massive efforts to improve school attendance, diminish desertion, improve academic performance and promote better academic standards. Readily available World Bank data for some indicators is slightly more up to date and allows a fair comparison with Nicaragua’s neighbours. While it is certainly true that available recent statistics are patchy and make it hard to compare like with like, that does not mean a more current view is out of reach. In any case, data isolated from any comparative context are grossly misleading and are a long-standing disinformation specialty of corporate media writers on foreign affairs.
So Nina Lakhani’s false use of out-of-date data looks even more dishonest when Nicaragua’s indicators according to the World Bank for the period 2006 to 2013 are compared with its regional neighbours’. For example, in the area of primary education, Nicaragua’s indicators are generally better than those in Guatemala, somewhat behind Honduras and El Salvador and all four countries lag behind Costa Rica. However, in terms of indicators relating to secondary education, Nicaragua has generally similar or better indicators than Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and again all four lag behind Costa Rica.
Nina Lakhani’s insistence on the importance of reducing child labour so as to ensure good education for all children is certainly correct. But that is true throughout Central America, whose countries share many social characteristics derived from their history of colonial and neocolonial domination and economic under-development. In particular in Nicaragua, the school year has historically been scheduled around the coffee harvest from mid-December to late February when thousands of rural families migrate en bloc as families to pick coffee. As in most of Central America, Nicaraguan law allows children to start work at 14.
Since 2011, the Nicaragua government has implemented a series of measures aimed at preventing under-age children from working. In 2012 the government began an annual campaign coordinated by local municipal authorities, the Education Ministry, the Health Ministry and relevant labour unions to ensure children under 14 years old, accompanying their families picking coffee in Nicaragua’s main coffee growing areas, attend classes and educational activities. The national confederation of workers in the informal sector also works with the government in urban centres to keep school age children from working selling with their parents on the streets.
Child labour is a serious problem throughout Central America. But Lakhani’s article suggests the Nicaraguan government’s policy on child labour represents a unique failure. To make her false case, she cites old figures from the 2005 census that she compares with unreliable current estimates from Nicaragua’s business sector. Lakhani writes “Nicaragua has ratified multiple international treaties and has strong national policies, but government claims that it is reducing child labour are not supported by any published evidence.” But Lakhani applies a different standard to a business sector estimate “that there are between 250,000 and 320,000 child workers, with one in three under 14.”
The link her report offers is to a video with off the cuff remarks at a press conference by business organization President José Adán Aguerri. His claim too is unsupported by any recent published evidence, but still Lakhani gives it more weight than government claims. By contrast, the Chair of the National Assembly’s Commision for Women Youth, Children and the Family, Carlos Emilio López, announced in 2013 a 10% drop in child labour in Nicaragua since 2005. Nina Lakhani mentions no reliable evidence to falsify that assertion.
She mentions an anecdotal case study by La Isla Foundation of 26 children in the sugar cane plantations aged between 12 and 17 which is virtually meaningless in the national context, but may perhaps reflect to some degree the reality in the sugar industry throughout the region, not just in Nicaragua. In that regional context, Nicaragua has a better record at protecting vulnerable children than its neighbours. In fact, the International Labour Organization representative in Nicaragua said in June 2014, “In the 2005 census, 53% of children working did not go to school, now that percentage is less than 15%.”
That statement by the ILO should be taken together with recent government data for education indicating substantial increases in matriculation numbers, lower figures for academic desertion, and better academic results generally. Likewise, Nicaragua’s Ministry of the Family’s mass campaign to help families ensure their children go to preschool is helping hundreds of thousands of children to get better early schooling. Bearing all that in mind, it is fair to say that the recent statements from the relevant responsible officials about the government’s committed implementation of education and family policies categorically contradict the Guardian’s misleading report. Nina Lakhani seems deliberately to omit highly relevant context supporting the government’s education policies in relation to child labour.
When she cites the most recent US government report saying, “The [Nicaraguan] government’s enforcement of labour laws is inadequate, and plans to combat child labour and protect children have not been fully implemented”, one has to assume she is making an extremely bad joke. The United States government, has overseen the fall of much of its child population into deep poverty for many years now and has zero authority to lecture another country about its record on child welfare. All the Central American governments are working to reduce child labour, Nicaragua’s Sandinista government especially.
Nina Lakhani’s baseless claim that the Nicaraguan government is failing to reduce child labour is not just grossly unfair given available evidence that she has chosen to ignore. A look at the budgetary history of Nicaragua’s spending on education since January 2007 also serves to confirm the falsity of the Guardian’s report. This calculation of education spending in Nicaragua includes both spending assigned to universities and the budget of Ministry of Education. It does not include :
-
spending by the Ministry of the Family to support pre-school education;
-
spending by the Ministry of Health to support children with special needs or dental health
-
spending in schools by the government’s sports and culture institutions;
-
in some years it may not include all spending on vocational and technical education;
-
spending to guarantee school meals or shoes and backpacks for school
Last year of the Presidency of Ing. Enrique Bolaños Geyer
| Year | Education spending in C$ (millions) | % national budget | % GDP |
| 2006 | 4, 608.4 | 20.1 | 03.98 |
Comandante Daniel Ortega Saavedra became President in January 2007
| Year | Education spending in C$ millions | % national budget | Inflation adjusted increase | % GDP |
| 2007 | 5,501.40 | 22.00 | 08.61 | 04.30 |
| 2008 | 6,250.00 | 21.80 | 02.21 | 04.52 |
| 2009 | 7,526.00 | 23.10 | 00.51 | 05.34 |
| 2010 | 7,250.80 | 23.00 | -07.64 | 04.74 |
| 2011 | 7,900.40 | 22.00 | 03.17 | 04.65 |
| 2012 | 9,364.40 | 22.10 | 08.21 | 05.01 |
| 2013 | 10,553.80 | 22.00 | 04.08 | 05.14 |
| 2014 | 12,766.40 | 22.80 | 11.38 | — |
| 2015 | 14,439.10 | 23.60 | 05.93 | — |
(Budget data from Ministerio de Hacienda y Crédito Público. Inflation data calculated from various IMF reports. GDP data calculated from World Bank data.)
This represents an increase of education spending of 36% in real terms since 2006, well outstripping the development of the school age population which, like Costa Rica’s, has in fact been declining slightly year by year in contrast to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala where the school age population is slightly increasing year by year. Here are World Bank data on Nicaragua’s population of children and adolescents under 18 years of age :
|
Age group |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
|
Ages 0-14 |
2050489 |
2039137 |
2027692 |
2017376 |
2009063 |
2003075 |
1999212 |
1996346 |
n/a |
|
Ages 10-18 |
1213061 |
1217077 |
1218835 |
1217850 |
1213924 |
1206832 |
1197091 |
1186169 |
1176045 |
(Data from World Bank: http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/EdStats_excel.zip)
As regards the above table of budget allocations, note the period 2008 to 2011. Major events in this period were the massive inflationary pressures leading to dramatically higher oil and food prices. Also in 2009 the US government and the European Union cut a total of over US$100m in development cooperation funding to the Nicaraguan government in response to the opposition campaign led by right-wing leader Eduardo Montealegre and his social democrat allies falsely alleging fraud in the November 2008 municipal elections. That mendacious campaign was supported by political opinion across the political spectrum in North America and Europe, including neo-colonial progressives and leftists.
It was only through 2011 that the government was able to make good the budgetary difficulties of the three years 2008-2010. Government spending figures tend to conceal the huge deficiencies of Nicaragua’s education system as of January 2007. The new Sandinista government had to overcome the enormous deficit in capital spending accumulated over 16 years of systematic denial of resources and corruption, preceded by a decade of war. In January 2007, that 26 year period had left Nicaragua’s schools unable even to deliver the complete primary school curriculum to large areas of the country, never mind comprehensive provision for secondary or technical and vocational education.
In January 2007, preschool care was almost entirely private. Secondary education was in the early stages of effective privatization. Public vocational and technical training was grossly under-resourced. Nationally, school infrastructure needed a programme of complete overhaul and renewal. Teacher salaries were desperately inadequate, as were resources for teacher training. That same year, 2007, saw the start of the global economic crisis with oil reaching US$147 a barrel in early 2008 and the worst economic collapse in North America and Europe since the 1930s.
None of that essential context figures anywhere in the Guardian’s report by Nina Lakhani on Nicaragua’s education system and its link to child labour. Her report glibly evades all that essential history. Instead, she shifts from disinforming her readers about Nicaragua’s education system to remarks reflecting an ideological disagreement between international education bureaucrats. But her earlier faithless, heavily prejudiced depiction of Nicaragua’s education dilemmas offers no legitimate insight into that debate. Her Guardian report quotes Manos Antoninis, “a senior analyst at Education for All global monitoring report“.
Manos Antoninis argues, “While raising the compulsory age of schooling is unlikely to immediately impact on completion rates in Nicaragua, it would send a powerful message that the state believes in the importance of education, which in turn would impact the way families perceive their own responsibility in keeping children in school.” His remarks are quoted in such a way as to reinforce Nina Lakhani’s false argument that the Nicaraguan government neither really believes in the importance of education nor devotes the resources necessary to improving Nicaragua’s education system.
The Guardian cites an opposing theoretical view, without explaining that this view, offered by Philippe Barragne-Bigot, Unicef representative in Nicaragua, in fact reflects the current policy of the Nicaraguan government. Philippe Barragne-Bigot argues “Quality, flexible education and jobs will keep children in school, not a change in the law.” But Nina Lakhani categorically fails to report the significance of these remarks by UNICEF’s representative in Nicaragua. Nicaragua’s Sandinista government is very deliberately prioritizing improving the quality of education in Nicaragua, broadening the range of study and training opportunities available to adolescents and young adults and prioritizing employment creation.
All these policy measures are integral components of Nicaragua’s national development strategy whose overwhelming priority is to reduce poverty. But the Guardian never even mentions the wide-ranging, complex national development policy the government is trying to implement. Instead, the Guardian report gives Manos Antoninis the last word:
“Countries that don’t educate their children to second school level don’t stand a chance. But the sudden expansion of secondary education could serve the elite, so policies must target the neediest,” said Antoninis. He added: “The inter-generational effect is chilling. A lack of education not only scuppers a child’s chances, but also the chances of their children. Failing to make an effort in this generation, also fails the next.”
And that’s it. Nina Lakhani’s article ends there, leaving the reader with the impression that Nicaragua’s Sandinista government is a clear example of a government “failing to make an effort” for the education of the country’s children and youth. The falsity of Nina Lakhani’s report in the Guardian is beyond travesty. More than any other country in the region, with the possible exception of El Salvador, Nicaragua is very much targeting the neediest among its population as it works to strengthen the whole of its historically devastated public education system.
On May 19th this year, the government’s policy coordinator, Rosario Murillo, announced that enrollment in the public education system came to “a grand total 2,143,721 students between Pre-school, Primary level, Secondary level, Special Education, Teacher training, Workshop-Classrooms for Young people and Adults, Literacy tutoring, Technical education and training”, apart from university level education. Earlier in the year, Rosario Murillo also confirmed the distribution of almost 90,000 text books in indigenous peoples languages, free, for school students on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast.
The reality of educational policy in Nicaragua overwhelmingly contradicts Nina Lakhani’s disingenuous fake-progressive argument that the Sandinista government has failed Nicaragua’s children. Perhaps the most egregious outright falsehood in the Guardian’s account is its report as a current fact that “The UN children’s agency, Unicef, estimates that 500,000 Nicaraguan children aged three to 17 are not in the educational system.” That is grotesquely unfair both to UNICEF and the Nicaraguan government because the link leads to a 2012 report using figures from 2010 that were probably out of date even then, despite the crisis between 2008 and 2010, and much more so now, five years after that crisis, in 2015.
For us at Tortilla con Sal we feel particularly bitter at the Guardian’s mendacious report on education and child labor in Nicaragua because much of the community work of our collective’s members is with families on extremely low incomes. Since 1998, we have worked with a programme serving 40 young women from very impoverished rural families each year training to be primary school teachers. Since 1999, we have worked on a programme that each year has helped over a hundred low income women, mostly single mothers, return to school to finish their secondary education. Over the last four years we have worked on a program to address domestic violence among families in low income rural and urban areas.
This close grass roots engagement has permitted us to witness the great sacrifices people in Nicaragua on very low incomes will make to ensure their children get an education that will improve their economic opportunities. We have also witnessed how year by year the government’s education and child protection policies improve systematically and incrementally, often making a dramatic difference to different sectors of the country’s impoverished majority. That process throws up many complex dilemmas over trade-offs, the most obvious being that of young family members opting to start work so as to increase their family’s income and go back to education later.
By quoting UNICEF’s country representative in Nicaragua, the Guardian’s Nina Lakhani opened the door a fraction towards a view of the flexible, quality education system Nicaragua’s Sandinista government led by Comandante Daniel Ortega is trying, despite innumerable difficulties, to promote. But she and her editors then immediately slammed it shut. They had to.
Nina Lakhani had to close down that view because it contradicts her own self-evident prejudices against Nicaragua’s government. Her Guardian editors’ had to deny it because their sinister psy-warfare imperative is to erase any reality contradicting their neocolonial propaganda line. In sum, Nina Lakhani’s article in the Guardian is grossly unfair and disingenuous. Contrary to her phony conclusion, Nicaragua’s education system is a very successful example of how a government committed to ALBA’s emancipatory socialist vision can overcome, in favour of the impoverished majority, the intractable problems inherited from decades of neocolonial subjugation and war.
Avaaz: manufacturing consent for wars since 2011
By James Boswell | Wall of Controversy | March 20, 2015
Four years ago I received an email from the internet campaign group Avaaz which read:
“Together, we’ve sent 450,000 emails to the UN Security Council, “overwhelming” the Council President and helping to win targeted sanctions and a justice process for the Libyan people. Now, to stop the bloodshed, we need a massive outcry for a no-fly zone.” [Bold as in the original.]
Of course, that no-fly zone was Nato’s justification for a war – “no-fly zone” means war. So the bloodshed wasn’t about to be stopped, it was about to begin in earnest:
The foreign media has largely ceased to cover Libya because it rightly believes it is too dangerous for journalists to go there. Yet I remember a moment in the early summer of 2011 in the frontline south of Benghazi when there were more reporters and camera crews present than there were rebel militiamen. Cameramen used to ask fellow foreign journalists to move aside when they were filming so that this did not become too apparent. In reality, Gaddafi’s overthrow was very much Nato’s doing, with Libyan militiamen mopping up.
Executing regime change in Libya cost the lives of an estimated 20,000 people: but this was only the immediate death toll, and as a civil war rages on, the final figure keeps rising, indefinitely and seemingly inexorably. And the number of victims will go on rising for so long as there is lawlessness and chaos in a country now completely overrun with terrorists and warlords. So what was started with a “no-fly zone” is ending with a hell on earth: abandon hope all ye who enter here.
Given their unpardonable role in instigating this entirely avoidable human catastrophe, does it come as any surprise when, with “mission accomplished”, the media chose to turn its back on the carnage in Libya? Patrick Cockburn, who wrote the article from which the above quote is taken, has been a rare exception to the rule. A journalist who was not so quick to swallow the official line, he has since been committed to telling the bigger story, which includes the falsity of Nato’s original justifications for air strikes:
Human rights organisations have had a much better record in Libya than the media since the start of the uprising in 2011. They discovered that there was no evidence for several highly publicised atrocities supposedly carried out by Gaddafi’s forces that were used to fuel popular support for the air war in the US, Britain, France and elsewhere. These included the story of the mass rape of women by Gaddafi’s troops that Amnesty International exposed as being without foundation. The uniformed bodies of government soldiers were described by rebel spokesmen as being men shot because they were about to defect to the opposition. Video film showed the soldiers still alive as rebel prisoners so it must have been the rebels who had executed them and put the blame on the government.
So here is a pattern that repeats with uncanny consistency, and with the mainstream media’s failure to discover and report on the truth also recurring with near parallel regularity. We had the ‘Babies out of incubators’ story in Kuwait, and then those WMDs in Iraq that, as Bush Jnr joked, “have got to be here somewhere”, to offer just two very well-established prior instances of the kinds of lies that have taken us to war.
Patrick Cockburn continues:
Foreign governments and media alike have good reason to forget what they said and did in Libya in 2011, because the aftermath of the overthrow of Gaddafi has been so appalling. The extent of the calamity is made clear by two reports on the present state of the country, one by Amnesty International called “Libya: Rule of the gun – abductions, torture and other militia abuses in western Libya” and a second by Human Rights Watch, focusing on the east of the country, called “Libya: Assassinations May Be Crimes Against Humanity”.1
Click here to read Patrick Cockburn’s full article published last November.
But accusations do not stop even at the deplorable roles played by “foreign governments and media alike”, but apply to all of the various warmongering parties at that time, and one of the groups we must also point the finger to is Avaaz. For it was Avaaz, more than any other campaign group, who pushed alongside Nato in their call for the “no-fly zone” which got the whole war going. To reiterate, since it is vitally important that this is understood, a “no-fly zone” always and without exception means war:
Clearly a no-fly zone makes foreign intervention sound rather humanitarian – putting the emphasis on stopping bombing, even though it could well lead to an escalation of violence.
No wonder, too, that it is rapidly becoming a key call of hawks on both sides of the Atlantic. The military hierarchy, with their budgets threatened by government cuts, surely cannot believe their luck – those who usually oppose wars are openly campaigning for more military involvement.2
So wrote John Hilary in an excellent article entitled “Internet activists should be careful what they wish for in Libya” published on the cusp of “intervention”.
In response, Ben Wikler, a campaign director at Avaaz, posted a comment that included the following remarks:
Would imposing a no-fly zone lead to a full-blown international war? No-fly zones can mean a range of different things.
Wikler is wrong and Hilary correct: “no-fly zones” always mean war. And as a consequence, those at Avaaz like Ben Wikler now have blood on their hands – and yet are unrepentant.
Yes, as with most others who were directly or indirectly culpable, “foreign governments and media alike”, it seems Avaaz too are suffering from collective amnesia. Not only have they forgotten the terrible consequences of imposing a “no-fly zone” on Libya, but they also seem to have forgotten their own deliberate efforts when it came to bolstering public support for that “bloody and calamitous” (to use Cockburn’s words) “foreign intervention” (to use the weasel euphemisms of Nato and the West). Because instead of reflecting upon the failings of Nato’s air campaign four years ago, and without offering the slightest murmur of apology for backing it (not that apologies help at all), Avaaz are now calling upon their supporters to forget our murderous blundering of the recent past, with calls for the same action all over again… this time in Syria.
It was yesterday when I received the latest email from Avaaz. Don’t worry, I’m not a supporter (although the simple fact I receive their emails means by their own definition, I am presumably counted one), but after Libya I chose to remain on their mailing list simply to keep an eye on what they were doing. And (not for the first or the second time) they are selling us on more war:
The Syrian air force just dropped chlorine gas bombs on children. Their little bodies gasped for air on hospital stretchers as medics held back tears, and watched as they suffocated to death.
But today there is a chance to stop these barrel bomb murders with a targeted No Fly Zone.
The US, Turkey, UK, France and others are right now seriously considering a safe zone in Northern Syria. Advisers close to President Obama support it, but he is worried he won’t have public support. That’s where we come in.
Let’s tell him we don’t want a world that just watches as a dictator drops chemical weapons on families in the night. We want action.
One humanitarian worker said ‘I wish the world could see what I have seen with my eyes. It breaks your heart forever.’ Let’s show that the world cares — sign to support a life-saving No Fly Zone
Obviously, I am not supplying the link for this latest call to arms: “a[nother] life-saving No Fly Zone”.
After Avaaz called for war against Libya back in 2011, I wrote a restrained article. But I was too polite. When they called for war again following the sarin gas attack on Ghouta, I hesitated again and looked into the facts. They didn’t stack up (as I explained at length in another post). But nor did I damn Avaaz on that occasion, as I ought to have done, when with Libya already ablaze they set up a campaign like this (sorry that it’s hard to read):
Since that time it has become evident to the world (at least the one outside the Avaaz office) that it has been Syrian forces who have most successfully fought back against Islamist extremists (al-Qaeda, but now more often called ISIS) who not only use poison gas to murder their enemies and spread fear, but methods so barbaric and depraved – public mass beheadings, crucifixions and even cannibalism – that you wonder which century we are living in. But Avaaz push the blame for all of this killing back on to the Assad regime, just as the West (whose close allies continue to back the so-called “rebels”) have also tried to do. And Avaaz are now saying (once again) that escalating the conflict is the way to save the people of Syria – so don’t worry if it spreads the infection now called ISIS – more love bombs are the preferred Avaaz solution for every complex political situation:
“Today, Gadhafi is dead, and the Libyan people have their first chance for democratic, accountable governance in decades…. American casualties were zero. Insurgent fighters and the vast majority of the population have cheered the victory as liberation, and courageous Syrians who face daily threats of death for standing up to their own repressive regime have taken comfort in Gadhafi’s fall. These accomplishments are no small feats for those who care about human dignity, democracy, and stability….
Progressives often demand action in the face of abject human suffering, but we know from recent history that in some situations moral condemnation, economic sanctions, or ex-post tribunals don’t save lives. Only force does.”
These are the self-congratulatory words of Tom Perriello, the co-founder of Avaaz, writing in late 2012. And he finishes the same piece:
We must realize that force is only one element of a coherent national security strategy and foreign policy. We must accept the reality—whether or not one accepts its merits—that other nations are more likely to perceive our motives to be self-interested than values-based. But in a world where egregious atrocities and grave threats exist, and where Kosovo and Libya have changed our sense of what’s now possible, the development of this next generation of power can be seen as a historically unique opportunity to reduce human suffering. 3
Independent investigative journalist, Cory Morningstar, who has probed very deeply into the organization says, “Make no mistake – this is the ideology at the helm of Avaaz.org.”
As she explains:
Tom Perriello is a long-time collaborator with Ricken Patel. Together, they co-founded Avaaz.org, Res Publica and FaithfulAmerica.org.
Perriello is a former U.S. Representative (represented the 5th District of Virginia from 2008 to 2010) and a founding member of the House Majority Leader’s National Security Working Group.
Perriello was also co-founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. He worked for Reverend Dr. James Forbes on “prophetic justice” principles. Many of these organizations were created with the intent of creating a broad-based “religious left” movement. […]
Despite the carefully crafted language and images that tug at your emotions, such NGOs were created for and exist for one primary purpose – to protect and further American policy and interests, under the guise of philanthropy and humanitarianism.
As Cory Morningstar also points out:
In December 2011, Perriello disclosed that he served as special adviser to the international war crimes prosecutor and has spent extensive time in 2011 in Egypt and the Middle East researching the Arab Spring. Therefore, based on this disclosure alone, there can be no doubt that the deliberate strategy being advanced by Avaaz cannot be based upon any type of ignorance or naïveté. 4
“It breaks your heart forever.” That was the heading under which yesterday’s email arrived and the way it signed off went as follows: “With hope, John, Mais, Nick, Alice, Rewan, Wissam, Ricken and the rest of the Avaaz team”. And this is how they come again with further ploys to prick your conscience. So do please remember before you click on their pastel-coloured links or forward those ‘messages’ to your own friends, how they beat the drums to war on two earlier occasions. In 2013, when they last called for the bombing of Syria (but the war party were halted in their mission), and in 2011 when they first aided Nato’s grand deception and helped to bring unremitting horrors to the innocent people of Libya. Keep in mind too, how lacking in guilt they have been in light of their own imploring role during the run up to the full “shock and awe” display over Tripoli.
Because John, Mais, Nick, Alice, Rewan, Wissam, Ricken and the rest… are really not our friends. They are humanitarian hawks, who are in the business of manufacturing consent for every Nato “intervention”. Indeed, I would like to ask John, Mais, Nick, Alice, Rewan, Wissam, Ricken and the rest, in good faith, just how do you sleep at night?
Click here to read a thorough examination of Avaaz put together by independent investigative journalist Cory Morningstar.
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Additional:
Here is an open letter I constructed in Summer 2012, but then decided not to post:
Dear Ricken, Eli and the whole Avaaz team,
By your own rather loose definition, I have been a member of Avaaz now for several years. In other words I responded to one of your campaigns many moons ago, and have never subsequently withdrawn my name from your mailing list. I believe that under your own terms, I am thus one of the many millions of your ‘members’. You presume that all those like me who are ‘in the Avaaz community’ support your various campaigns simply because we are on your contact list, although in my own case, this is absolutely not the case. I have ceased to support any of the Avaaz campaigns since you pushed for a ‘no-fly zone’ over Libya, and from this time on, have kept up with your campaign messages simply to keep an eye on you. I vowed never again to sign any of your petitions on the grounds that I do not wish to be a supporter of any organisation that backs an aggressive and expansionist war.
The most common criticism of Avaaz, and other internet campaign groups, is that it encourages ‘slacktivism’, which is indeed a very valid concern:
Sites such as Avaaz, suggested Micah White in the Guardian last year, often only deal with middle-of-the-road causes, to the exclusion of niche interests: “They are the Walmart of activism . . . and silence underfunded radical voices.” More infamously, internet theorist Evgeny Morozov has called the likes of Avaaz “Slacktivists”, claiming that they encourage previously tenacious activists to become lazy and complacent.
There’s also the issue of breadth. Clicktivist websites often cover a range of issues that have little thematic or geographical relation to each other, which leaves them open to accusations of dilettantism.
Click here to read Patrick Kingsey’s full article in the Guardian.
Ricken Patel’s response to Kingsley is to point to their campaign against Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB:
“Our activism played a critical role in delaying the BskyB deal until the recent scandal was able to kill it,” Avaaz‘s founder, New York-based Ricken Patel, tells me via Skype. 5
So is this really the best example Avaaz has to offer? Since the BSkyB deal would undoubtedly have been stymied for all sorts of other reasons, not least of which were the various phone hacking scandals, and most shockingly, in the hacking of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone. This more than anything killed off the Murdoch bid for BSkyB.
We might also give a little grudging credit to Business Secretary Vince Cable, who in late 2010 revealed privately to undercover reporters that he was ‘declaring war’ on Rupert Murdoch. This caused such a storm that Tory leader David Cameron came out against Cable, describing his comments as “totally unacceptable and inappropriate”, whilst Labour leader Ed Miliband immediately followed suite saying that he would have gone further and sacked Cable 6. In any case, Murdoch was coming under attack from many fronts (including, as shown by Cable’s example, a maverick offensive from inside the government), and so there were already growing calls for a review of the BskyB deal. As it turns out, the deal itself was seriously compromised by a conflict of interests involving Ofcom Chairman Colette Bowe, not that this widely reported – I wrote a post on it just before the deal suddenly collapsed. In fact, I had tried in vain to get a number of politicians to look into this aspect of the case, but none at all even bothered to reply. The story the media were telling quickly moved on, and so the role of Ofcom remains more or less unscrutinised.
But I have a far bigger problem with Avaaz than simply the matter of its lack of effectiveness. Since even if Avaaz has achieved nothing concrete whatsoever, which might well be the case, its growing prominence as a campaign group is undoubtedly helping to frame the protest agenda. Picking and choosing what are and aren’t important issues is dilettantism, yes, and also, potentially at least, “the manufacturing of dissent”. Avaaz‘s defence is that it is an independent body – oh, really?
Co-founder and Director of Avaaz, Ricken Patel said in 2011 “We have no ideology per se. Our mission is to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want. Idealists of the world unite!”
“No ideology per se”? So what then are we to make of your association with another organisation called Res Publica, of which Patel is a fellow, and Eli Pariser has also been a member of the Advisor Board.
Res Publica (US) is described by wikipedia as “a US organization promoting ‘good governance, civic virtue and deliberative democracy.’”, though there is no article on the group itself, and nor, for that matter, any entry on Ricken Patel himself. If I visit the Res Publica website, however, the link I immediately find takes me straight to George Soros’ Open Democracy group and also the International Crisis Group of which Soros is again a member of the Executive Committee. The International Crisis Group that gets such glowing endorsements from peace-loving individuals as (and here I quote directly from the website):
President Bill Clinton (‘in the most troubled corners of the world, the eyes, the ears and the conscience of the global community’); successive U.S. Secretaries of State (Condoleezza Rice: ‘a widely respected and influential organisation’, Colin Powell: ‘a mirror for the conscience of the world’ and Madeleine Albright: ‘a full-service conflict prevention organisation’); and former U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the late Richard Holbrooke (‘a brilliant idea… beautifully implemented’ with reports like CrisisWatch ‘better than anything I saw in government’).
Whilst according to Res Publica‘s own website Ricken Patel has himself “consulted for the International Crisis Group, the United Nations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation…”
To cut to the quick then, Avaaz claims to independence are simply a sham. Whether foundation funded or not, you are undeniably foundation affiliated. Which brings me to your recent campaigns.
In a letter which I received on Wednesday 11th January, you wrote, typically vaingloriously, about the significance of Avaaz in bringing about and supporting the uprisings of Arab Spring:
Across the Arab world, people power has toppled dictator after dictator, and our amazing Avaaz community has been at the heart of these struggles for democracy, breaking the media blackouts imposed by corrupt leaders, empowering citizen journalists, providing vital emergency relief to communities under siege, and helping protect hundreds of activists and their families from regime thugs.
When all that I can actually recall is some jumping on the bandwagon and your support for the ‘shock and awe’ assault that we saw lighting up the skies over Tripoli. Gaddafi was ousted, of course, much as Saddam Hussein had been by the Bush administration, and likewise, the country remains in chaos. But does the removal of any dictator justify the killing of an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people in the first months of the Libyan war – these figures according to Cherif Bassiouni, who led a U.N. Human Rights Council mission to Tripoli and rebel-held areas in late April. 7 Figures that officially rose to 25,000 people killed and 60,000 injured, after the attacks on Gaddafi’s besieged hometown of Sirte. 8 The true overall casualties of the Libyan war remain unknown, as they do in Iraq, although a conservative estimate is that around 30,000 people lost their lives. Avaaz, since you called for this, you must wash some of that blood from your own hands.
Now you are calling for ‘action’ against Syria, on the basis this time of your own report which finds that “crimes against humanity were committed by high-level members of the Assad regime”. Now, let me say that I do not in the least doubt that the Assad regime is involved in the secret detainment and torture of its opponents. The terrible truth is that such human rights abuses are routinely carried out all across the Middle East, and in many places on behalf or in collusion with Western security services such as the CIA. Back in September 2010, PolitiFact.com wrote about the Obama administration’s record on so-called “extraordinary renditions” [from wikipedia with footnote preserved]:
The administration has announced new procedural safeguards concerning individuals who are sent to foreign countries. President Obama also promised to shut down the CIA-run “black sites,” and there seems to be anecdotal evidence that extreme renditions are not happening, at least not as much as they did during the Bush administration. Still, human rights groups say that these safeguards are inadequate and that the DOJ Task Force recommendations still allow the U.S. to send individuals to foreign countries.[158]
Whilst back in April 2009, on the basis of what he had witnessed in Uzbekistan, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004, Craig Murray, gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights “UN Convention against torture: allegations of complicity in torture”. In answers to questions, he explained to the committee how the UK government disguises its complicity and that he believed it has, in effect, helped to create “a market for torture”:
If I may refer to the documents on waterboarding and other torture techniques released recently in the United States on the orders of President Obama, if we are continuing to receive, as we are, all the intelligence reports put out by the CIA we are complicit in a huge amount of torture. I was seeing just a little corner in Uzbekistan. [p. 73]
I think the essence of the government’s position is that if you receive intelligence material from people who torture, be it CIA waterboarding, or torture by the Uzbek authorities or anywhere else, you can do so ad infinitum knowing that it may come from torture and you are still not complicit. [bottom p. 74]
Their position remains the one outlined by Sir Michael Wood, and it was put to me that if we receive intelligence from torture we were not complicit as long as we did not do the torture ourselves or encouraged it. I argue that we are creating a market for torture and that there were pay-offs to the Uzbeks for their intelligence co-operation and pay-offs to other countries for that torture. I think that a market for torture is a worthwhile concept in discussing the government’s attitude. [p. 75]
The government do not volunteer the fact that they very happily accept this information. I make it absolutely plain that I am talking of hundreds of pieces of intelligence every year that have come from hundreds of people who suffer the most vicious torture. We are talking about people screaming in agony in cells and our government’s willingness to accept the fruits of that in the form of hundreds of such reports every year. I want the Joint committee to be absolutely plain about that. [bot p.75] 9
Click here to watch all of parts of Craig Murray’s testimony.
Here is the introduction to Amnesty International‘s Report from last year:
Over 100 suspects in security-related offences were detained in 2010. The legal status and conditions of imprisonment of thousands of security detainees arrested in previous years, including prisoners of conscience, remained shrouded in secrecy. At least two detainees died in custody, possibly as a result of torture, and new information came to light about methods of torture and other ill-treatment used against security detainees. Cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments, particularly flogging, continued to be imposed and carried out. Women and girls remained subject to discrimination and violence, with some cases receiving wide media attention. Both Christians and Muslims were arrested for expressing their religious beliefs.
But not for Syria – for Saudi Arabia report-2011.
And it continues:
Saudi Arabian forces involved in a conflict in northern Yemen carried out attacks that appeared to be indiscriminate or disproportionate and to have caused civilian deaths and injuries in violation of international humanitarian law. Foreign migrant workers were exploited and abused by their employers. The authorities violated the rights of refugees and asylum-seekers. At least 27 prisoners were executed, markedly fewer than in the two preceding years.
Further down we read that:
At least 140 prisoners were under sentence of death, including some sentenced for offences not involving violence, such as apostasy and sorcery.
Not that Amnesty‘s report on Syria report-2011 is any less deplorable:
The authorities remained intolerant of dissent. Those who criticized the government, including human rights defenders, faced arrest and imprisonment after unfair trials, and bans from travelling abroad. Some were prisoners of conscience. Human rights NGOs and opposition political parties were denied legal authorization. State forces and the police continued to commit torture and other ill-treatment with impunity, and there were at least eight suspicious deaths in custody. The government failed to clarify the fate of 49 prisoners missing since a violent incident in 2008 at Saydnaya Military Prison, and took no steps to account for thousands of victims of enforced disappearances in earlier years. Women were subject to discrimination and gender-based violence; at least 22 people, mostly women, were victims of so-called honour killings. Members of the Kurdish minority continued to be denied equal access to economic, social and cultural rights. At least 17 people were executed, including a woman alleged to be a victim of physical and sexual abuse.
Please correct me, but so far as I’m aware, Avaaz have been entirely silent in their condemnation of the human rights violations of either Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia (two countries that maintain very close ties with the US). Silent too when Saudi forces brutally cracked down on the Arab Spring protests in neighbouring Bahrain. So one could be forgiven for thinking that when Avaaz picks and chooses its fights, those it takes up are, if not always in the geo-strategic interests of the United States, then certainly never against those interests.
Back to your call for action against Syria and the letter continues:
We all had hoped that the Arab League’s monitoring mission could stop the violence, but they have been compromised and discredited. Despite witnessing Assad’s snipers first-hand, the monitors have just extended their observation period without a call for urgent action. This is allowing countries like Russia, China and India to stall the United Nations from taking action, while the regime’s pathetic defense for its despicable acts has been that it is fighting a terrorist insurgency, not a peaceful democracy movement.
Well, I’m not sure that anyone was expecting much from the Arab League, but can you really justify what you are saying here? That the violence now taking place in Syria is against an entirely “peaceful democracy movement” and that Syria is in no way facing a terrorist insurgency. Not that such an insurgency is entirely unjustified; after all one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But that both sides are involved in atrocities, since both sides are evidently armed and the rebels are undeniably backed by militant Islamist groups.
Making statements such as “allowing countries like Russia, China and India to stall the United Nations from taking action”, directly implies that these foreign powers are simply protecting their own selfish interests (which is, of course, true), whereas the US is intent only on defending freedom and human rights. Such a gross oversimplification and plain nonsense.
So far, I note, Avaaz have not called for direct ‘military intervention’ in Syria, unlike in the shameful case of Libya. But given the timing of this latest announcement and on the basis of past form, I’m expecting petitions for what amounts to war (such as the ‘no-fly zone’ over Libya) will follow soon enough.
And so to your latest campaign, which I received by email on Tuesday 10th April. It begins:
Dear Friends,
Today is a big day for Avaaz. If you join in, Avaaz might just move from having a small team of 40 campaigners to having 40,000!!
Then goes on to explain how the reach of Avaaz will be broadened by encouraging everyone to write their own campaign petitions:
So, to unlock all the incredible potential of our community to change the world, we’ve developed our website tools and website to allow any Avaazer to instantly start their *own* online petitions, tell friends, and win campaigns.
The site just went live – will you give it a try? Think of a petition you’d like to start on any issue – something impacting your local community, some bad behaviour by a distant corporation, or a global cause that you think other Avaaz members would care about. If your petition takes off, it may become an Avaaz campaign – either to members in your area, or even to the whole world!
On the face of it, you are offering a way for everyone to be involved. But 40,000 petitions…? Is this really going to change the world? I have an idea that maybe just five or six might serve the purpose better – here are my suggestions for four:
- a call for those responsible within the Bush administration and beyond to be charged with war crimes for deliberately leading us into an illegal war with Iraq
- the criminal prosecution for crimes against humanity of George W Bush and others who have publicly admitted to their approval of the use of torture
- the repeal of NDAA 2012 and the rolling back of the unconstitutional US Patriot and Homeland Security Acts
- a criminal investigation into the rampant financial fraud that created the current global debt crisis
So consider me a member of the team once more. I’m putting those four campaigns out there. Or at least I would have before I’d read your ‘Terms of Use’. For it concerns me that “In order to further the mission of this site or the mission of Avaaz, we may use, copy, distribute or disclose this material to other parties” but you do not then go on to outline who those ‘other parties’ might be. And you say you will “Remove or refuse to post any User Contributions for any or no reason. This is a decision Avaaz will strive to make fairly, but ultimately it is a decision that is solely up to Avaaz to make.”
Since you reserve the right to “remove or refuse to post” without making a clear statement of your rules and without any commitment to providing justification for such censorship, I see little reason in bothering to try. Doubtless others will attempt to build campaigns on your platform for actions regarding the very serious issues I have outlined above, and should they achieve this, then I will try to lend support to those campaigns. Alternatively, should I fail to come across campaigns formed around these and related issues, I will presume, rightly or wrongly (this is “a decision that is solely up to me to make”), that Avaaz prefers not to support such initiatives. Either way, I will not holding my breath.
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1 From an article entitled “The West is silent as Libya falls into the abyss” written by Patrick Cockburn, published by The Independent on November 2, 2014. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-west-is-silent-as-libya-falls-into-the-abyss-9833489.html
2 From an article entitled “Internet activists should be careful what they wish for in Libya” written by John Hillary, published in the Guardian on March 10, 2011. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/10/internet-activists-libya-no-fly-zone
3 From an article entitled “Humanitarian Intervention: Recognizing When, and Why, It Can Succeed” written by Tom Perriello, published in Issue #23 Democracy Journal in Winter 2012. http://www.democracyjournal.org/23/humanitarian-intervention-recognizing-when-and-why-it-can-succeed.php?page=all
4 From an article entitled “Imperialist Pimps of Militarism, Protectors of the Oligarchy, Trusted Facilitators of War”, Part II, Section I, written by Cory Morningstar, published September 24, 2012. Another extract reads:
The 12 January 2012 RSVP event “Reframing U.S. Strategy in a Turbulent World: American Spring?” featured speakers from Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rosa Brooks of the New America Foundation, and none other than Tom Perriello, CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Perriello advanced his “ideology” during this lecture.
5 From an article entitled “Avaaz: activism or ‘slacktivism’?” written by Patrick Kingsley, published in the Guardian on July 20, 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/20/avaaz-activism-slactivism-clicktivism
6 From an article entitled “Vince Cable to stay on as Business Secretary” published by BBC news on December 21, 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12053656
7 From an article entitled “Up to 15,000 killed in Libya war: U.N. Right expert” reported by Reuters on June 9. 2011. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/09/us-libya-un-deaths-idUSTRE7584UY20110609
8 From an article entitled “Residents flee Gaddafi hometown”, written by Rory Mulholland and Jay Deshmukh, published in the Sydney Morning Herald on October 3, 2011. http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/residents-flee-gaddafi-hometown-20111003-1l49x.html
9 From the uncorrected transcript of oral evidence given to the Joint Committee on Human Rights “UN Convention against torture: allegations of complicity in torture” on April 28, 2009. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200809/jtselect/jtrights/152/152.pdf
Please note that when I originally posted the article the link was to a different version of the document, but it turns out that the old link (below) has now expired. For this reason I have altered the page references in accordance with the new document.
Privatized Ebola
By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | October 15, 2014
Sierra Leone has waved the white flag in the face of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). Its meager infrastructure has buckled under the onslaught of a disease which could have been curtailed. The announcement that infected patients will be treated at home because there is no longer the capacity to treat them in hospitals is a surrender which did not have to happen. Not only did Europe and the United States turn a blind eye to sick and dying Africans but they did so with the help of an unlikely perpetrator.
The World Health Organization is “the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system.” Its very name implies that it takes direction from and serves the needs of people all over the world but the truth is quite different. The largest contributor to the WHO budget is not a government. It is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which provides more funding than either the United States or the United Kingdom. WHO actions and priorities are no longer the result of the consensus of the world’s people but top down decision making from wealthy philanthropists.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation may appear to be a savior when it provides $300 million to the WHO budget, but those dollars come with strings attached. WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan admitted as much when she said, “My budget [is] highly earmarked, so it is driven by what I call donor interests.” Instead of being on the front line when a communicable disease crisis appears, it spends its time administering what Gates and his team have determined is best.
The Ebola horror continues as it has for the last ten months in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The cruelty of the world’s lack of concern for Africa and all Africans in the diaspora was evident by the inaction of nations and organizations that are supposed to respond in times of emergencies. While African governments and aid organizations sounded the alarm the WHO did little because its donor driven process militates against it. The world of private dollars played a role in consigning thousands of people to death.
Critics of the Gates Foundation appeared long before this current Ebola outbreak. In 2008 the WHO’s malaria chief, Dr. Arata Kochi, complained about the conflicts of interest created by the foundation. In an internal memo leaked to the New York Times he complained that the world’s top malaria researchers were “locked up in a ‘cartel’ with their own research funding being linked to those of others within the group.” In other words, the standards of independent peer reviewed research were cast aside in order to please the funder.
Private philanthropy is inherently undemocratic. It is a top down driven process in which the wealthy individual tells the recipient what they will and will not do. This is a problematic system for charities of all kinds and is disastrous where the health of world’s people is concerned. Health care should be a human right, not a charity, and the world’s governments should determine how funds to protect that right are spent. One critic put it very pointedly. “…the Gates Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates, do not believe in the public sector, they do not believe in a democratic, publically owned, publically accountable system.”
There is little wonder why the Ebola outbreak caught the WHO so flat footed as they spent months making mealy mouthed statements but never coordinating an effective response. The Gates foundation is the WHO boss, not governments, and if they weren’t demanding action, then the desperate people affected by Ebola weren’t going to get any.
Privatization of public resources is a worldwide scourge. Education, pensions, water, and transportation are being taken out of the hands of the public and given to rich people and corporations. The Ebola crisis is symptomatic of so many others which go unaddressed or improperly addressed because no one wants to bite the hands that do the feeding.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged an additional $50 million to fight the current Ebola epidemic but that too is problematic, as Director General Chan describes. “When there’s an event, we have money. Then after that, the money stops coming in, then all the staff you recruited to do the response, you have to terminate their contracts.” The WHO should not be lurching from crisis to crisis, SARS, MERS, or H1N1 influenza based on the whims of philanthropy. The principles of public health should be carried out by knowledgeable medical professionals who are not dependent upon rich people for their jobs.
The Gates are not alone in using their deep pockets to confound what should be publicly held responsibilities. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was contributing $25 million to fight Ebola. His donation will go to the Centers for Disease Control Foundation. Most Americans are probably unaware that such a foundation even exists. Yet there it is, run by a mostly corporate board which will inevitably interfere with the public good. The WHO and its inability to coordinate the fight against Ebola tells us that public health is just that, public. If the CDC response to Ebola in the United States fails it may be because it falls prey to the false siren song of giving private interests control of the people’s resources and responsibilities.
Margaret Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
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Tony Fauci and the Swine Flu hoax; betrayal of trust
By Jon Rappoport | NoMoreFakeNews | March 5, 2021
In my current series of articles, I’ve taken apart the Ebola and Zika hoaxes.
Now I take you back to the summer of 2009, when the CDC and the World Health Organization were hyping the “deadly H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic.”
They were, of course, also urging people to take the new Swine Flu vaccine. On that subject, here is an excerpt from Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense (3/27/20):
“For example, [Dr. Anthony] Fauci once shilled for the fast-tracked H1N1 influenza (‘swine flu’) vaccine on YouTube, reassuring viewers in 2009 that serious adverse events were ‘very, very, very rare.’ Shortly thereafter, the vaccine went on to wreak havoc in multiple countries, increasing miscarriage risks in pregnant women in the U.S., provoking a spike in adolescent narcolepsy in Scandinavia and causing febrile convulsions in one in every 110 vaccinated children in Australia—prompting the latter to suspend its influenza vaccination program in under-fives.”
However, that is only half the Swine Flu story. The other half—which involves an astounding hoax—was surely something Fauci was aware of at the time.
Fauci was, in fact, recommending a highly dangerous vaccine for protection against AN EPIDEMIC THAT DIDN’T EXIST AT ALL.
His friends and professional colleagues at the CDC were creating the hoax.
Let me run it down for you. … continue
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