Having chaired a “Lancet” commission on the origins of Covid-19, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs has opined that he is “pretty convinced” that the virus originated in a U.S. biotechnology laboratory. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
This is the third program in a short series updating not only our inquiry into the Covid “op” but the overlapping inquiry into the Metabiota/Pentagon biological research/warfare program in Ukraine.
In our “Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now” programs, we noted Gilead Sciences’ development of the Tamiflu anti-viral developed for use in the event of a human adaptation of H5N1 avian flu.
Previously the chairman of Gilead’s board of directors, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had the Pentagon stockpile Tamiflu, while retaining generous amounts of Gilead stock–Rumsfeld profited handsomely thereby.
We have also discussed the gain-of-function research done on H5N1 to make it more infective in numerous programs.
This program explores the Ukraine programs and the allegation that weaponized H5N1 was being developed in that country.
Our research into Metabiota and the Ukraine biological laboratories is discussed in–among other programs–FTR#1239.
Research into the allegation of “digitized” migratory birds to be used as weapons is highlighted in FTR#1243.
In this and succeeding programs, we will analyze a very important article presenting depth on a number of overlapping considerations about biological warfare, the Covid “op” and the Ukraine war.
Recapping, underscoring and detailing an important milieu involved for decades with biological warfare advocacy, gain-of-function advocacy and manipulation of H5N1 avian flu, and researching the rare human outbreaks of the disease:
Two figures at opposite temporal ends of this array are Anthony Fauci and Frank Macfarlane Burnet. Fauci has channeled financing to gain-of-function manipulations performed by Ron Fouchier and Yoshihiro Kawaoka. Kawoka and Fouchier, in turn, are networked with Jan De Jong and Robert G. Webster.
Webster and Kennedy Shortridge are both colleagues/proteges of Macfarlane Burnet.
The decades long network of research projects and curious outbreaks of H5N1 among both birds and humans is detailed below:
Key Points of Analysis and Discussion Include:
1.–” . . . . The emergence of the virus in 1997 in Hong Kong was eerily predicted by Kennedy Shortridge, the scientist who would discover it. H5N1 didn’t infect humans until Shortridge and his colleagues had been studying its human infection potential in their labs for several years. At the time, the natural leap of a flu directly from poultry to humans was so improbable that scientists first suspected that it was the result of contamination from Shortridge’s lab. . . .”
3.–Normally, H5N1 human infections are extremely rare: ” . . . . H5N1 hardly ever infects people. News about highly pathogenic avian influenza usually leads with how deadly it is. Rarely is it mentioned that the disease hardly ever infects people. H5N1 kills more than half of the people who get it, but H5N1 has circled the globe for decades and there have only ever been 860 human infections worldwide. . . .”
4.–More about how rare human infections are and the rise of avian infections in 2022: ” . . . . There has never been an H5N1 pandemic and no human infection with H5N1 bird flu has ever been identified in the U.S. That’s an extraordinary safety record, given how filthy U.S. factory farms and slaughterhouses are and how fast the infection spreads among crowded birds. So far in 2022, 29 states have reported outbreaks of bird flu in 213 flocks resulting in the culling of nearly 31 million birds, including almost 5 percent of egg-laying hens. In 2015, it was even worse with 50 million birds culled, but there wasn’t a single human case. . . .”
5.–” . . . . Anthony Fauci has made significant investments in gain-of-function research to give H5N1 pandemic potential, making it easily transmissible from person to person—and Bill Gates chipped in, too! . . .”
6.–” . . . . In February 2006, Fauci convened a one-day in-house ‘NIAID Influenza Research Summit’ to identify influenza research priorities. In September, he opened up the topic to a 35-member ‘Blue Ribbon Panel on Influenza Research’ that included Fouchier and Kawaoka. The Blue Ribbon panel’s report doesn’t mention gain-of-function experiments, but Fauci gave them grants to do just that. [Ron] Fouchier and [Yoshihiro] Kawaoka’s now infamous gain-of-function research showed that, through lab manipulation, H5N1 could be altered to become highly transmissible among humans via airborne infection. . . .”
7.–” . . . . The first human H5N1 outbreak occurred in Hong Kong in 1997, the year of what the British call the ‘Hong Kong handover,’ when sovereignty over Hong Kong was transferred from the U.K. to China. It was during this ‘politically sensitive’ year that Kennedy Shortridge, an Australian scientist who was the director of the World Health Organization’s reference laboratory at the University of Hong Kong, confirmed human cases of highly pathogenic bird flu. . . .”
8.–” . . . .The 1997 Hong Kong H5N1 virus was unique in every respect. Time magazine reported, ‘On the H gene at a point called the cleavage site, [was] found a telltale mutation, the same kind of mutation found in other highly pathogenic avian viruses. …The virus … had regions that were identical to portions of [an] avian virus that struck Pennsylvania [chickens] in 1983.” The L.A. Times reported, ‘The H5 piece came from a virus in a goose. The N1 piece came from a second virus in a quail. The remaining flu genes came from a third virus, also in quail.’ . . . .”
9.–” . . . . Shortridge had been studying how avian influenza viruses spread to humans since 1975. Prior to discovering H5N1, Shortridge eerily predicted its emergence. As Frank Ching reported in ‘Bird Flu, SARS and Beyond’: As early as 1982, Shortridge had labeled southern China, where humans and domestic animals lived in close proximity, ‘an epicenter for the origin of pandemics.’ Ten years later, he called southern China a ‘virus soup’ and warned that pandemic influenza was a zoonosis, that is, it could be transmitted from animals to humans and, in 1995, he warned that influenza in southern China could not properly be called an ’emerging’ infection because it was constantly lurking. ‘Elusive might be more apt,’ he wrote. . . .”
10.–” . . . . An example of Shortridge’s penchant for such predictions is his 1995 Lancet article “The next pandemic influenza virus?” Curiously, H5N1 emerged two years later, in 1997, in the same city where Shortridge worked, Hong Kong. . . .”
11.–” . . . . At the time, the natural leap of a flu directly from poultry to humans was thought to be so unlikely that scientists first suspected contamination from Shortridge’s lab was the cause of the highly improbable H5N1 diagnosis. How would that contamination happen unless Shortridge hadn’t already been working with H5N1 in the lab? . . .”
12.–” . . . . H5N1 didn’t cause disease in humans until this potential had been studied in a lab for several years. Fauci had been funding Kawaoka and Fouchier’s efforts to get bird flu to leap to humans since 1990 and their work was connected to what Shortridge was doing in Hong Kong. For seven years prior to the first human H5N1 outbreak in 1997, Fauci had been funding Kawaoka’s gain-of-function bird flu research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Kawaoka’s mentor there, Robert G. Webster, was working and publishing with Shortridge. Every year, Webster spent three months working with Shortridge at the University of Hong Kong, according to this profile of Webster which mentions Kawaoka as his protege. . . .”
13.–” . . . . The most eerie connection between Shortridge and Webster’s labs is that the closest known relative of the 1997 Hong Kong H5N1 was the avian virus that struck Pennsylvania chickens in 1983—that Yoshihiro Kawaoka had studied. According to Time magazine: Webster assigned a young scientist, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, to try to figure out how the [1983] virus transformed itself into such a ‘hot’ pathogen. Kawaoka, now a professor of virology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, compared the genetic structure of viruses from the first and second waves and found only a single, extremely subtle change in the H gene. The two viruses differed by just one nucleotide–one of 1,700 nucleotides that made up the gene. . . .”
14.–”. . . . There’s also a connection to Fouchier, through his mentor at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Jan De Jong, also a colleague and collaborator of Shortridge and Webster’s. . . .”
15.–” . . . . Kawaoka’s colleague and mentor Robert G. Webster and Fouchier’s colleague and mentor Jan De Jong were the first scientists outside of Hong Kong to receive samples of the 1997 H5N1 flu from Shortridge’s lab. . . .”
16.–” . . . . De Jong is often credited with being the one who identified the 1997 Hong Kong flu as H5N1, but he did so with ‘a panel of reagents to every type of flu strain yet known’ that had been brought from Webster’s lab in Memphis to the National Influenza Centre in Rotterdam. . . .”
17.–” . . . . Kawaoka and Fouchier are of post-Biological Weapons Convention era where the weaponization of pathogens is euphemistically called ‘gain-of-function’ research, but their older colleagues, De Jong, Shortridge and Webster came of age prior to 1972 and their mentors were of the pre-Biological Weapons Convention era when virologists knowingly and openly engineered viruses for military purposes. . . .”
18.–” . . . . Shortridge and Webster were trained by Frank Macfarlane Burnet who served on the Australian Department of Defence’s New Weapons and Equipment Development Committee in the 1940s and 50s. The Federation of American Scientists lists some of the most chilling things Burnet recommended: Burnet … said Australia should develop biological weapons that would work in tropical Asia without spreading to Australia’s more temperate population centres. . . .”
19.–Burnet’s observations: ” . . . . ‘Specifically to the Australian situation, the most effective counter-offensive to threatened invasion by overpopulated Asiatic countries would be directed towards the destruction by biological or chemical means of tropical food crops and the dissemination of infectious disease capable of spreading in tropical but not under Australian conditions.’ . . .”
20.–The broadcast notes a frightening relationship between Metabiota and the selection of Philip Zelikow to head a commission to determine the origin of Covid-19: ” . . . . In 2008, Google.org committed $30 million to virus hunting and gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens through a project it called Predict and Prevent. At least $5.5 million of that went to Dr. Nathan Wolfe’s non-profit Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, which was soon to become the for-profit Metabiota. Other GVFI funders at the time included the Skoll Foundation, which also gave $5.5 million, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Merck Research Laboratories and the US Department of Defense. . . .”
21.–” . . . . When the GVFI became the for-profit Metabiota, Google Ventures continued to invest. In addition, it created a business partnership with Metabiota, ‘offering its big-data expertise to help the company serve its customers–insurers, government agencies and other organizations–by offering them forecasting and risk-management tools.’ In other words, they sell pandemic insurance. . . .”
22.–”. . . . Now that Metabiota has gotten caught up in the COVID origins scandal, its original investors, Eric Schmidt of Google, Jeffrey Skoll of EBay, Rajiv Shah of The Rockefeller Foundation (formerly USAID director, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) chipped in to fund the COVID Commission Planning Group, a white-wash led by Philip Zelikow who gave us the 9–11 Commission cover-up. . . .”
23.–In past programs, we have noted that David Franz, former head of the U.S.A.M.R.I.I.D at Fort Detrick was a key advisor to EcoHealthAlliance. Franz helped produce the encapsulated, weapons-grade anthrax used in the 2001 anthrax attacks: ” . . . . One of Metabiota’s PREDICT partners is EcoHealth Alliance, whose science and policy advisor, David Franz, produced the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks while working for Southern Research and partnering with scientists at Battelle. . . .”
Pivoting to the subject of apparent Russian discoveries of an advanced American-financed biological warfare program in Ukraine, we access the commentary of M.K. Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat.
Bhadrakumar underscores some terrifying aspects of the apparent B.W. program, including “digitized” migratory birds, tracked by satellite and fitted with capsules of deadly microbes. When the birds are over a targeted country, they can be killed, triggering a pandemic.
” . . . . A mind-boggling ‘discovery’ that Russian forces in Ukraine stumbled upon is the use of numbered birds by the Pentagon-funded labs. . . . On the basis of this data, groups of migratory birds are caught, digitized and capsules of germs are attached to them that carry a chip to be controlled through computers. . . . During the long flight of the birds that have been digitized in the Pentagon bio-labs, their movement is monitored step by step by means of satellites and the exact locations are determined. . . . During the long flight of the birds that have been digitized in the Pentagon bio-labs, their movement is monitored step by step by means of satellites and the exact locations are determined. . . . The idea is that if the Biden Administration (or the CIA) has a requirement to inflict harm on, say, Russia or China (or India for that matter), the chip is destroyed when the bird is in their skies. Plainly put, kill the bird carrying the epidemic. . . . once the ‘digitized’ bird is killed and the capsule of germs it carries is released, the disease spreads in the ‘X’ or ‘Y’ country. It becomes a highly cost-effective method of harming an enemy country without any need of war or coup d’état or color revolution. The Russians have made the shocking claim that they are actually in possession of such migratory birds digitized in the Pentagon’s bio-labs. . . .”
A 2014 blog post details a 1960’s program in India that may have been a precursor to the apparent “digitized/weaponized” migratory birds program in Ukraine.
” . . . . It appeared that a unit of the U.S. Army called Migratory Animal Pathological Survey was interested in the project. The Army’s interest lay in knowing whether bacteria were being transmitted by the migrating birds. The project offered an excellent means of investigation and therefore had acquired an ominous significance. . . .”
Another possible 1960’s precursor of the “migratory birds of mass destruction” in Ukraine was a program to place voracious, disease-carrying Lone Star ticks in the Atlantic Flyway, through which migratory birds travel from Latin America through to the American Northeast.
” . . . . The sites were located on the Atlantic Flyway, the migratory bird superhighway that runs along the eastern South American and North American coasts. . . . . . . . Lone star ticks have several survival advantages over their deer tick cousins. They don’t wait patiently on a stalk of grass for passing prey; they are active hunters that crawl toward any carbon dioxide-emitting animal, including birds. . . . But in the 1970s, these ticks began rapidly expanding their range. 7 The first lone star tick observed on Montauk, Long Island, was in 1971, and as of 2018, established populations have been observed as far north as Maine. 8 . . . . All this begs the question: What is driving this mass migration of the lone star tick and its disease-causing hitchhikers northward? . . . .”
Is this research in any way linked to the Russian allegations of weaponization of H5N1 avian flu detailed in FTR#‘s 1248 and 1249?
This is the second program in a short series updating not only our inquiry into the Covid “op” but the overlapping inquiry into the Metabiota/Pentagon biological research/warfare program in Ukraine.
In our “Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now” programs, we noted Gilead Sciences’ development of the Tamiflu anti-viral developed for use in the event of a human adaptation of H5N1 avian flu.
Previously the chairman of Gilead’s board of directors, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had the Pentagon stockpile Tamiflu, while retaining generous amounts of Gilead stock–Rumsfeld profited handsomely thereby.
We have also discussed the gain-of-function research done on H5N1 to make it more infective in numerous programs.
This program explores the Ukraine programs and the allegation that weaponized H5N1 was being developed in that country.
Our research into Metabiota and the Ukraine biological laboratories is discussed in–among other programs–FTR#1239.
Research into the allegation of “digitized” migratory birds to be used as weapons is highlighted in FTR#1243.
In this and succeeding programs, we will analyze a very important article presenting depth on a number of overlapping considerations about biological warfare, the Covid “op” and the Ukraine war.
Key Points of Analysis and Discussion Include:
1.–” . . . . The emergence of the virus in 1997 in Hong Kong was eerily predicted by Kennedy Shortridge, the scientist who would discover it. H5N1 didn’t infect humans until Shortridge and his colleagues had been studying its human infection potential in their labs for several years. At the time, the natural leap of a flu directly from poultry to humans was so improbable that scientists first suspected that it was the result of contamination from Shortridge’s lab. . . .”
2.–Normally, H5N1 human infections are extremely rare: ” . . . . H5N1 hardly ever infects people. News about highly pathogenic avian influenza usually leads with how deadly it is. Rarely is it mentioned that the disease hardly ever infects people. H5N1 kills more than half of the people who get it, but H5N1 has circled the globe for decades and there have only ever been 860 human infections worldwide. . . .”
3.–More about how rare human infections are and the rise of avian infections in 2022: ” . . . . There has never been an H5N1 pandemic and no human infection with H5N1 bird flu has ever been identified in the U.S. That’s an extraordinary safety record, given how filthy U.S. factory farms and slaughterhouses are and how fast the infection spreads among crowded birds. So far in 2022, 29 states have reported outbreaks of bird flu in 213 flocks resulting in the culling of nearly 31 million birds, including almost 5 percent of egg-laying hens. In 2015, it was even worse with 50 million birds culled, but there wasn’t a single human case. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Anthony Fauci has made significant investments in gain-of-function research to give H5N1 pandemic potential, making it easily transmissible from person to person—and Bill Gates chipped in, too! . . .”
5.–” . . . . In February 2006, Fauci convened a one-day in-house ‘NIAID Influenza Research Summit’ to identify influenza research priorities. In September, he opened up the topic to a 35-member ‘Blue Ribbon Panel on Influenza Research’ that included Fouchier and Kawaoka. The Blue Ribbon panel’s report doesn’t mention gain-of-function experiments, but Fauci gave them grants to do just that. [Ron] Fouchier and [Yoshihiro] Kawaoka’s now infamous gain-of-function research showed that, through lab manipulation, H5N1 could be altered to become highly transmissible among humans via airborne infection. . . .”
6.–” . . . . The first human H5N1 outbreak occurred in Hong Kong in 1997, the year of what the British call the ‘Hong Kong handover,’ when sovereignty over Hong Kong was transferred from the U.K. to China. It was during this ‘politically sensitive’ year that Kennedy Shortridge, an Australian scientist who was the director of the World Health Organization’s reference laboratory at the University of Hong Kong, confirmed human cases of highly pathogenic bird flu. . . .”
7.–” . . . .The 1997 Hong Kong H5N1 virus was unique in every respect. Time magazine reported, ‘On the H gene at a point called the cleavage site, [was] found a telltale mutation, the same kind of mutation found in other highly pathogenic avian viruses. …The virus … had regions that were identical to portions of [an] avian virus that struck Pennsylvania [chickens] in 1983.” The L.A. Times reported, ‘The H5 piece came from a virus in a goose. The N1 piece came from a second virus in a quail. The remaining flu genes came from a third virus, also in quail.’ . . . .”
8.–” . . . . Shortridge had been studying how avian influenza viruses spread to humans since 1975. Prior to discovering H5N1, Shortridge eerily predicted its emergence. As Frank Ching reported in ‘Bird Flu, SARS and Beyond’: As early as 1982, Shortridge had labeled southern China, where humans and domestic animals lived in close proximity, ‘an epicenter for the origin of pandemics.’ Ten years later, he called southern China a ‘virus soup’ and warned that pandemic influenza was a zoonosis, that is, it could be transmitted from animals to humans and, in 1995, he warned that influenza in southern China could not properly be called an ’emerging’ infection because it was constantly lurking. ‘Elusive might be more apt,’ he wrote. . . .”
9.–” . . . . An example of Shortridge’s penchant for such predictions is his 1995 Lancet article “The next pandemic influenza virus?” Curiously, H5N1 emerged two years later, in 1997, in the same city where Shortridge worked, Hong Kong. . . .”
10.–” . . . . At the time, the natural leap of a flu directly from poultry to humans was thought to be so unlikely that scientists first suspected contamination from Shortridge’s lab was the cause of the highly improbable H5N1 diagnosis. How would that contamination happen unless Shortridge hadn’t already been working with H5N1 in the lab? . . .”
11.–” . . . . H5N1 didn’t cause disease in humans until this potential had been studied in a lab for several years. Fauci had been funding Kawaoka and Fouchier’s efforts to get bird flu to leap to humans since 1990 and their work was connected to what Shortridge was doing in Hong Kong. For seven years prior to the first human H5N1 outbreak in 1997, Fauci had been funding Kawaoka’s gain-of-function bird flu research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Kawaoka’s mentor there, Robert G. Webster, was working and publishing with Shortridge. Every year, Webster spent three months working with Shortridge at the University of Hong Kong, according to this profile of Webster which mentions Kawaoka as his protege. . . .”
12.–” . . . . The most eerie connection between Shortridge and Webster’s labs is that the closest known relative of the 1997 Hong Kong H5N1 was the avian virus that struck Pennsylvania chickens in 1983—that Yoshihiro Kawaoka had studied. According to Time magazine: Webster assigned a young scientist, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, to try to figure out how the [1983] virus transformed itself into such a ‘hot’ pathogen. Kawaoka, now a professor of virology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, compared the genetic structure of viruses from the first and second waves and found only a single, extremely subtle change in the H gene. The two viruses differed by just one nucleotide–one of 1,700 nucleotides that made up the gene. . . .”
13.–”. . . . There’s also a connection to Fouchier, through his mentor at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Jan De Jong, also a colleague and collaborator of Shortridge and Webster’s. . . .”
14.–” . . . . Kawaoka’s colleague and mentor Robert G. Webster and Fouchier’s colleague and mentor Jan De Jong were the first scientists outside of Hong Kong to receive samples of the 1997 H5N1 flu from Shortridge’s lab. . . .”
15.–” . . . . De Jong is often credited with being the one who identified the 1997 Hong Kong flu as H5N1, but he did so with ‘a panel of reagents to every type of flu strain yet known’ that had been brought from Webster’s lab in Memphis to the National Influenza Centre in Rotterdam. . . .”
16.–” . . . . Kawaoka and Fouchier are of post-Biological Weapons Convention era where the weaponization of pathogens is euphemistically called ‘gain-of-function’ research, but their older colleagues, De Jong, Shortridge and Webster came of age prior to 1972 and their mentors were of the pre-Biological Weapons Convention era when virologists knowingly and openly engineered viruses for military purposes. . . .”
17.–” . . . . Shortridge and Webster were trained by Frank Macfarlane Burnet who served on the Australian Department of Defence’s New Weapons and Equipment Development Committee in the 1940s and 50s. The Federation of American Scientists lists some of the most chilling things Burnet recommended: Burnet … said Australia should develop biological weapons that would work in tropical Asia without spreading to Australia’s more temperate population centres. . . .”
18.–Burnet’s observations: ” . . . . ‘Specifically to the Australian situation, the most effective counter-offensive to threatened invasion by overpopulated Asiatic countries would be directed towards the destruction by biological or chemical means of tropical food crops and the dissemination of infectious disease capable of spreading in tropical but not under Australian conditions.’ . . .”
18.–The broadcast notes a frightening relationship between Metabiota and the selection of Philip Zelikow to head a commission to determine the origin of Covid-19: ” . . . . In 2008, Google.org committed $30 million to virus hunting and gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens through a project it called Predict and Prevent. At least $5.5 million of that went to Dr. Nathan Wolfe’s non-profit Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, which was soon to become the for-profit Metabiota. Other GVFI funders at the time included the Skoll Foundation, which also gave $5.5 million, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Merck Research Laboratories and the US Department of Defense. . . .”
19.–” . . . . When the GVFI became the for-profit Metabiota, Google Ventures continued to invest. In addition, it created a business partnership with Metabiota, ‘offering its big-data expertise to help the company serve its customers–insurers, government agencies and other organizations–by offering them forecasting and risk-management tools.’ In other words, they sell pandemic insurance. . . .”
20.–”. . . . Now that Metabiota has gotten caught up in the COVID origins scandal, its original investors, Eric Schmidt of Google, Jeffrey Skoll of EBay, Rajiv Shah of The Rockefeller Foundation (formerly USAID director, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) chipped in to fund the COVID Commission Planning Group, a white-wash led by Philip Zelikow who gave us the 9–11 Commission cover-up. . . .”
21.–In past programs, we have noted that David Franz, former head of the U.S.A.M.R.I.I.D at Fort Detrick was a key advisor to EcoHealth Alliance. Franz helped produce the encapsulated, weapons-grade anthrax used in the 2001 anthrax attacks: ” . . . . One of Metabiota’s PREDICT partners is EcoHealth Alliance, whose science and policy advisor, David Franz, produced the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks while working for Southern Research and partnering with scientists at Battelle. . . .”
This is the first program in a short series updating not only our inquiry into the Covid “op” but the overlapping inquiry into the Metabiota/Pentagon biological research/warfare program in Ukraine.
In our “Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now” programs, we noted Gilead Sciences’ development of the Tamiflu anti-viral developed for use in the event of a human adaptation of H5N1 avian flu.
Previously the chairman of Gilead’s board of directors, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had the Pentagon stockpile Tamiflu, while retaining generous amounts of Gilead stock–Rumsfeld profited handsomely thereby.
We have also discussed the gain-of-function research done on H5N1 to make it more infective in numerous programs.
This program explores the Ukraine programs and the allegation that weaponized H5N1 was being developed in that country.
Our research into Metabiota and the Ukraine biological laboratories is discussed in–among other programs–FTR#1239.
Research into the allegation of “digitized” migratory birds to be used as weapons is highlighted in FTR#1243.
In this and succeeding programs, we will analyze a very important article presenting depth on a number of overlapping considerations about biological warfare, the Covid “op” and the Ukraine war.
Key Points of Analysis and Discussion Include:
1.–” . . . . The emergence of the virus in 1997 in Hong Kong was eerily predicted by Kennedy Shortridge, the scientist who would discover it. H5N1 didn’t infect humans until Shortridge and his colleagues had been studying its human infection potential in their labs for several years. At the time, the natural leap of a flu directly from poultry to humans was so improbable that scientists first suspected that it was the result of contamination from Shortridge’s lab. . . .”
2.–Normally, H5N1 human infections are extremely rare: ” . . . . H5N1 hardly ever infects people. News about highly pathogenic avian influenza usually leads with how deadly it is. Rarely is it mentioned that the disease hardly ever infects people. H5N1 kills more than half of the people who get it, but H5N1 has circled the globe for decades and there have only ever been 860 human infections worldwide. . . .”
3.–More about how rare human infections are and the rise of avian infections in 2022: ” . . . . There has never been an H5N1 pandemic and no human infection with H5N1 bird flu has ever been identified in the U.S. That’s an extraordinary safety record, given how filthy U.S. factory farms and slaughterhouses are and how fast the infection spreads among crowded birds. So far in 2022, 29 states have reported outbreaks of bird flu in 213 flocks resulting in the culling of nearly 31 million birds, including almost 5 percent of egg-laying hens. In 2015, it was even worse with 50 million birds culled, but there wasn’t a single human case. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Anthony Fauci has made significant investments in gain-of-function research to give H5N1 pandemic potential, making it easily transmissible from person to person—and Bill Gates chipped in, too! . . .”
5.–” . . . . In February 2006, Fauci convened a one-day in-house ‘NIAID Influenza Research Summit’ to identify influenza research priorities. In September, he opened up the topic to a 35-member ‘Blue Ribbon Panel on Influenza Research’ that included Fouchier and Kawaoka. The Blue Ribbon panel’s report doesn’t mention gain-of-function experiments, but Fauci gave them grants to do just that. [Ron] Fouchier and [Yoshihiro] Kawaoka’s now infamous gain-of-function research showed that, through lab manipulation, H5N1 could be altered to become highly transmissible among humans via airborne infection. . . .”
6.–” . . . . H5N1 didn’t cause disease in humans until this potential had been studied in a lab for several years. Fauci had been funding Kawaoka and Fouchier’s efforts to get bird flu to leap to humans since 1990 and their work was connected to what Shortridge was doing in Hong Kong. For seven years prior to the first human H5N1 outbreak in 1997, Fauci had been funding Kawaoka’s gain-of-function bird flu research at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Kawaoka’s mentor there, Robert G. Webster, was working and publishing with Shortridge. Every year, Webster spent three months working with Shortridge at the University of Hong Kong, according to this profile of Webster which mentions Kawaoka as his protege. . . .”
7.–” . . . . The most eerie connection between Shortridge and Webster’s labs is that the closest known relative of the 1997 Hong Kong H5N1 was the avian virus that struck Pennsylvania chickens in 1983—that Yoshihiro Kawaoka had studied. According to Time magazine: Webster assigned a young scientist, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, to try to figure out how the [1983] virus transformed itself into such a ‘hot’ pathogen. Kawaoka, now a professor of virology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, compared the genetic structure of viruses from the first and second waves and found only a single, extremely subtle change in the H gene. The two viruses differed by just one nucleotide–one of 1,700 nucleotides that made up the gene. . . .”
8.–”. . . . There’s also a connection to Fouchier, through his mentor at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Jan De Jong, also a colleague and collaborator of Shortridge and Webster’s. . . .”
9.–” . . . . Kawaoka’s colleague and mentor Robert G. Webster and Fouchier’s colleague and mentor Jan De Jong were the first scientists outside of Hong Kong to receive samples of the 1997 H5N1 flu from Shortridge’s lab. . . .”
10.–” . . . . De Jong is often credited with being the one who identified the 1997 Hong Kong flu as H5N1, but he did so with ‘a panel of reagents to every type of flu strain yet known’ that had been brought from Webster’s lab in Memphis to the National Influenza Centre in Rotterdam. . . .”
11.–” . . . . Kawaoka and Fouchier are of post-Biological Weapons Convention era where the weaponization of pathogens is euphemistically called ‘gain-of-function’ research, but their older colleagues, De Jong, Shortridge and Webster came of age prior to 1972 and their mentors were of the pre-Biological Weapons Convention era when virologists knowingly and openly engineered viruses for military purposes. . . .”
12.–” . . . . Shortridge and Webster were trained by Frank Macfarlane Burnet who served on the Australian Department of Defence’s New Weapons and Equipment Development Committee in the 1940s and 50s. The Federation of American Scientists lists some of the most chilling things Burnet recommended: Burnet … said Australia should develop biological weapons that would work in tropical Asia without spreading to Australia’s more temperate population centres. . . .”
13.–Burnet’s observations: ” . . . . ‘Specifically to the Australian situation, the most effective counter-offensive to threatened invasion by overpopulated Asiatic countries would be directed towards the destruction by biological or chemical means of tropical food crops and the dissemination of infectious disease capable of spreading in tropical but not under Australian conditions.’ . . .”
14.–The broadcast notes a frightening relationship between Metabiota and the selection of Philip Zelikow to head a commission to determine the origin of Covid-19: ” . . . . In 2008, Google.org committed $30 million to virus hunting and gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens through a project it called Predict and Prevent. At least $5.5 million of that went to Dr. Nathan Wolfe’s non-profit Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, which was soon to become the for-profit Metabiota. Other GVFI funders at the time included the Skoll Foundation, which also gave $5.5 million, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Merck Research Laboratories and the US Department of Defense. . . .”
15.–” . . . . When the GVFI became the for-profit Metabiota, Google Ventures continued to invest. In addition, it created a business partnership with Metabiota, ‘offering its big-data expertise to help the company serve its customers–insurers, government agencies and other organizations–by offering them forecasting and risk-management tools.’ In other words, they sell pandemic insurance. . . .”
16.–”. . . . Now that Metabiota has gotten caught up in the COVID origins scandal, its original investors, Eric Schmidt of Google, Jeffrey Skoll of EBay, Rajiv Shah of The Rockefeller Foundation (formerly USAID director, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) chipped in to fund the COVID Commission Planning Group, a white-wash led by Philip Zelikow who gave us the 9–11 Commission cover-up. . . .”
17.–In past programs, we have noted that David Franz, former head of the U.S.A.M.R.I.I.D at Fort Detrick was a key advisor to EcoHealthAlliance. Franz helped produce the encapsulated, weapons-grade anthrax used in the 2001 anthrax attacks: ” . . . . One of Metabiota’s PREDICT partners is EcoHealth Alliance, whose science and policy advisor, David Franz, produced the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks while working for Southern Research and partnering with scientists at Battelle. . . .”
In FTR#1243, we present information about the apparent biowarfare programs the U.S. funded in Ukraine. These bear more intense scrutiny. In a 4/06 U.N. Security Council meeting, Russia alleged that migratory birds had been digitized, fitted with capsules of deadly pathogens and were tracked via satellite. The Russians claim to actually have some of these digitized birds. This allegation aligns with known U.S. biowarfare investigation of and experiments with, migratory birds. A program in India in the 1960s was supervised by the U.S. Army and another program in the same time period involved placing the virulent-biting Lone Star Tick in the Atlantic Flyway used by birds migrating between North and South America. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
The latest Patreon talk highlights the 4/6/2022 UN Security Council discussion, boycotted by the U.S. and U.K. and blacked out in Western media, at which Russia detailed its apparent discoveries of U.S. biological warfare programs in Ukraine. Some of the most startling information concerned “digitized,” satellite-monitored migratory birds fitted with capsules of deadly pathogens. When the birds are over a targeted country, they can be killed and the pathogens spread, precipitating an epidemic. A 1960s program run by the U.S. Army and involving migratory birds at an Indian bird sanctuary may have been a precursor to this program. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
A subsidiary of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency oversees 14 Pentagon-financed “Veterinary” Labs in Ukraine. DTRA deeply involved with Pentagon-financed EcoHealth Alliance’s gain-of-function research on bat-borne coronaviruses at what Mr. Emory calls “The Oswald Institute of Virology.” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
The ravages of the Agent Orange defoliant used in Southeast Asia are well known. What has not received as much publicity is the documented fact that the poison was developed by Friedrich “Fritz” Hoffman, one of the Third Reich alumni brought to the U.S. under Project [or “Operation”] Paperclip. “. . . . Under the umbrella of the CIA’s Security Research Services, [CIA organization] Morwede was among the front organizations protecting Nazi chemists transported to the US, including Dr. Friedrich “Fritz” Hoffman, a major beneficiary of the largesse of the Paperclip pipeline. In the late ‘50s, Hoffmann’s work for the CIA and Fort Detrick included development of lethal chemical agents to be used as weapons in Vietnam, proof that the dishonorable was just over the horizon when John Kennedy took office. One of these weapons, the horrific and now-infamous Agent Orange, was authorized for use in Vietnam in November 1961 . . . .” WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE. Mr. Emory emphatically recommends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash drive containing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fascist books on easy-to-download PDF files.
This program supplements our long series on “The Oswald Institute of Virology.”
A pair of stories in The Wall Street Journal yield understanding of our media landscape and the degree of propagandizing of same.
Reportage about the WHO’s resumption of its inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic hasn’t received much coverage in the U.S.
What coverage there has been has–predictably–focused on the “lack of transparency/cooperation” by China in the probe.
(We reiterate that–at this point in time and sometime before–the Chinese response would have be governed by the disciplines warranted by a wartime investigation of an enemy attack. In this case, a U.S. biological warfare attack. Something of a “bio-Northwoods” operation.)
A remarkable aspect of the Journal’s coverage concerns a development that has been almost completely excised from the Western press: ” . . . . For months, China’s government has insisted both in public, and in private meetings with Dr. Tedros, that studies on the origins of the virus should now focus on other countries, such as Italy, or on a U.S. military bioresearch facility in Fort Detrick, Md. Dozens of governments aligned with China have sent Dr. Tedros letters in support of Beijing’s position, a person familiar with the letters said. . . .”
“Dozens of governments?” Which ones? This sounds like a major international dialogue/scandal.
WHY aren’t we hearing about it?
I think it affords us some perspective on just how carefully manicured the public perspective is in this country.
In another article in the same issue of the Journal, it was noted that Jeffrey Sachs is disbanding the scientific panel he oversaw on behalf of the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, due to the presence of EcoHealth Alliance chief Peter Daszak and several other members of the panel associated with the organization.
” . . . . Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs said he has disbanded a task force of scientists probing the origins of Covid-19 in favor of wider bio-safety research. Dr. Sachs, chairman of a Covid-19 commission affiliated with The Lancet scientific journals, said he closed the task force because he was concerned about its links to EcoHealth Alliance. . . . EcoHealth Alliance’s president, Peter Daszak, led the task force until recusing himself from that role in June. Some other members of the task force have collaborated with Dr. Daszak or EcoHealth Alliance on projects. . . . .”
EcoHealth Alliance has been heavily involved in coronavirus research–including gain-of-function work–at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We have noted that the DARPA has been heavily involved with that category of research.
As noted in past programs and discussion, the EcoHealth Alliance is funded primarily by the Department of Defense and USAID, a State Department subsidiary that has often served as a cover for CIA operations. One of the principal advisers of the organization is David Franz, the former commanding officer of Fort Detrick.
Worth noting is that Jeffrey Sachs–an American economics professor–was tabbed to select those personnel to serve on a panel of experts assembled under the auspices of The Lancet–a British medical journal.
In addition to his role advising both Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sachs headed the U.S. government-funded Harvard University consortium that advised Boris Yeltsin and, in the process, drove Russia back to the stone age.
In Russia, it is widely believed that Sachs work for the CIA–a theory that is bolstered by his pivotal role in managing the narrative concerning the origins of the pandemic.
We have done many programs underscoring our working hypothesis that Covid-19 is a biological warfare weapon, developed by the U.S. and deployed as part of the destabilization program against China we have covered since the fall of 2019.
(Some of those programs are: FTR#‘s 1157, 1158, 1159, 1170 and FTR#‘s 1183 through 1193, inclusive.)
Next, we highlight a heavily “spun” story about the EcoHealth Alliance and its involvement with Pentagon-linked research into bat-borne coronaviruses may well–when freed from the predictably ideologized journalistic shading to which it has been subjected–yield a “smoking genome” with regard to the SARS CoV‑2 virus causing the Covid-19 pandemic.
(The Intercept is the spawn of Pierre Omidyar, deeply involved in the ascent of the Nazi OUN/B milieu in Ukraine and that of the Hindutva fascist regime of Narendra Modi in India. He has partnered with U.S. intelligence cutouts such as the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID. Omidyar’s protege Glenn Greenwald is to be viewed with a jaundiced eye as well.)
Key points of information in the article:
1.–” . . . . Last month, a grant application submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) revealed that an international team of scientists had planned to mix genetic data of similar strains to create a new virus. The grant application was made in 2018 . . . .”
2.–” . . . . The grant application proposal was submitted by British zoologist Peter Daszak on behalf of a group, which included Daszak EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the University of North Carolina and Duke NUS in Singapore, The Telegraph reported. . . .”
3.–” . . . . ‘We will compile sequence/RNAseq data from a panel of closely related strains and compare full length genomes, scanning for unique SNPs representing sequencing errors. ‘Consensus candidate genomes will be synthesised commercially using established techniques and genome-length RNA and electroporation to recover recombinant viruses,’ the application states. . . .”
4.–” . . . . The WHO expert told The Telegraph that the process detailed in the application would create ‘a new virus sequence, not a 100 per cent match to anything.’ ‘They would then synthesise the viral genome from the computer sequence, thus creating a virus genome that did not exist in nature but looks natural as it is the average of natural viruses. ‘Then they put that RNA in a cell and recover the virus from it. ‘This creates a virus that has never existed in nature, with a new ‘backbone’ that didn’t exist in nature but is very, very similar as it’s the average of natural backbones,’ the expert said. . . .”
5.–” . . . . Experts told the paper that creating an ‘ideal’ average virus could have been part of work to create a vaccine that works across coronaviruses. Last month, it emerged that the US had funded similar research to that outlined in the 2018 grant proposal. . . .”
Key considerations in the context of which this story should be viewed:
1.–DARPA has been extensively involved in researching bat-borne coronaviruses in, and around China.
2.–Note that the proposal to DARPA involved extensive discussion of the genome of the virus to be synthesized. Utilizing contemporary technology, this would permit the synthesis of the virus without necessarily approving the proposal!
3.–Note that the latest innovations in biotechnology permit: ” . . . . Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch; make harmful bacteria more deadly; and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body. . . .”
4.–Those innovations also permit: ” . . . . In the report, the scientists describe how synthetic biology, which gives researchers precision tools to manipulate living organisms, ‘enhances and expands’ opportunities to create bioweapons. . . .”
5.–Those innovations also permit: ” . . . . Today, the genetic code of almost any mammalian virus can be found online and synthesized. ‘The technology to do this is available now,’ said [Michael] Imperiale. ‘It requires some expertise, but it’s something that’s relatively easy to do, and that is why it tops the list.’ . . .”
6.–The chief funding sources for the EcoHealth Alliance are the Pentagon and USAID, a State Department subsidiary that commonly serves as a cover for CIA.
7.–One of Peter Daszak’s chief advisers is David Franz, the former commanding officer of Fort Detrick.
8.–In FTR#1191, we noted that producing a vaccine for an existing biological weapon or one under advanced development might well be seen as an “offensive” biological warfare maneuver.
9.–This article, like many others, features commentary from Richard Ebright to the effect that the WIV did, in fact, synthesize the virus. Ebright had a long association with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the former owner of the Hughes Aircraft Company, a firm with profound national security connections. It is more than a little interesting that Ebright, like almost all of the other commenters quoted in the U.S., does not factor in the innovations in biotechnology highlighted above.
10.–Of interest, as well, is this passage: ” . . . . Experts told the paper that creating an ‘ideal’ average virus could have been part of work to create a vaccine that works across coronaviruses. Last month, it emerged that the US had funded similar research to that outlined in the 2018 grant proposal. . . .”
11.–The Pentagon has, indeed, been working on such a vaccine: ” . . . . The service is closing in on a ‘pan-coronavirus’ vaccine and on synthetic antibodies that could protect a population before spread. . . .”
Pompeo State Department officials pursuing the lab-leak hypothesis were told to cover it up lest it shed light on U.S. government funding of research at the “Oswald Institute of Virology!”: ” . . . . In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it. . . . In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that. . . staff from two bureaus . . . ‘warned’ leaders within his bureau ‘not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19’ because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.’ . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak scenario, among other possibilities, its members were repeatedly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four former State Department officials interviewed by Vanity Fair. . . .”
New York Times right-wing columnist Ross Douthat has highlighted the propaganda significance of pinning the “Lab Leak Theory” on China.
In an ironic tragedy worthy of Aeschylus, Douthat has been struggling with Lyme Disease, and has suffered greatly in his attempts to navigate the Lyme Disease treatment labyrinth. We have done many programs on Lyme Disease and its development as a biological warfare weapon.
Interviewed by an indie filmmaker named Tim Grey, Willy Burgdorfer discussed the development of Lyme Disease as a biological warfare weapon. It was Burgdorfer who “discovered” the spirochete that caused Lyme Disease in 1982. As we will see later, it appears that more than one organism is involved with Lyme Disease.
1.–” . . . . Willy paused, then replied, ‘Question: Has [sic] Borrelia Burgdorferi have the potential for biological warfare?’ As tears welled up in Willy’s eyes, he continued, ‘Looking at the data, it already has. If the organism stays within the system, you won’t even recognize what it is. In your lifespan, it can explode . . . We evaluated. You never deal with that [as a scientist]. You can sleep better.’ . . .”
2.–” . . . . Later in the video, Grey circled back to this topic and asked, ‘If there’s an emergence of a brand-new epidemic that has the tenets of all of those things that you put together, do you feel responsible for that?’ ‘Yeah. . . .’ ”
3.–” . . . . Grey asked him the one question, the only question, he really cared about: ‘Was the pathogen that you found in the tick that Allen Steere [the Lyme outbreak investigator] gave you the same pathogen or similar, or a generational mutation, of the one you published in the paper . . . the paper from 1952?’ ”
4.–” . . . . The left side of his mouth briefly curled up, as if he is thinking, ‘Oh, well.’ Then anger flashes across his face. ‘Yah,’ he said, more in German than English. . . .”
5.–” . . . . It was a stunning admission from one of the world’s foremost authorities on Lyme disease. If it was true, it meant that Willy had left out essential data from his scientific articles on the Lyme disease outbreak, and that as the disease spread like a wildfire in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions of the United States, he was part of the cover-up of the truth. . . It had been created in a military bioweapons lab for the specific purpose of harming human beings. . . . ”
Next, we present discussion of Ms. Newby’s expose of the institutionally and financially incestuous relationship between bureaucratic and corporate entities that both regulate, and profit from, Lyme Disease. Key “experts” involved with diagnosing and treating the affliction run interference for the status quo.
Legal and regulatory rulings have enabled the patenting of living organisms and that has exacerbated the monetizing of Lyme Disease treatment. That monetization, in turn, has adversely affected the quality of care for afflicted patients. ” . . . . All of a sudden, the institutions that were supposed to be protectors of public health became business partners with Big Pharma. The university researchers who had previously shared information on dangerous emerging diseases were now delaying publishing their findings so they could become entrepreneurs and profit from patents through their university technology transfer groups. We essentially lost our system of scientific checks and balances. And this, in turn, has undermined patient trust in the institutions that are supposed to ‘do no harm.’ . . .”
Strikingly, a FOIA suit she filed was stonewalled for five years, before finally yielding the documents she had so long sought.
The “experts” and their agenda were neatly, and alarmingly, summed up by Ms. Newby:
” . . . . The emails revealed a disturbing picture of a nonofficial group of government employees and guidelines authors that had been setting the national Lyme disease research agenda without public oversight or transparency. . . . Bottom line, the guidelines authors regularly convened in government-funded, closed-door meetings with hidden agendas that lined the pockets of academic researchers with significant commercial interests in Lyme disease tests and vaccines. A large percentage of government grants were awarded to the guideline authors and/or researchers in their labs. Part of the group’s stated mission, culled from these FOIA emails, was to run a covert ‘disinformation war’ and a ‘sociopolitical offensive’ to discredit Lyme patients, physicians, and journalists who questioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and their treating physicians were called ‘loonies’ and ‘quacks’ by Lyme guidelines authors and NIH employees. . . .”
We conclude with review of a chilling set of provocations that were planned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the early 1960s. Although they were not formally instituted at that time, Mr. Emory believes the scenarios discussed below have been adapted to the modern, high-technology available to biological warfare practitioners and instituted as the Covid-19 “op.”
Introducing the expansion of American experience with Chiang and his Kuomintang fascists into U.S. Cold War policy in Asia, we present Sterling Seagrave’s rumination about Stanley Hornbeck, a State Department flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far Eastern Division. . . .”
Hornbeck “ . . . . had only the most abbreviated and stilted knowledge of China, and had been out of touch personally for many years. . . . He withheld cables from the Secretary of State that were critical of Chiang, and once stated that ‘the United States Far Eastern policy is like a train running on a railroad track. It has been clearly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
Next, we visit one of the stops on Hornbeck’s straight railway line:
A consummately important study of Vietnam War crimes was authored by Nick Turse. A review by the U.S. Naval Institute can be taken as an advisory in this regard.
Mr. Turse performs the remarkable feat of unsparingly searing presentation of the war crimes that were standard operating procedure for much of the American (and allied) forces in Vietnam by tracing the foundation of those crimes from the technocratic approach to military strategy pursued by the Pentagon and Robert McNamara, through the re-socialization and re-programming of young, often teen-aged, recruits to turn them into reflexive killers, chronicling the massive firepower available to U.S. forces, and documenting the recalcitrant attitude of the officer corps and General Staff, who were unwilling to countenance the professional and ideological damage that would result from presentation and adjudication of the truth.
In addition, Mr. Turse–while avoiding self-righteous posturing–highlights the doctrinaire racism of many U.S. combatants, who committed war crimes behind the “MGR”–the “Mere Gook Rule.”
“ ‘An important addition to Vietnam war studies . . . . Turse’s study is not anti-veteran, anti-military, or anti-American. It does not allege that the majority of U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam committed crimes. . . .” Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute).
Nick Turse traces the strategic use of overwhelming firepower and de facto countenancing of civilian casualties owes much to the tactical approach of Japanese forces during World War II in China: “ . . . . These efforts were commonly known as ‘pacification,’ but their true aim was to depopulate the contested countryside. ‘The people are like water and the army is like fish.’ Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist revolution, had famously written. American planners grasped his dictum, and also studied the ‘kill-all, burn-all, loot-all’ scorched earth campaigns that the Japanese army launched in rural China during the 1930s and early 1940s for lessons on how to drain the ‘sea.’ Not surprisingly the idea of forcing peasants out of their villages was embraced by civilian pacification officials and military officers alike. . . .”
The accounts of many G.I.’s about war crimes appear to be largely representative of the conduct of U.S. forces: “ . . . . While we have only fragmentary evidence about the full extent of civilian suffering in South Vietnam, enough similar accounts exist so that roughly the same story could have been told in a chapter about Binh Dinh Province in the mid-1960’s, or Quang Tri Province in the early 1970s, among others. The incidents in this chapter were unbearably commonplace throughout the conflict and are unusual only in that they were reported in some form or recounted by witnesses instead of vanishing entirely from the historical record.”
Turse notes that racism–embodied in the “MGR” (Mere Gook Rule)—contributed fundamentally to the slaughter perpetrated by the U.S. in Vietnam. “ . . . . In 1971, Major Gordon Livingston, a West Point graduate who served as regimental surgeon with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, testified before members of Congress about the ease with which Americans killed Vietnamese. ‘Above 90 percent of the Americans with whom I had contact in Vietnam,’ said Dr. Livingston, treated the Vietnamese as subhuman snd with ‘nearly universal contempt.’ . . . .”
Turse’s very important and profoundly disturbing book encapsulates the American policy in Vietnam. Speaking of the Phoenix assassination program: “ . . . . Phoenix was a program run amok, but it was also the logical result of a military campaign driven by the body count and run under the precept of the mere-gook rule. For the Vietnamese the American war was an endless gauntlet of potential calamities . . . . the range of disasters was nearly endless.
While no exact figures are available, there can be little question that such events occurred in shocking numbers. They were the very essence of the war: crimes that went on all the time, all over South Vietnam, for years and years. When you consider this along with the tallies of dead, wounded, and displaced, the scale of the suffering becomes almost unimaginable—almost as unimaginable as the fact that somehow, in the United States all that suffering was more or less ignored as it happened and then written out of history even more thoroughly in the decades since. . . .”
Stanley Hornbeck referred to U.S. Far Eastern policy as a railroad track, proceeding on a straight line. Sterling Seagrave noted that ” . . . . It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whistle stops along the way at Peking, Quemoy, Matsu, and the Yalu River. . . .”
The reference to the Yalu River is in consideration of a key incident in the Korean War. General Douglas MacArthur was warned by military intelligence professionals not to approach the Yalu River during his advance through North Korea, lest the Chinese enter the conflict.
MacArthur ignored the warning of the military intelligence professionals with the ultimate result that they forecast: Chinese forces entered the conflict and routed the forces under MacArthur’s command.
During the precipitous retreat of the American and U.N. forces, it appears that the U.S. used biological warfare against the Chinese and North Korea.
In numerous programs and lectures, we have discussed the important, devastatingly successively mind control programs engaged in by the military and CIA. Those programs were developed in reaction to downed American airmen who–after captivity–gave testimony that they had been involved in biological warfare attacks against China and North Korea during the war.
A superb book about Unit 731–the Japanese biological warfare unit during World War II–had a chapter in the British edition that was omitted in the American edition. (Sadly, the books are out of print, although both the British and American editions are available through used-book services. Mr. Emory heartily encourages listeners to obtain the book. Even the American edition–missing this key chapter–is worthwhile. Hopefully, a publisher will obtain the rights to the book and re-issue it. If so, we will enthusiastically promote the work.)
The chapter in the UK edition chronicles the investigation into the allegations of American BW use during the Korean War, including circumstantial evidence that Unit 731 veterans and methodology may well have been used in the alleged campaign. That chapter is altogether objective, avoiding ideological bias toward either side in the conflict.
Because of that, we found the omission of this chapter from the U.S. edition to be significant. As the brilliant Peter Dale Scott noted: “The cover-up obviates the conspiracy.” It is a matter of public record that Unit 731’s files were incorporated into the U.S. biological warfare program, and veterans of the Unit bequeathed their expertise to the Americans in exchange from immunity from prosecution for war crimes.
It is a matter of public record that Unit 731’s files were incorporated into the U.S. biological warfare program, and veterans of the Unit bequeathed their expertise to the Americans in exchange from immunity from prosecution for war crimes.
FTR#1172 presents the scientific credentials of the International Scientific Commission investigating the allegations of biological warfare, which are impressive and their conclusions are credible.
The introduction of FTR#1173 consists of reading and analysis of Tom O’Neill’s presentation of the career of one of the CIA’s most important MK-Ultra mind control operatives, which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Korean War–1954.
Note that Jimmie Shaver was serving in the Air Force. Personnel from that branch were involved in the allegations of BW waged by the U.S. Those allegations were the rationale for the U.S. mind control programs, developed to combat Chinese “brainwashing” which was alleged to have precipitated the basis for the testimony by USAF.
Louis Jolyon West was Jack Ruby’s psychiatrist, and presented the untenable hypothesis that Ruby killed Oswald because he had a brief psychomotor epileptic event in the basement of the Dallas jail. In fact, the evidence suggests strongly that West had helped to erase Ruby’s memory of having killed Oswald.
West’s work with Ruby helped to keep the train of U.S. Far Eastern policy running on track.
The broadcast sets forth the murder of Chere Jo Horton, a three-year-old girl whose mutilation, rape and murder were pinned on 29-year-old Jimmie Shaver.
An obvious victim of mind control, apparently implemented in considerable measure by Louis Jolyon West, Shaver was programmed to take responsibility for the killing, despite enormous contradictions in the evidence.
O’Neill’s discussion of West, Shaver, the mind control programs and the Manson Family “op” is part of what appears to be a domestic Phoenix Program, designed to win “hearts and minds” in the U.S. during the Vietnam War.
Key Points of Discussion and analysis include:
1.–Shaver’s unusual behavior and demeanor at the initial scene of the crime: ” . . . . He was shirtless, covered in blood and scratches. Making no attempt to escape, he let the search party walk him to the edge of the highway. Bystanders described him as ‘dazed’ and ‘trance-like’ . . . .”
2.–Shaver’s apparent lack of awareness of the immediate circumstances of the crime: ” ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked. He didn’t seem drunk, but he couldn’t say where he was, how he’d gotten there, or whose blood was all over him. Meanwhile, the search party found Horton’s body in the gravel pit. Her neck was broken, her legs had been torn open, and she’s been raped. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Around four that morning, an Air Force marshal questioned Shaver and two doctors examined him, agreeing he wasn’t drunk. One later testified that he ‘was not normal . . . . he was very composed outside, which I did not expect him to be under these circumstances.’ . . .”
4.–Shaver didn’t recognize his own wife when she came to visit him. ” . . . . When his wife came to visit, he didn’t recognize her. . . .”
5.–Initially, he believed someone else committed the crime. ” . . . . He gave his first statement at 10:30 a.m., adamant that another man was responsible: he could summon an image of a stranger with blond hair and tattoos. . . .”
6.–Eventually, he signed a statement taking responsibility: ” . . . . After the Air Force marshal returned to the jailhouse, however, Shaver signed a second statement taking full responsibility. Though he still didn’t remember anything, he reasoned that he must have done it. . . .”
7.–Enter Jolly West: ” . . . . Two months later, in September, Shaver’s memories still hadn’t returned. The base hospital commander told Jolly West to perform an evaluation: was he legally sane at the time of the murder? Shaver spent the next two weeks under West’s supervision . . . While Shaver was under–with West injecting more truth serum to ‘deepen the trance’–Shaver recalled the events of that night. He confessed to killing Horton. . . .”
8.–West was a defense witness who, instead, appears to have aided the prosecution: ” . . . . At the trial, West argued that Shaver’s truth-serum confession was more valid than any other. And West was testifying for the defense . . . .”
9.–Shaver’s behavior at the trial is further suggestive of mind control: ” . . . . One newspaper account said he ‘sat through the strenuous sessions like a man in a trance,’ saying nothing, never rising to stretch or smoke, though he was a known chain-smoker. ‘Some believe it’s an act,’ the paper said, ‘others believe his demeanor is real. . . .”
10.–Shaver’s medical records at Lackland Air Force base had vanished. ” . . . . But, curiously, all the records for patients in 1954 had been maintained, with one exception: the file for last names beginning with ‘Sa’ through ‘St’ had vanished. . . .”
11.–West posed leading questions to Shaver, who denied having ever taken the victim’s clothes off. ” . . . . West had used leading questions to walk the entranced Shaver through the crime. ‘Tell me about when you took your clothes off, Jimmy,’ he said. And trying to prove that Shaver had repressed memories: ‘Jimmy, do you remember when something like this happened before?’ Or: ‘After you took her clothes off, what did you do?’ ‘I never did take her clothes off,’ Shaver said. . . .”
12.–The interview was divided into thirds, the middle third of which was not recorded! ” . . . . The interview [with Shaver] was divided into thirds. The middle third, for some reason, wasn’t recorded. When the record picked up, the manuscript said, ‘Shaver is crying. He has been confronted with all the facts repeatedly.’ . . .”
Next, we review Luce’s beatification of Chiang Kai-shek in Life magazine, portraying the Generalissimo as a Christian martyr: “ . . . . Chiang Kai-shek has heretofore shown himself a man of remarkable courage and resolution. . . . He is a converted Methodist who has now for solace the examples of tribulation in the Christian bible. . . .”
Adding further depth to the Luce/Time Inc. meme of Chiang Kai-shek as an iconic Christian is his “brothel-hopping” behavior with his fellow Christian convert, Tu Yueh-sheng.
“ . . . . At the opposite end of the Shanghai social scale, Big-eared Tu enjoyed visiting the famous Blue Villa and cruising the other Green Gang brothels in the Blue Chamber District with a young, ill-tempered bravo by the name of Chiang Kai-shek. . . .”
he prostitutes in the brothels were subjects of the brutal practice of footbinding;
“ . . . . Since this netherworld consumed so much of Chiang’s and Tu’s attention, it requires a closer look. The Chinese brothels, almost without exception, were staffed by girls with bound feet—the ideal being less than three inches long. These were objects of extraordinary sexual excitement, and enjoyed a central role in any noisy evening. . . .”
More about the practice of footbinding, long-since forbidden in China.
“ . . . . Footbinding usually began at age four. A ten-foot long two-inch bandage was wrapped around the toes to force them in against the sole. Each day the bandage was tightened until the foot was folded under with only the big toe sticking out, a shape called the ‘Golden Lotus’ because it resembled a lotus pod with the petals removed. Flesh rotted and fell off, sometimes a toe or two, and the foot oozed pus, until the process of deformation was complete after two years, at which point the feet were practically dead. . . .”
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