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FTR #1167: This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: The program begins with analytic review of the military’s role in U.S. vaccine development.
In previous posts and programs, we have noted that Moderna’s vaccine work has been financed by DARPA. We have also noted that the overall head of Operation Warp Speed is Moncef Slaoui, formerly in charge of product development for Moderna!
Of great significance is the central role of the military in the development of treatment for Covid-19:
- We note that: ” . . . . Remdesivir predates this pandemic. It was first considered as a potential treatment for Ebola, and was developed through a longstanding partnership between the U.S. Army and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. . . .”
- Jonathan King, who has chaired the microbial physiology study section for the NIH has sounded the alarm about “vaccine research” masking offensive biological warfare research: “. . . . King, who has chaired the microbial physiology study section for the NIH, believes that without intensive independent scrutiny, the Pentagon is free to obscure its true goals. ‘The Defense Department appears to be pursuing many narrow, applied goals that are by nature offensive, such as the genetic ‘improvement’ of BW agents,’ King says. ‘But to achieve political acceptability, they mask these intentions under forms of research, such as vaccine development, which sound defensive. . . .”
- Moderna’s vaccine development was overseen by an unnamed Pentagon official: ” . . . . Moderna’s team was headed by a Defense Department official whom company executives described only as ‘the major,’ saying they don’t know if his name is supposed to be a secret. . . . .”
- The pervasive role of the military in Operation Warp Speed (the Trump administration’s vaccine development program) has generated alarm in civilian participants:”. . . . Scores of Defense Department employees are laced through the government offices involved in the effort, making up a large portion of the federal personnel devoted to the effort. Those numbers have led some current and former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to privately grumble that the military’s role in Operation Warp Speed was too large for a task that is, at its core, a public health campaign. . . .”
- General Gustave Perna–one of the principals in Operation Warp Speed–has chosen a retired Lieutenant General to oversee much of the program: ” . . . . ‘Frankly, it has been breathtaking to watch,’ said Paul Ostrowski, the director of supply, production and distribution for Operation Warp Speed. He is a retired Army lieutenant general who was selected to manage logistics for the program by Gen. Gustave F. Perna, the chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed. . . .”
- The military will be able to trace the destination and administration of each dose: ” . . . . Military officials also came up with the clever idea — if it works — to coordinate the delivery of vaccines to drugstores, medical centers and other immunization sites by sending kits full of needles, syringes and alcohol wipes. Vaccine makers will be alerted when the kits arrive at an immunization site so they know to ship doses. Once the first dose is given, the manufacturer will be notified so it can send the second dose with a patient’s name attached several weeks later. The military will also monitor vaccine distribution through an operations center. ‘They will know where every vaccine dose is,’ Mr. [Paul] Mango said on a call with reporters. . . .”
Obfuscating the nature of U.S. vaccine contracting is the fact that the contracting is done through ATI. ” . . . . In part, it’s because of the way many Operation Warp Speed contracts have been executed, with their terms largely invisible to the public. . . . under the hood, the effort’s largest agreements with vaccine companies—totaling more than $6 billion—have been managed by a third party, a defense-oriented nonprofit called Advanced Technology International (ATI). . . . with ATI as an intermediary, these billion-dollar deals instead fall under something called an ‘other transaction agreement’ that isn’t subject to the same kinds of cross-checks and accountability. . . .”
The balance of the program consists of analysis of the capital interests behind BioNTech–the German corporate partner producing a Covid vaccine with Pfizer.
Headed by a German MD couple whose parents were “gastarbeiter” (guest workers), BioNTech has soared exponentially in value since the approval of the vaccine by a number of countries.
A dominant consideration in power politics remains the advisory to “Follow the Money.”
Against the background of I.G. Farben and its successor companies’ dominant position in both the global pharmaceutical and chemical market, as well as its major position within the remarkable and deadly Bormann capital network, the program explores the capitalization of Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci’s Ganymed firm and BioNTech.
Of paramount significance in both Ganymed (the couple’s initial commercial venture) and BioNtech are twin brothers Thomas and Andreas Struengmann.
Key points of analysis:
- The brothers are major players in the pharmaceutical and biotech market.
- They keep a purposefully low professional profile–a professional behavior characteristic of the deadly Bormann network.
- Thomas was an important member of the board of Wacker Chemie, a major successor to two I.G. Farben subsidiary companies.
- Wacker Chemie has apparently obfuscated its Nazi past.
- Andreas initiated his medical career in apartheid South Africa, and the brothers’ Hexal firm began its significant international expansion in that country. (The apartheid regime was an offshoot of the Third Reich.)
- Firms that evolved from I.G. Farben figure prominently in the dealings of Hexal, Wacker Chemie and BioNTech (Novartis, the Hoechst division of Sanofi-Aventis.)
1. In previous posts and programs, we have noted that Moderna’s vaccine work has been financed by DARPA. We have also noted that the overall head of Operation Warp Speed is Moncef Slaoui, formerly in charge of product development for Moderna!
Of great significance is the central role of the military in the development of treatment for Covid-19:
- We note that: ” . . . . Remdesivir predates this pandemic. It was first considered as a potential treatment for Ebola, and was developed through a longstanding partnership between the U.S. Army and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. . . .”
- Jonathan King, who has chaired the microbial physiology study section for the NIH has sounded the alarm about “vaccine research” masking offensive biological warfare research: “. . . . King, who has chaired the microbial physiology study section for the NIH, believes that without intensive independent scrutiny, the Pentagon is free to obscure its true goals. ‘The Defense Department appears to be pursuing many narrow, applied goals that are by nature offensive, such as the genetic ‘improvement’ of BW agents,’ King says. ‘But to achieve political acceptability, they mask these intentions under forms of research, such as vaccine development, which sound defensive. . . .”
- Moderna’s vaccine development was overseen by an unnamed Pentagon official: ” . . . . Moderna’s team was headed by a Defense Department official whom company executives described only as ‘the major,’ saying they don’t know if his name is supposed to be a secret. . . . .”
- The pervasive role of the military in Operation Warp Speed (the Trump administration’s vaccine development program) has generated alarm in civilian participants:”. . . . Scores of Defense Department employees are laced through the government offices involved in the effort, making up a large portion of the federal personnel devoted to the effort. Those numbers have led some current and former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to privately grumble that the military’s role in Operation Warp Speed was too large for a task that is, at its core, a public health campaign. . . .”
- General Gustave Perna–one of the principals in Operation Warp Speed–has chosen a retired Lieutenant General to oversee much of the program: ” . . . . ‘Frankly, it has been breathtaking to watch,’ said Paul Ostrowski, the director of supply, production and distribution for Operation Warp Speed. He is a retired Army lieutenant general who was selected to manage logistics for the program by Gen. Gustave F. Perna, the chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed. . . .”
- The military will be able to trace the destination and administration of each dose: ” . . . . Military officials also came up with the clever idea — if it works — to coordinate the delivery of vaccines to drugstores, medical centers and other immunization sites by sending kits full of needles, syringes and alcohol wipes. Vaccine makers will be alerted when the kits arrive at an immunization site so they know to ship doses. Once the first dose is given, the manufacturer will be notified so it can send the second dose with a patient’s name attached several weeks later. The military will also monitor vaccine distribution through an operations center. ‘They will know where every vaccine dose is,’ Mr. [Paul] Mango said on a call with reporters. . . .”
2. Obfuscating the nature of U.S. vaccine contracting is the fact that the contracting is done through ATI. ” . . . . In part, it’s because of the way many Operation Warp Speed contracts have been executed, with their terms largely invisible to the public. . . . under the hood, the effort’s largest agreements with vaccine companies—totaling more than $6 billion—have been managed by a third party, a defense-oriented nonprofit called Advanced Technology International (ATI). . . . with ATI as an intermediary, these billion-dollar deals instead fall under something called an ‘other transaction agreement’ that isn’t subject to the same kinds of cross-checks and accountability. . . .”
On Nov. 9, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced some early results for their Covid-19 vaccine candidate. Data from a late-stage clinical trial show the two-dose shot could be 90% effective at preventing infections—a promising development that quickly devolved into a fight for bragging rights.
Vice president Mike Pence attributed the news to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s “public-private partnership,” while Pfizer tried to take credit for its own work. Although the company did strike a deal worth $1.95 billion for the US government to purchase 100 million doses of the vaccine, it emphasized that it received no federal funding for vaccine research and development.
What’s behind the confusion? In part, it’s because of the way many Operation Warp Speed contracts have been executed, with their terms largely invisible to the public.
Operation Warp Speed (OWS) is the public face of the federal effort to rapidly develop and distribute vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. But under the hood, the effort’s largest agreements with vaccine companies—totaling more than $6 billion—have been managed by a third party, a defense-oriented nonprofit called Advanced Technology International (ATI). A new crop of vaccine agreements set to be made through ATI may be just as opaque as the first.
For more than 20 years, ATI has managed federally-funded research and development collaborations for the Department of Defense. One of those collaborations, the Medical CBRN Defense Consortium, is focused on protecting military personnel against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats—including viruses they could encounter in the line of duty, like Ebola.
So ATI had some experience with vaccine deals before the pandemic. On Jun. 9, it made the shift to Covid-19 vaccines, soliciting companies’ proposals for research, development, and large-scale manufacturing. Less than a month later, the US had made its first agreement, a deal with Novavax worth up to $1.6 billion.
But the precise terms of that deal, and the one with Pfizer that came shortly after, are still unclear. . . .
. . . . It would be easier to understand the difference between investment and procurement—and what Operation Warp Speed could reasonably take credit for—if the contracts were made public. Normally, when the government makes an agreement with a contractor, it has to follow federal acquisition regulations. But with ATI as an intermediary, these billion-dollar deals instead fall under something called an “other transaction agreement” that isn’t subject to the same kinds of cross-checks and accountability. . . .
3. ATI represents its function as follows:
“ATI Builds and Manages R & D Collaborations;” ATI—About Us.
ATI recruits, organizes, and manages teams of large and small businesses, academic institutions, and nonprofit organizations to develop new technologies for our federal clients. We don’t bring our solution; we bring the best solution for the DoD’s most urgent challenges.
A hallmark of ATI-managed collaborations is access to non-traditionals, innovative companies that have not traditionally worked with Government due to the complexity of Federal contracting. We vet these innovators, teach them how to work with the Government, and provide online and in-person forums where they can meet and partner with traditional defense contractors.
In today’s environment of increasingly sophisticated adversaries and rapid technology refresh, speed of technology acquisition is critical to the DoD. ATI’s expertise in program management and rapid contracting ensures that we deliver new technologies at the speed of mission.
4. A Guardian article about the German-Turkish couple has more information on their earlier business ventures. Interestingly that they simply started their first company, Ganymed, because they were planning on opening an academic lab but research funds were hard to come by.
There is no explanation of where the venture capital start-up funds came from.
So the story of how Ganymed was actually funded seems like a story with learning more about. They founded BioNTech in 2008 with Austrian oncology expert Christopher Huber, who still sits on the board:
The ‘Prussian Turk’ couple’s company BioNTech developed the breakthrough Covid vaccine with Pfizer
Dr Özlem Türeci and Dr Uğur Şahin, who both have parents who came to Germany from Turkey in the late 1960s.
. . . . At Mainz university hospital, the couple planned to set up a research lab to investigate how immune systems could be trained to attack cancerous cells. When research funds were hard to come by “we simply started our own company”, Şahin told news portal Heise.
“Their first company, founded in 2001, was called Ganymed – not after the handsome hero of Greek myth but a Turkish expression roughly meaning “earned through hard work”, as Türeci told Süddeutsche Zeitung. The company, which pioneered precision antibody therapies against cancer, was sold to Japanese pharma company Astellas for €1.4bn in 2016.
They founded their second company BioNTech in 2008 with the Austrian oncologist Christoph Huber, who still sits on the supervisory board. . . .
5. Historical and informational background on the Wacker subsidiary firms of I.G. Farben are set forth in one of the books on the Spitfirelist website.
In Germany’s Master Plan–The Story of an Industrial Offensive by Joseph Borkin and Charles A. Welsh, we find that two of the subsidiary companies of I.G. Farben are Alexander Wacker A.-G. and Dr. Albert Wacker G.m.b.H.
Alexander Wacker A.-G. (p. 328.)
Dr. Albert Wacker G.m.b.H. (p. 330.)
6. The major shareholder in BioNTech is Santo Holding–an investment firm for identical twin brothers Thomas and Andreas Strüngmann (also spelled “Struengmann”).
The brothers appear to be major investors in the German biotech and healthcare sector. They appear to have intentionally kept relatively low personal and corporate profiles–a characteristic of the deadly, effective Bormann capital organization.
Thomas Strüngmann was on the supervisory board of Wacker Chemie AG until May of 2018, when he was replaced by Ann-Sophie Wacker.
When replaced, he was described as a shareholder representative. First appointed to the board in 2006, he appears to have been representing part of the Wacker family on the board from 2006–2018.
Summing up: Thomas Strüngmann, one of the brothers who owns the German biotech and healthcare investment empire, was seemingly a Wacker-family shareholder representative on Wacker Chemie’s supervisory board for 12 years. In terms of ties to the Underground Reich, it’s not nothing, and potentially significant. Wacker Chemie is a global chemical powerhouse. It’s US branch is Wacker Chemical Corp. It has offices around the globe. It’s undoubtedly considered a vital strategic asset.
It also turns out that the Strüngmann brothers were investors in Ganymed, which is the company in the couple ‘behind’ BioNTech founded in 2001 after they couldn’t find funding for their academic lab. So these brothers have probably been the money behind the couple all along, although it’s unclear if they were the initial investors in Ganymed.
” . . . . Investors in Ganymed included German investment fund MIG Fonds as the family office of twins Thomas and Andreas Struengmann, who now hold a large stake in BioNTech. The brothers have long been big investors in biotech, having sold their generic drug company Hexal to Swiss drugmaker Novartis for around $7 billion in 2005. . . .”
The following article discusses the Strüngmanns and their investment roles in Ganymed and BioNTech. We also note, in passing, that BioNTech’s growth involves the purchase of a valuable facility from Novartis, which, as we have seen, grew from the Swiss component of I.G. Farben.:
When BioNTech made its stock market debut on Nasdaq last October, the German biotechnology company was valued at just under $3.4 billion.
Just over a year later, BioNTech is now worth around $25 billion and the Mainz, Germany-based company hit the headlines earlier this week as it became the front-runner in the race to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market.
Shares in BioNTech soared 14% on Monday after the company said its experimental shot, which is being developed in partnership with U.S. drugmaker Pfizer was more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19, based on initial trial results from a Phase 3 clinical trial. This is the first coronavirus vaccine to prove its efficacy in a late-stage clinical study.
The stock was 3% up in early trading on Tuesday and has now climbed 219% year-to-date. . . . .
HUSBAND AND WIFE TEAM BEHIND THE SCIENCE
In 2001, the pair founded Ganymed Pharmaceuticals, a spin off from the universities of Mainz and Zurich that focused on developing a new class of cancer drugs called ideal monoclonal antibodies.
Investors in Ganymed included German investment fund MIG Fonds as the family office of twins Thomas and Andreas Struengmann, who now hold a large stake in BioNTech.The brothers have long been big investors in biotech, having sold their generic drug company Hexal to Swiss drugmaker Novartis for around $7 billion in 2005.
In 2016, Ganymed was sold to Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas Pharma for $1.4 billion
BIONTECH’S IPO
BioNTech raised $150 million in its U.S. initial public offering on Nasdaq on Oct. 9, 2019, after it sold fewer shares and at a lower price than originally planned, giving the company a market valuation of $3.4 billion.
The IPO followed BioNTech’s $325 million fundraising in July, which marked one of the biggest private financing rounds for a European biotechnology company in history.
The fundraising was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, with participation from both new and existing investors, including the Strüngmann Family Office.
Şahin and Türeci are now among the 100 richest Germans, according to German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
RELATIONSHIP WITH PFIZER
. . . . In March this year, Pfizer and BioNTech announced plans to jointly develop a COVID-19 vaccine. “We believe that by pairing Pfizer’s development, regulatory and commercial capabilities with BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine technology and expertise as one of the industry leaders, we are reinforcing our commitment to do everything we can to combat this escalating pandemic, as quickly as possible,” said Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, at the time.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — called BNT162 — uses messenger RNA (mRNA), the molecules in cells that control protein production, to teach the immune system to make coronavirus-fighting antibodies. The mRNA technology is also being used by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna and CureVac . . . .
. . . . “BioNTech has been a loss-making company since our inception 12 years ago and we’ve invested over $1 billion to develop our mRNA technology platform,” Ryan Richardson, head of strategy at BioNTech, told a conference on Tuesday.
VACCINE PRODUCTION
. . . . In June, BioNTech signed a €100 million debt financing agreement with the European Investment Bank for the development of its experimental shot, to help scale-up its commercial manufacturing capacity.
In September, it also received €375 million in funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to support its COVID-19 vaccine program.
That same month, it announced the acquisition of a manufacturing site in Marburg in western Germany from Swiss pharma group Novartis. The state-of-the art facility is expected to expand BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine production capacity by up to 750 million doses a year, or more than 60 million doses a month, once fully operational, BioNTech said. . . .
8. A corporate “Sustainability Report” from Wacker AG that states that Thomas Strüngmann was replaced as a shareholder representative on the Supervisory Board by Ann-Sophie Wacker in May of 2018:
“Sustainability Report;” Wacker.com.
. . . . At its meeting on March 6, 2018, the Supervisory Board of Wacker Chemie AG renewed the contract of Executive Board member Auguste Willems for a further five years (until December 31, 2023). On May 9, 2018, the Annual Shareholders’ Meeting in Munich elected the shareholder representatives for the Supervisory Board. Newly elected was Ann-Sophie Wacker, who replaced shareholder representative Dr. Thomas Strüngmann on the Supervisory Board. . . .
9. A recent article notes Wacker Chemie’s lack of addressing its Nazi past.
“Drawing a Veil Over the Nazi Past” by Gilbert Kreijger; Handelsblatt; 09/03/2016
. . . . Mr. Bähr, the historian, wants to see independent investigations into the Nazi histories of German household and industrial goods maker Henkel, as well as construction firm Bilfinger, potash producer K+S and Wacker Chemie. He said industrial giant Siemens was “on the way” in conducting research. . . .
10. An article from May of 2005 that gives a good overview of the broad scope of Wacker Chemie’s interests.
Note the 49% stake in Wacker Chemie owned by the Hoechst unit of Sanofi-Aventis.
Hoechst–one of the Big Three successor firms to I.G. Farben merged with the French pharmaceutical company.
“WACKER HOLDS OWN IN CHEMICAL WORLD” by Michael McCoy; Chemical Engineering News; 5/9/2005.
A person attending Wacker-Chemie’s annual press conference in Munich last month could be excused for mistaking Wacker for a publicly traded firm. The company’s 2004 financial results presentation mirrored that of public German firms like BASF, Degussa, and Bayer. Wacker distributed a detailed annual report, and its chief executive officer made a lengthy presentation, after which he patiently answered questions from reporters.
But Wacker is in fact a private company owned 51% by the Wacker family and 49% by the Hoechst unit of Sanofi-Aventis. It was founded in 1914 by Alexander Wacker and today is headed by his great-grandson, Peter-Alexander Wacker.
Many private firms relish their anonymity and give out little information about their financial condition. Wacker has a different philosophy. According to Peter-Alexander Wacker, the company holds an annual press conference–and often a subsequent technical briefing–because it desires the public exposure that the press can provide. . . .
. . . . Although he may want to replicate the recognition enjoyed by his publicly traded competitors, Peter-Alexander Wacker says he isn’t otherwise envious of them. After the presentation, he told C&EN that a big part of Wacker’s strength is its ability to make long-term investments without worrying about the short-term concerns of outside investors.
“Stability is one of the biggest advantages of a private or family-owned company,” he said. “Stability means we are not looking at every quarterly result. We can go through cycles where the earnings are a little bit lower because of high investment costs. It is much easier if you are not on the radar screen every quarter.”
Private ownership also allows Wacker to put more money into R&D–some 6% of annual sales–than most publicly traded chemical companies, without having to fend off investor complaints of high spending. And the company can put this research into practice with expensive plant construction projects that public companies might shy away from. . . .
11. The Struengmann brothers got their start with the company their father, Ernst Struengmann, had started, Durachemie. Durachemie was sold off to raise the money they used to start the generic drug maker Hexal, which was eventually sold off to Novartis–the firm that coalesced from the Swiss component of I.G. Farben.
The following review of Hexal also notes that Andreas worked as a physician in South Africa after getting his medical degree. A key element in Hexal’s corporate development was the firm’s foreign investment, which began in South Africa near the end of the apartheid regime.
“Company History;” Hexal-AG-Company.
Company History:
. . . . Hexal was founded by twin brothers Thomas and Andreas Strüngmann. The Strüngmann brothers were no strangers to pharmaceuticals: father Ernst Strüngmann had earlier founded the Frankfurt-based company Durachemie. While Andreas pursued his medical studies, Thomas received a doctorate in business administration from the University of Augsburg in 1977.
He then went to work for Schering-Plough as a product manager, at first in Lucerne, before being transferred to that company’s New Jersey branch in 1978. Strüngmann’s encounter with American “can-do” optimism was to have a lasting impact, and became a driving force behind Hexal’s success. Thomas Strüngmann then returned to Germany, becoming Durachemie’s CEO in 1979. In the meantime, Andreas had completed his studies and gone to work as a physician in the South African bush where he was directly confronted with the urgent need for more affordable medicines. . . .
. . . . A key factor in Hexal’s growth was its decision early on to expand production and distribution into the global market. The company’s first foreign move came in 1990, when it opened a marketing subsidiary in South Africa, with an office in the Durban suburb of Pinetown. . . .
FYI, Santo Holding turns up in the “Paradise Papers”. They are linked to this EOS Africa group in Malta. (reminder: a female Maltese journo who blew the lid on some of the Panama Papers stuff years ago was murdered with a car bomb). This shows the ties of EOS.
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/55038905
Duncan Randall is a South African who worked with EOS Africa. He has some very interesting ties.
https://www.marketscreener.com/business-leaders/Duncan-Randall-0HQ6H0‑E/biography/
I am fairly certain that this is the same Duncan Randall, though I cannot find 100% confirmation of this.
https://www.marketscreener.com/business-leaders/Duncan-Randall-0HQ6H0‑E/biography/
Founder of The Progress Fund, Duncan Randall presently is Managing Director at Tana Africa Capital Managers Pty Ltd. Dr. Randall is also Chief Executive Officer- FNB Enterprise Solutions at FirstRand Bank Ltd.
.
NOTE: Tana was founded by members of the Oppenheimer diamond family this family, like the Rothschilds, are often part of antisemitic conspiracy theories. However, the patriarch of the family, while born Jewish, converted to Anglican Christianity over a century ago. None of the modern Oppenheimers are Jews. As we shall see, they “played for the other team”.
http://www.tana-africa.com/pages/FOUNDING_SHAREHOLDERS.aspx
“Tana Africa Capital was established in 2011 as a 50/50 joint venture between E. Oppenheimer & Son and Temasek. The two like-minded investors were united by the common vision of creating value on the African continent through capital and business building support. To date the company has deployed more than US$250 million across the length and breadth of Africa.”
This book looks interesting and covers apparent ties between DeBeers and the Nazis. See the bolded section.
https://books.google.com/books?id=raO8jHBdDhYC
“Taking us through seven decades of intrigue and ‑manipulation that span the globe, Janine Roberts has written the most expansive and explosive expose ever on diamonds; among Roberts’ revelations: How De Beers hides away rich diamond deposits-and where some of these are located. How a long-term companion of Jackie Onassis was a CIA-linked millionaire diamond merchant tied to coups and dictators in Central Africa. Just how diamonds are “fixed” to make them more expensive. How major diamond companies cooperated with Hitler’s Germany-and how much they were paid. How industrial diamond supplies were artificially ‑restricted to the United States during World War II, severely damaging its war effort and how U.S. Intelligence came to suspect treason. How a major diamond deposit in Arkansas was sabotaged to stop it coming into production. How the White House was manipulated into buying millions of diamonds it did not need and now must sell. How terrorism found its way into the diamond trade, not recently but many decades ago. How diamonds are secretly moved by the millions around the world. ”
NOTE: The “CIA-linked diamond merchant” was longtime Jackie O companion Maurice Tempelsman. Tempelsman’s CIA business agent was Richard Devlin, who was involved in the machinations to put Mobutu in charge of Congo AND was CIA station chief in Laos during the Vietnam War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Tempelsman
The Oppenheimer’s partner in Tana Africa is Temasek, the state sovereign wealth fund of Singapore.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2126198/oil-bribes-politicians-what-happened-clean-singapore
“The US$55 million topped the nearly US$19 million in bribes that were involved at a scandal at state-linked shipbuilder Singapore Technologies Marine, making it the biggest corruption case to hit one of the so-called Singapore Inc companies linked to state sovereign wealth firm Temasek Holdings.
Temasek is huge in Asia and is currently building an entire “smart city” with Mitsubishi in Indonesia.”
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/In-Jakarta-suburb-Mitsubishi-and-Temasek-unit-plan-smart-city
President Biden gave his first presidential address to the nation last night marking the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration that COVID-19 was a global pandemic and the beginnings of the COVID-19 lockdowns. It was undoubtedly a year the vast majority of the global populace would prefer to forget.
But here’s a quick reminder that for at least some industries, 2020 was the gift that kept on giving. And for at least some of the vaccine manufacturers, in particular Moderna and BioNTech, 2020 was the gift that kept on giving and will probably keep on giving for years and perhaps decades to come, as reflecting by their wild stock surges. Other large winners like Pfizer haven’t seen their stocks surge from the valuations a year ago — valuations that preceded the history stock selloffs the followed the March 11 pandemic declaration — but are still expecting revenues from vaccines alone in 2021 to fall in the range of $15–30 billion.
So 2020 is the gift that’s definitely going to keep giving in 2021 for these vaccine manufacturers, but as the article also notes, it’s still unclear if 2021 is going to be a one-off event for the industry or the start of a new annual global coronavirus vaccination market. That all remains to be seen. So for the vaccine industry, 2020 might have been the gift that kept on giving through 2021 or it might be the gift that keeps on giving forever. And whether or not it’s a gift that’s given just a 2021 or forever depends, in part, on the success of the global vaccination rollout at quelling the virus, if that’s even possible, with the likelihood of a ‘forever gift’ rising should the global vaccination efforts fail. It’s a reminder that, from a profit-maximization perspective, the goal of the vaccine manufacturers shouldn’t be to vaccinate everyone. The goal should be to vaccinate almost everyone, while leaving enough people available to keep the virus circulating for years to come:
“Whether the market remains a money-spinner in the future depends on whether the vaccines become the type that need just a one-off shot – as for measles – or if regular vaccinations will be required, such as for flu. But in the immediate future, there are big financial returns up for grabs.”
Are we looking at a forever-war against COVID? We don’t know yet, but if so, that means forever-profits for the winning vaccine manufacturers. But if that’s going to happen, humanity has to loses the vaccination race in 2021.
Now, in fairness, there’s almost no realistic chance that the SARS-CoV‑2 virus is going to be wiped out by measles simply because the virus doesn’t appear to have the same kind of evolutionary fragility that measles possess that makes measles such a potent candidate for stopping with a vaccine. There really shouldn’t be any expectation that this virus is leaving in 2021 because the virus itself doesn’t appear to be amendable to that, as the number of different variants have already made clear.
At the same time, if humanity is going to win the vaccination race in 2021, that’s going to require the kind of mass forced vaccinations campaigns that haven’t really been conceived of yet. And in the era of far right misinformation and the threats of civil war in the US, it’s hard to imagine a mass forced vaccination campaign going over well. And that’s just in the US. There really is no realistic scenario where this virus disappears.
On the other hand, we still could see a replay of past coronavirus scenarios where the virus effectively becomes a new common cold coronavirus with highly limited mortality rates. It might be the best scenario we can realistically hope for and one that works for the vaccine manufacturers too. After all, that process of allowing the virus to flair out could take time, and it’s possible some vulnerable groups might still require vaccines even at that point.
But also keep in mind that one of the big innovations here is the development of new vaccine development platforms that, in theory, allow from the rapid deployment of new vaccines against new viruses in rapid time. That’s the promise of Moderna and Pfizer’s mRNA technology. You can sequence a virus an basically immediately design a new vaccine. That capability didn’t really exist before 2020. A big part of the reason Moderna and Pfizer are the big winners in this race is because they had their vaccines ready to first. So if you’re a company with this kind of rapid vaccine-development technologies ready to go, the next 2020 might be even more profitable because the mRNA technology will have already gone through this global vetting process.
And that’s why it’s looking like the biggest 2020 gift to the vaccine industry isn’t the promise of SARS-CoV‑2 vaccine sales well into the future. It’s the promise of even bigger and better ‘2020’ experiences for the industry during the next global pandemic thanks to the emergency approval of all these new vaccine technologies. The next pandemic that’s bound to show up sooner or later, with a growing bias towards sooner.
This article shows a potentially promising solution by the US Army. The IG — Farben derivatvive Pharma companies do not want this to be a US government success.
A next-gen Army COVID vaccine you’ve never heard of has just begun human trials
ABC News
Scientists believe it might combat deadly variants and even future pandemics.
By Matt Seyler April 8, 2021, 5:03 AM
As more than 100 million Americans were needled and inoculated against COVID-19 with doses produced by pharmaceutical powerhouses like Pfizer and Moderna, a scrappy team of scientists in an Army lab just outside the nation’s capital quietly continued manipulating proteins, testing monkeys, working to conceive a vaccine of the future. This is the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Over the last decade Modjarrad also led the Army’s vaccine efforts for Ebola and the Zika virus and was principal investigator of its campaign against MERS, a disease itself caused by a coronavirus. And though WRAIR is the oldest biomedical research institute within the Department of Defense, the emerging infectious diseases branch is still young.
From the beginning his focus was on next-generation threats,
The WRAIR vaccine skips both the instruction and creation steps, bringing the already-formed spike protein straight into the arm along with an immune-boosting adjuvant compound, quickly starting the antibody response.
And unlike other protein-based vaccines being tested, the WRAIR candidate presents virus-looking nanoparticles, each with a consistent array of 24 spike proteins arranged in small bouquets of three protruding from a ferritin base.
“There’s a lot of theories as to why something presented in this fashion gives such a good immune response, but in some ways you can see it looks like a virus as well,” Modjarrad said. “So it has some properties that educate the immune response in a way that it gives you a very strong, but also a broad response.”
Test results with thousands of mice and dozens of monkeys have been promising.
“We think (other) vaccines are probably going to be protective against new variants, but they might be decreased in their protection,” Modjarrad said. “What we’ve seen with our vaccine so far in animals ... is that the vaccine is not decreased in effectiveness against those variants at all. And it is effective against other coronaviruses like SARS‑1. So what we have developed now is starting to look like a pan-SARS vaccine ... and we’re going to start testing everything in between.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gen-army-covid-vaccine-heard-begun-human-trials/story?id=76901332
Pfizer CEO says a THIRD Covid vaccine may be needed
https://mol.im/a/9475955
Here’s a story to keep an eye on with potentially huge implications for the ability of the developing countries to deal with future pandemics: South Africa just developed their own version of the mRNA coronavirus vaccine. It sounds like they basically just attempted to replicate on their own what Moderna did and have largely succeeded. It’s potentially quite an exciting development for South Africa, where less than 10% of the population has been vaccinated. But the implications go far beyond this pandemic. Don’t forget that the simplicity of the mRNA vaccine development process is a major part of their appeal, which allowed for Moderna to announce on Jan 13, 2020, just days after the SARS-CoV‑2 sequence was published to the world. So, in theory, this relatively simple and cheap vaccine development process could be replicated by countries around the world for future emerging diseases. It’s one of the under-appreciated aspect of the potential for mRNA vaccines: it makes vaccine development potentially accessible to developing nations.
But, of course, there’s a flip side to this ostensibly feel-good story: It’s not great news for Big Pharma. The world isn’t necessary going to be nearly as reliant on large pharmaceutical companies like Moderna or Pfizer for their vaccines for future outbreaks.
That’s the context of South Africa’s big vaccine announcement: it was the kind of breakthrough that’s going to prompt a big patent fight. The kind of patent fight with life-and-death-and-big-profit implications.
And as we’ve seen, Moderna hasn’t exactly been acting in good faith when it comes to these mRNA vaccine patents. Recall the reports from back in August of 2020 about how Moderna was filing patent applications for an mRNA vaccine that would protect against a broad range of betacoronaviruses. A vaccine application that neglected to mention the fact that Moderna received extension help and support from the NIH. Possibly related to those missing disclosures is the fact that the patent application gave a long list of betacoronaviruses that this vaccine would work for — MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-NL, HCoV-NH, HCoV-HKU1 — but no mention of SARS-CoV‑2, despite the fact that the NIH and Moderna joint infectious disease research team finalized the sequence for mRNA-1273 on Jan 13, 2020. That patent was originally filed on Feb 28, 2020. So about 6 weeks after Moderna and the NIH designed their COVID mRNA vaccine — which was designed in record time by utilizing the years of joint research for mRNA vaccines — Moderna proceeds to file for a patent on basically the same mRNA vaccine technology that can protect against Betacoronaviruses other than SARS-CoV‑2 with no mention of the NIH’s extensive involvement. It was more than a little sleazy.
So what does Moderna have to say about this South African vaccine announcement? Nothing, so far. It’s an ominous silence:
“Gerhardt Boukes, chief scientist at Afrigen — the firm at the core of the WHO’s hub — is proud to have helped complete this first step of the plan. Afrigen and its collaborators completed the process, beginning with mRNA encoding a modified portion of the SARS-CoV‑2 coronavirus, and finishing by encapsulating it in a lipid nanoparticle that delivers the vaccine to cells. “We didn’t have help from the major COVID vaccine producers,” he says, “so we did it ourselves to show the world that it can be done, and be done here, on the African continent.””
Africa can’t rely on Big Pharma. Clearly, with only about 10% of people on the whole continent having been vaccinated yet. So Africa is going it alone. Not quite alone. The work is being done in conjunction with the WHO’s technology transfer hub. And the WHO appears to have hopes that this project is a template for more globally distributed mRNA vaccine industry to address future pandemics. And yet the big Western vaccine manufacturers haven’t been part of it despite being asked to participate. It doesn’t bode well:
Adding to the complications is the fact that they used a DNA sequence for the vaccine that was already patented by Moderna, albeit controversially patented:
And note how researchers NIH who were working directly with Moderna on the development of a general coronavirus vaccine, and later the crash-development of the SARS-CoV‑2 vaccine, are part of this initiative. Together, this team is creating a mimic of the Moderna vaccine:
And yet we are told by the people being this initiative that they have no intention of infringing on any of Moderna’s patents. There’s even hope that Moderna might then license its patents. In other words, Moderna’s cooperation is required for this initiative to actually work without it descending into a giant disgusting patent fight:
All in all, it’s the kind of good news story that feels like the setup for a nasty intellectual property fight down the line. The kind of intellectual property fight that could ensure Africa goes unvaccinated during the next pandemic.
Here’s a pair of articles related to the developing story about South Africa’s attempts to create its own version of the mRNA COVID vaccine and the attempts by the big Western pharmaceutical companies to stop them. First, recall how South Africa’s vaccine development program is being carried out in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and some of the very same NIH researchers who worked closely with Moderna based in developing the COVID vaccine. But pp+ of the major pharmaceutical companies currently producing mRNA vaccines — Moderna, Pfizer, or BioNTech — are cooperating with this program and are instead actively trying to kill it. Also recall how on the NIH and Moderna are locked in an intellectual property dispute of their own, with Moderna having filed a patent for a different COVID mRNA vaccine that appears to a range of betacoronaviruses that infect humans except SARS-CoV‑2, while seemingly attempting to take full claim for the vaccine-related patents and neglecting to even acknowledge the extensive efforts of NIH researchers.
The first follow up article was published in Nature back in November describing the legal contours of the intellectual property fight developing between the NIH and Moderna. It’s not just a single patent. Multiple patents covering different aspects of the vaccine development process have been file, including patents involved with some of the basic chemical components used in constructing these vaccines. As the article notes, that’s the kind of patent that could potentially block Moderna’s competitors for developing alternatives. It’s a potentially huge legal battle unfolding. The kind of legal battle that ominously might end up getting resolved at the US Supreme Court.
But while the Supreme Court might be in a position to resolve a US patent dispute between Moderna and the NIH, it’s not quite a clear how the battle over the South African WHO-backed mRNA initiative will be settled. Because as the Common Dreams article excerpt below points out, the South African WHO-program is entirely legal under South African law. The WHO is in complete agreement on this point. So that legal battle is effectively going to be an international fight over whether or not these Western pharmaceutical giants to force South Africa to end a program it deems to be entirely legal and vital to the health of the country.
As the Common Dreams article also notes, that legal battle between Moderna and South Africa isn’t being just fought be Moderna. BioNTech has already entered the fray via a non-profit representative foundation, the kENUP Foundation. It turns out kENUP was arguing to the WHO back in August of 2021 that the South African project wasn’t sustainable precisely because Moderna reserved the right to exercise international control over its patents.
Intriguingly, kENUP had an alternative proposal that could ostensibly retain the intellectual property rights while making this technology available to developing countries: BioNTech would build factories in sea containers that would be shipped down from Europe to Africa. Oh, and it turns out these sea container factories would initially be staffed by BioNTech employees and operate under a novel regulatory regime that would effectively remove them from local regulatory oversight. In other words, this patent fight isn’t just a move to capture the future of mRNA medicine globally. It’s also the latest attempt to sneak in some sort of corporate Charter City paradigm. And that’s all why, as we watching these parallel legal disputes play out, it’s going to be important to keep in mind that the players in this fight have ambitions that go well beyond mRNA vaccines:
“The stakes are high. Moderna, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has projected that it will make up to US$18 billion on its COVID-19 vaccine this year. Inventor status could enable the NIH to collect royalties — potentially recouping some of its investment of taxpayer money — and to license the patent as it sees fit, including to competing vaccine makers in low- and middle-income countries, where vaccines are still painfully scarce.”
It’s a legal battle over whether or not Moderna will retain the right to license its mRNA vaccine patents as it sees fit. Around the world. Whether or not there’s a major pandemic raging. Complete legal control over the use of this mRNA vaccine technology globally. That’s what Moderna is fighting for, pitting it against its own partner, the NIH.
But Moderna isn’t fighting for complete legal control over the COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, it’s over the coronavirus vaccine Moderna and the NIH happened to be working on right when the pandemic erupted. But it’s not simply a patent for this generic vaccine. It’s multiple patents over different components of the vaccine, including one of the basic chemical constituents in the vaccine. As the article notes, that’s the kind of patent that can effectively block competition for a wide variety of potential vaccines. So this is a patent fight over one of the building blocks for mRNA vaccines, and potentially other mRNA-based therapeutics. Don’t forget that the vaccines weren’t for the first mRNA-based therapy Moderna was trying to develop. They only decided to focus on vaccines after the side-effects for more frequent mRNA injections proved too difficult to overcome. So if this basic chemical component of the mRNA vaccine also happens to be a basic chemical component of more general mRNA-based therapeutics, that patent could help lock in Moderna’s control over a much broader range of mRNA-based medicine. The stakes are massive:
And note how this legal battle could end up being resolved: before the US Supreme Court. One of the most corporate-friendly courts in US history:
So that’s some of what Moderna has been up to. But don’t forget that it’s not just Moderna who is voicing strong opposition to anything that might get weaken the pharmaceutical industry’s intellectual property rights. It wasn’t just Moderna who refused to cooperate with the South Africa/WHO initiative. Pfizer and BioNTech aren’t partnering either. Quite the opposite. As Jake Johnson recently wrote about in Common Dreams, a foundation representing BioNTech, the kENUP foundation, was lobbying the WHO back in August of 2021 to kill the South African project. The foundation basically warned that because Moderna reserved the right to enforce its patents in the future the project wasn’t sustainable. As others pointed out, the project is entirely legal under South African law. So kENUP was basically arguing that the project should end because Moderna is going to kill it by waging some sort of legal challenge to the project by asserting intellectual property rights.
But kENUP wasn’t only recommending that the WHO kill the project. It has an alternative solution instead: ship factories in sea containers from Europe to Africa. These factories would initially be staffed with BioNTech workers. And these factories would come with a new regulatory framework that critics note would effectively remove these factories from the oversight of local regulatory bodies. It sounds like a factory-scale version of Charter Cities. So in addition to securing patents that could capture for these government-backed early-movers the future of mRNA medicine development, it appears the industry’s plans also include a new regime for enforcing those intellectual property rights globally by empowering corporations to operate outside of state oversight:
“In August, according to The BMJ, the kENUP Foundation urged South African government officials to shut down a World Health Organization-backed initiative aiming to make an mRNA vaccine using Moderna’s shot as a template.”
Like Moderna, BioNTech isn’t taking this patent fight lying down either. Not that BioNTech is going to openly oppose the South African initiative. No, the company is instead relying on the kENUP Foundation to stop the program. It was back in August of 2021 when kENUP argued that the WHO-backed joint project “is not favorable” precisely because Moderna reserved the right to enforce its patents. It’s basically a warning of what the industry is planning. Not just Moderna. And yet, as many pointed out, what South Africa is doing is completely legal under South African law. So this is the kind of fight that involves getting the international community to effectively coerce South Africa into ending this legal WHO-backed initiative:
And note what appears to be the industry-backed alternative scenario that promises to make these vaccines available (eventually) to developing countries while still retaining the pharmaceutical companies’ property rights: factories that will be shipped down from Europe to Africa. Oh, and these factories won’t be governed by the local regulations. Some sort of novel regulatory pathway has been pitched that effectively bypasses local laws. So these industry isn’t just pushing for complete control over the licensing of its patents. It’s instead trying to achieve complete international control over the regulation of its products:
It’s also worth noting that it’s not entirely clear if the plan is to place these factories on land or keep them as floating sea-based factories operating off the shore of African countries. Is the plan to have the vaccines produced in international waters or something? We’ll see, but if so, that injects a whole ‘Seasteading’ element to this agenda too.
So as we can see, the pharmaceutical industry isn’t just trying to steal mRNA patents from its government partners at the same time it schemes for asserting control over those patents globally. It’s also a scheme to capture global sovereignty for corporate entities. At least the select corporate entities that managed to capture all the intellectual property rights.