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“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
— George Orwell, 1946
EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
Mr. Emory has launched a new Patreon site. Visit at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory
FTR#1243 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
NB: This description contains material not contained in the original program.
Introduction: This program continues our coverage of Ukraine.
The title of the series comes from the 1976 autobiography Heartland by the late, brilliant political comedian Mort Sahl, one of New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s investigators his probe of President Kennedy’s assassination.
Amid the highly politicized accounts of alleged “Russian atrocities” in the Ukraine war, it is of the highest importance to remember that the “news” reaching the West is coming exclusively through the Ukrainian security authorities, chiefly the Azov-imprinted Ukrainian National Police and the associated Interior Ministry, which retains the dominant influence of Azov-associated Arsen Avakov and Vadim Troyan–the former head of the Ukrainian national police and, before that, Deputy Commander of the Azov Battalion.
Further clouding access to accurate information about what is actually occurring in the war is an accelerated American disinformation process enthusiastically touting dubious intelligence as a vehicle for—supposedly—“getting inside Putin’s head.”
It is highly unlikely that the purveyors of that low-quality intelligence are actually trying to influence Putin. The low-grade intelligence is more likely to be directed at the American people.
Also worth contemplating is the grotesque history of U.S. disinformation—a track record of egregious, official lying that dominates the American political and historical landscape.
The assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam War that, in large measure, resulted from that murder, the killings of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Iraq War and countless other fundamental official political lies do not appear to have taught the American people anything!
Their appetite for b.s. appears undiminished.
For more information about the “low-quality” intel being disseminated for psychological warfare purposes, see: https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr1237-how-many-lies-before-you-belong-to-the-lie-part-10/comment-page‑1/#comment-370625
Next, we visit the satellite photos, also allegedly showing photos of the alleged “Russian atrocities” in Bucha, including the digging of the alleged mass grave to hold victims of said abominations.
Maxar is the company whose satellite photos are highlighted by our media to demonstrate the alleged atrocities.
Maxar, in turn, is the parent company of DigitalGlobe, a firm started by veterans of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”).
Growing out of late 1992 legislation that legalized the entry of private firms into the strategic reconnaissance satellite business, DigitalGlobe was the source of propagandized pictures alleging a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine in 2014!
DigitalGlobe/Maxar’s track record warrants scrutiny of the firm’s “evidence” in the context of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
More about Maxar can be found here: https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr1237-how-many-lies-before-you-belong-to-the-lie-part-10/comment-page‑1/#comment-370595
In FTR#808, we set forth information about DigitalGlobe.
The satellite imagery purporting to show Russian armor and self-propelled artillery inside of Ukraine comes from a private company–DigitalGlobe. That company was founded by key personnel from Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.
DigitalGlobe co-founder Doug Gerull had previously worked for the Zeiss firm, discussed in FTR #272 as one of the German/Underground Reich/Bormann firms that were moving into satellite imagery technology in the U.S.
An article published after FTR#808 was recorded noted the dubious nature of the claims of a “Russian Invasion” of Ukraine.
A major consideration to be weighed concerns the Azov-imprinted Ukrainian police’s use of an American AI facial recognition software called Clearview.
The brainchild of Alt-right lynchpin Charles Johnson, Clearview received key start-up investment capital from Peter Thiel, one of the driving forces behind Trump and a major player in the Big Tech and electronic surveillance scene.
Critics have expressed concern about Clearview’s potential for abuse. Note that the firm uses a database of 20 billion faces, scraped from social media.
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? . . . .”
The program concludes with review of a Daily Mail article highlighting [confirmed] e‑mails from Hunter Biden’s laptop that partially confirm Russian discoveries of U.S.-financed biological warfare program in Ukraine.
1a. Amid the highly politicized accounts of alleged “Russian atrocities” in the Ukraine war, it is of the highest importance to remember that the “news” reaching the West is coming exclusively through the Ukrainian security authorities, chiefly the Azov-imprinted Ukrainian National Police and the associated Interior Ministry, which retains the dominant influence of Azov-associated Arsen Avakov.
. . . . Ukraine’s government has severely restricted information about its casualty numbers, and frontline access to its forces is practically nonexistent for most news organizations. . . .
1b. Further clouding access to accurate information about what is actually occurring in the war is an accelerated American disinformation process enthusiastically touting dubious intelligence as a vehicle for—supposedly—“getting inside Putin’s head.”
It is highly unlikely that the purveyors of that low-quality intelligence are actually trying to influence Putin. The low-grade intelligence is more likely to be directed at the American people.
Also worth contemplating is the grotesque history of U.S. disinformation—a track record of egregious, official lying that dominates the American political and historical landscape.
The assassination of President Kennedy, the Vietnam War that, in large measure, resulted from that murder, the killings of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Iraq War and countless other fundamental official political lies do not appear to have taught the American people anything!
Their appetite for b.s. appears undiminished.
For more information about the “low-quality” intel being disseminated for psychological warfare purposes, see: https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr1237-how-many-lies-before-you-belong-to-the-lie-part-10/comment-page‑1/#comment-370625
“It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence,” one U.S. official said. “It’s more important to get out ahead of them [the Russians], Putin specifically, before they do something.”
1c. Next, we visit the satellite photos, also allegedly showing photos of the alleged “Russian atrocities” in Bucha, including the digging of the alleged mass grave to hold victims of said abominations.
Maxar is the company whose satellite photos are highlighted by our media to demonstrate the alleged atrocities.
Maxar, in turn, is the parent company of DigitalGlobe, a firm started by veterans of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”).
Growing out of late 1992 legislation that legalized the entry of private firms into the strategic reconnaissance satellite business, DigitalGlobe was the source of propagandized pictures alleging a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine in 2014!
DigitalGlobe/Maxar’s track record warrants scrutiny of the firm’s “evidence” in the context of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
More about Maxar can be found here: https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr1237-how-many-lies-before-you-belong-to-the-lie-part-10/comment-page‑1/#comment-370595
1d. In FTR#808, we set forth information about DigitalGlobe.
The satellite imagery purporting to show Russian armor and self-propelled artillery inside of Ukraine comes from a private company–DigitalGlobe. That company was founded by key personnel from Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative.
“DigitalGlobe”; Wikipedia.com.
. . . . . Origins[edit]
WorldView Imaging Corporation was founded in January 1992 in Oakland, California in anticipation of the 1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy Act (enacted in October 1992) which permitted private companies to enter the satellite imaging business.[3] Its founder was Dr Walter Scott, who was joined by co-founder and CEO Doug Gerull in late 1992. In 1993, the company received the first high resolution commercial remote sensing satellite license issued under the 1992 Act.[4] The company was initially funded with private financing from Silicon Valley sources and interested corporations in N. America, Europe, and Japan. Dr. Scott was head of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories “Brilliant Pebbles” and “Brilliant Eyes” projects which were part of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Doug Gerull was the executive in charge of the Mapping Sciences division at the Intergraph Corporation.[5] The company’s first remote sensing license from the United States Department of Commerce allowed it to build a commercial remote sensing satellite capable of collecting images with 3 m (9.8 ft) resolution.[3]
In 1995, the company became EarthWatch Incorporated, merging WorldView with Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.‘s commercial remote sensing operations.[6] In September 2001, EarthWatch became DigitalGlobe.[7] . . . . .
1e. DigitalGlobe co-founder Doug Gerull had previously worked for the Zeiss firm, discussed in FTR #272 as one of the German/Underground Reich/Bormann firms that were moving into satellite imagery technology in the U.S.
. . . . . Carl Zeiss
Privately Held; 10,001+ employees; Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing industry
January 1980 – 1985 (5 years) Toronto / White Plains, NY
1f. An article published after this program was recorded notes the dubious nature of the claims of a “Russian Invasion’ of Ukraine.
“Who’s Telling the ‘Big Lie’ On Ukraine?” by Robert Parry; Consortium News; 9/2/2014.
. . . . And now there’s the curious case of Russia’s alleged “invasion” of Ukraine, another alarmist claim trumpeted by the Kiev regime and echoed by NATO hardliners and the MSM.
While I’m told that Russia did provide some light weapons to the rebels early in the struggle so they could defend themselves and their territory – and a number of Russian nationalists have crossed the border to join the fight – the claims of an overt “invasion” with tanks, artillery and truck convoys have been backed up by scant intelligence.
One former U.S. intelligence official who has examined the evidence said the intelligence to support the claims of a significant Russian invasion amounted to “virtually nothing.” Instead, it appears that the ethnic Russian rebels may have evolved into a more effective fighting force than many in the West thought. They are, after all, fighting on their home turf for their futures.
2. A major consideration to be weighed concerns the Azov-imprinted Ukrainian police’s use of an American AI facial recognition software called Clearview.
The brainchild of Alt-right lynchpin Charles Johnson, Clearview received key start-up investment capital from Peter Thiel, one of the driving forces behind Trump and a major player in the Big Tech and electronic surveillance scene.
Critics have expressed concern about Clearview’s potential for abuse. Note that the firm uses a database of 20 billion faces, scraped from social media.
“Using Facial Recognition to Gain an Edge in War” by Kashmir Hill; The New York Times; 4/8/2022.
. . . . The tool [Clearview], which can identify a suspect caught on surveillance video, could be valuable to a country under attack, Mr. Ton-That wrote. He said the tool could identify people who might be spies, as well as deceased people, by comparing their faces against Clearview’s database of 20 billion faces from the public web, including from “Russian social sites such as VKontakte.”. . .
. . . . According to one email, Ukraine’s national police obtained two photos of dead Russians. . . .
3. More about the development of Clearview, Charles Johnson and Peter Thiel:
. . . . Palantir’s support of the Trump administration was still indirect, but Thiel was not above directly linking his business interests with Trump’s most controversial policies. In 2017, Charles Johnson persuaded Thiel to invest in a new venture that he was developing with Hoan Ton-That, the anti-Gawker enthusiast who’d met Thiel at the RNC. It was called Clearview—and the idea, as Johnson explained to Thiel, was simple. . . .
. . . . Clearview would eventually sign a contract to give ICE access to its technology—and would have Thiel’s help. After hearing Johnson’s pitch, he provided $200,000 in seed capital to the effort. . . .
4a. Before presenting some disturbing research presented by M.K. Bhadrakumar in his blog, we set forth his CV:
I was a career diplomat by profession. For someone growing up in the 1960s in a remote town at the southern tip of India, diplomacy was an improbable profession. My passion was for the world of literature, writing and politics – roughly in that order. While doing doctoral research on the works of Tennessee Williams, however, friends encouraged me to have a fling at the Civil Services Examination. As it turned out, before I could figure out the momentous import of what was unfolding, fate had pitchforked me into the top ranks of the merit list and ushered me into the Indian Foreign Service.
Roughly half of the 3 decades of my diplomatic career was devoted to assignments on the territories of the former Soviet Union and to Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Other overseas postings included South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Turkey. I write mainly on Indian foreign policy and the affairs of the Middle East, Eurasia, Central Asia, South Asia and the Asia-Pacific.
Writing must come in a spontaneous rush of thoughts. The exhilarating sense of freedom of an eclectic mind makes all the difference. None of the Indian Punchline blogs has been a pre-meditated act of writing. But then, I will be gravely remiss if I do not acknowledge the two profound influences on my formative years – my late mother who was a deeply religious person of extraordinary spirituality who moulded my inner world and my late father who was a prolific writer, author, and Marxist intellectual and thinker who introduced me at a young age to dialectics as a matchless intellectual tool to analyse the material world and decode politics.
The Indian Punchline may intentionally provoke at times, but there are no mala fide intentions here, no hidden agenda and no attempt to preach. Simply put, the Indian Punchline reflects a humanist’s markings against the backdrop of the ‘Asian Century’. I am underscoring this because we live in difficult times, especially in India, with such acute polarization in discourses – ‘You are either with us or against us’.
4b. M.K. 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. . . .”
“Migratory birds of mass destruction” by M.K. Bhadrakumar; Indian Punchline; 4/21/2022.
The UN Security Council held an extraordinary event on April 6 under the rubric Arria Formula Meeting on Biological Security regarding the biological activities in countries including Ukraine. Predictably, the US and UK representatives didn’t show up at the event and the western media also blacked out the proceedings. But that does not detract from the profound significance of what transpired.
The highlight of the Security Council proceedings lasting over two hours was the disclosure by General Igor Kirillov, chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, that Washington is creating biological laboratories in different countries and connecting them to a unified system.
He said the US has spent more than $5 billion on military biological programs since 2005 and detailed that in territories bordering Russia and China alone, about 60 facilities have been modernized during this period. The Ukrainian network of laboratories is designed to conduct research and monitor the biological situation consisting of 30 facilities in 14 populated locations.
Highly sensitive materials from the Ukrainian biological laboratories were exported to the US in early February just before the Russian special operation began, and the rest were ordered to be destroyed lest they fell into Russian hands. But the cover-up was only partially successful. Indeed, Russia is in possession of highly incriminating evidence.
Previously also, Russia had released a number of documents related to the biological military activities of the Pentagon, which pointed toward a worldwide project to set up biological laboratories in rival countries with the goal of developing targeted viral weapons against those countries.
The proceedings of the Security Council conference on April 6 are in the public domain and are accessible. See the video below:
Russia has made specific allegations, pointing finger at:
- Pentagon funding for the bio-labs in Ukraine;
- Location of these bio-labs (not only in Ukraine but in 36 countries around the world);
- Diseases and epidemics on which research work is going on, focusing on the means for their release, the countries where they are being tested (even without the knowledge of the governments of these countries); and, of course,
- Experiments relating to coronavirus (and bats used to transmit this virus).
However, the US has so far point-blank refused to accept any supervision and verification of such incriminatory evidences and has stonewalled the demand for a verification mechanism. It is unlikely that the US will permit an international verification process that holds the potential to expose it as indulging in crimes against humanity — although there are appropriate frameworks in place including the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the UN, to hear the clarifications from the relevant country in a fair and impartial manner.
A mind-boggling “discovery” that Russian forces in Ukraine stumbled upon is the use of numbered birds by the Pentagon-funded labs. This almost falls out of science fiction and Sir Alfred Hitchcock could have made an epic movie out of it where deception mixes with innocence and man’s cruelty to nature becomes unbearably grotesque. The project works like this:
To begin with, the Pentagon accesses the scientific data available with environmental specialists and zoologists after studying the migration of birds and observing them throughout the seasons, relating to the path these birds take each year on their seasonal journey from one country to another and even from one continent to another.
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. They birds are then released to the flock of the migratory birds in those target countries toward which the US intelligence has malevolent intentions.
Of course, these migratory birds travel great distances. The wandering albatross, for instance, is known to migrate at least 8500 km eastward across the South Pacific to the coast of South America, and many shy albatrosses migrate westward across the Indian Ocean to the coast of South Africa.
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. Sadly, my mind goes back to the novel by the American author Harper Lee To Kill a Mocking Bird, the haunting story of innocence destroyed by evil.
To return to reality, 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.
International law expressly forbids the numbering of migratory birds because they freely criss-cross the blue sky and air of other countries. By supplying them with germs, these birds become weapons of mass destruction. What human ingenuity! But the US enjoys total immunity from international law.
The bottom line is that only the US intelligence — and President Biden, perhaps, if he remembers — would know where all humans have been infected so far in this century by the Birds of Mass Destruction. Was Ebola that devastated Africa a test case and precursor of things to come?
What about Covid-19, which is known to have originated from funded laboratories that were administered by the US? It is very likely that the US might have used migratory birds to kill Chinese citizens. Clearly, the US in its desperation to reverse its global decline is pulling out all the stops to restore its hegemony in a world order that is inexorably moving toward multipolarity.
4c. 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. . . .”
“The Birds of Bharatpur” by N.R. Krishnan; The Hindu; 11/8/2014.
. . . . At Bharatpur in Rajasthan is the Keoladeo Ghana Bird Sanctuary, the winter sojourn of thousands of birds from far and near. They come from the icy wastes of Siberia and the cold sands of Central Asia, Europe, and the western and northern regions of China. In winter it is a bird-watcher’s paradise, with the long-necked Sarus cranes captivating visitors with their courtship dance.
An Indian ornithological outfit was interested in studying the migratory paths of the wintering birds. They wanted to catch a number of birds, put collars around their necks with identification marks and release them. The idea was to keep track of the birds wherever they rested along their routes and on their return to Bharatpur the next winter. Financial support came from the World Health Organization. . . .
. . . . One afternoon, the young officer had the opportunity to have tea with a veteran scientist-cum-administrator in the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. The elderly man was all warmth and friendliness and enquired of the officer how things were. The young man poured out his tale of woe in failing to convince the powers-that-be of the genuine request of the ornithologists and how much natural sciences research would be affected sans assistance. The man laughed, and asked, “Do you know the background of this project and the people who were interested in it?”, and proceeded to provide enlightenment.
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. For the novice Deputy Secretary, unused to such international cloak-and-dagger stuff, it was all like a John Le Carre novel with the field agent not knowing whether he was the hunter or the hunted. The man’s words explained the caution on the part of the officers he met and were terrifying. . . .
3. 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? . . . .”
. . . . For the Newport News study [in 1968 in Virginia—D.E.], he [Daniel E. Sonenshine] planted poles to partition the woods into forty-seven equilateral squares, placing live-animal traps covered with sticky tape at evenly spaced locations. One thousand lone star larvae were then released inside each square. Over the next few months, Sonenshine and his helpers would return to the woods to collect ticks from captured animals, cloth flags dragged along the ground, and the sticky tape. Each harvested tick was placed in a vial labeled with the location of the square in which it had been captured. Back at the lab, a technician would place the vials under a “scintillation detector” to measure how many original-release, radioactive larval ticks were in the batch. Adult and nymph-stage ticks were marked with colored enamel paint and then released into the square where they had been captured. The paint would allow them to be tracked as they migrated.
Over the three years, 194,150 radioisotope-tagged lone star tick larvae were released at the two Virginia sites. (See appendix 2: “Uncontrolled Tick Releases, 1966–1969.”) The sites were located on the Atlantic Flyway, the migratory bird superhighway that runs along the eastern South American and North American coasts.
On the face of it, there were clear public health benefits to these tick field tests. The lone star tick had been moving northward in the last few years, and it would be useful for the pest control people to know the rate at which the species was migrating. But the studies were also useful to the U.S. military planners at Fort Detrick who wanted to know how far lone star ticks might spread when released into enemy territory. . . .
. . . . The lone star tick is a “vicious biter, attacking man readily and voraciously,” said Glen Kohls, the tick zookeeper who worked with Willy [Burgdorfer] when he first arrived in Montana. 5 The Rocky Mountain Lab occasionally sent batches of lone star ticks to Fort Detrick. . . .
. . . . 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. They swarm. And unlike deer ticks, they have primitive eyes that help them creep toward prospective prey. . . .
. . . . Even more worrisome, lone star ticks are on the move, replacing long standing native tick populations. After World War II, lone stars were fairly concentrated in a region south of the Mason-Dixon line, bounded on the west by Texas and on the east by the Atlantic coast. 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? . . . .
6. 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?
7. 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. . . .”
8. Although heavily spun–as would be expected from a Daily Mail article–this story not only has important implications for the war in Ukraine, but also resonates with our long series on “The Oswald Institute of Virology.”
We note that there are significant connections between the agency overseeing the Ukrainian projects and institutions implicated in the apparent “bio-skullduggery” surrounding the U.S. biological warfare gambit involving what Mr. Emory has termed “The Oswald Institute of Virology.” This is discussed in: FTR#‘s 1157–1159, 1170, 1183 through 1193, and 1215.
The essence of the “Oswald Institute of Virology” gambit concerns the DTRA and Pentagon funding of bat-borne coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, much of it through Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance. Once the research was complete, it resulted in publication which included the genome of the bat viruses being researched. Using technology discussed below, the viruses were then synthesized from scratch and population groups were vectored with the same viral strains being researched by the WIV.
It turns out that Hunter Biden–a member of the board of directors at Burisma–was instrumental in securing funding for EcoHealth Alliance partner Metabiota, described in a screen shot of an e‑mail as being “to the DOA what Palantir is to CIA.”
Both EcoHealth Alliance and Metabiota have been involved with bat-borne coronavirus at the WIV.
Note that–” . . . . ‘His [Hunter Biden’s] father was the Vice President of the United States and in charge of relations with Ukraine.’ . . .”
Previously we have noted then Vice-President Joe Biden’s close relationship with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and Ukrainaian fascist Andriy Parubiy during the Maidan coup, which centered on false-flag sniper killings from buildings controlled by Svoboda (formerly the Social National Party of Ukraine, founded by Parubiy.)
Highlights of the Discussion:
- ” . . . . The commander of the Russian Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, claimed there was a ‘scheme of interaction between US government agencies and Ukrainian biological objects’ and pointed to the ‘financing of such activities by structures close to the current US leadership, in particular the investment fund Rosemont Seneca, which is headed by Hunter Biden.’. . .”
- ” . . . . Moscow’s claim that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military ‘bioweapons’ research program in Ukraine is at least partially true, according to new emails obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com. . . .”
- ” . . . . emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show he helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons. . . .”
- ” . . . . Metabiota has been an official partner of EcoHealth Alliance since 2014, according to its website. . . .”
- ” . . . . He also introduced Metabiota to an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma, for a ‘science project’ involving high biosecurity level labs in Ukraine . . . .”
- ” . . . . Emails and defense contract data reviewed by DailyMail.com suggest that Hunter had a prominent role in making sure Metabiota was able to conduct its pathogen research just a few hundred miles from the border with Russia. . . .”
- ” . . . . Metabiota has worked in Ukraine for Black & Veatch, a US defense contractor with deep ties to military intelligence agencies, which built secure labs in Ukraine that analyzed killer diseases and bioweapons. . . .”
- ” . . . . Hunter was also particularly involved in Metabiota’s operations in Ukraine. Hunter’s pitches to investors claimed that they not only organized funding for the firm, they also helped it ‘get new customers’ including ‘government agencies in case of Metabiota’. . . .”
- ” . . . . Former senior CIA officer Sam Faddis, who has reviewed emails on Hunter’s laptop, told DailyMail.com that the offer to help assert Ukraine’s independence was odd for a biotech executive [Metabiota vice-president Mary Guttieri]. ‘It raises the question, what is the real purpose of this venture? It’s very odd,’ he said. . . .”
- ” . . . . Guttieri had a leading role in Metabiota’s Ukraine operations, meeting with other company executives and US and Ukrainian military officials in October 2016 to discuss ‘cooperation in surveillance and prevention of especially dangerous infectious diseases, including zoonotic diseases in Ukraine and neighboring countries’ according to a 2016 report by the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine. . . .”
- ” . . . . Four days after Guttieri’s April 2014 email, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi wrote to Hunter revealing that the then-Vice President’s son had pitched a ‘science project’ involving Burisma and Metabiota in Ukraine. ‘As I understand the Metabiota was a subcontract to principal contactor of the DoD B&V [Black & Veatch]. . . .”
- ” . . . . Faddis told DailyMail.com that the attempt to get Metabiota to form a partnership with Burisma was a perplexing and worrying revelation. ‘His father was the Vice President of the United States and in charge of relations with Ukraine. So why was Hunter not only on the board of a suspect Ukrainian gas firm, but also hooked them up with a company working on bioweapons research?’ Faddis said. . . .”
- ” . . . . ‘The DoD position is that . . . . this is pandemic early warning research. We don’t know for sure that’s all that was going on. . . .”
- ” . . . . Government spending records show the Department of Defense awarded an $18.4million contract to Metabiota between February 2014 and November 2016, with $307,091 earmarked for ‘Ukraine research projects’. . . .”
- ” . . . . The US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) also commissioned B&V to build a Biological Safety Level 3 laboratory in Odessa, Ukraine in 2010, which ‘provided enhanced equipment and training to effectively, safely and securely identify especially dangerous pathogens’ according to a company press release. Such labs are used to ‘study infectious agents or toxins that may be transmitted through the air and cause potentially lethal infections,’ the US Department of Health and Human Services says. . . .”
- ” . . . . In another sign of the deep ties between Metabiota and the Department of Defense, Hunter’s RSTP business partner Rob Walker said he would ‘have a friend reach out to DoD on the down low’, in order to prove the company’s bona fides to top prospective investors Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in October 2014. . . .”
- ” . . . . Metabiota also has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), suspected to be the source of the COVID-19 outbreak. WIV was a hotspot for controversial ‘gain of function’ research that can create super-strength viruses. Chinese scientists performed gain of function research on coronaviruses at the WIV, working alongside a US-backed organization EcoHealth Alliance that has since drawn intense scrutiny over its coronavirus research since the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers from the Wuhan institute, Metabiota and EcoHealth Alliance published a study together in 2014 on infectious diseases from bats in China, which notes that tests were performed at the WIV. Shi Zhengli, the WIV Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases who became dubbed the ‘bat lady’ for her central role in bat coronavirus research at the lab, was a contributor to the paper. . . .”
The Russian government held a press conference Thursday claiming that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military ‘bioweapons’ research program in Ukraine
However the allegations were branded a brazen propaganda ploy to justify president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and sow discord in the US
But emails and correspondence obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show the claims may well be true
The emails show Hunter helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases
He also introduced Metabiota to an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma, for a ‘science project’ involving high biosecurity level labs in Ukraine
The president’s son and his colleagues invested $500,000 in Metabiota through their firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners
They raised several million dollars of funding for the company from investment giants including Goldman Sachs
Moscow’s claim that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military ‘bioweapons’ research program in Ukraine is at least partially true, according to new emails obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.
The commander of the Russian Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, claimed there was a ‘scheme of interaction between US government agencies and Ukrainian biological objects’ and pointed to the ‘financing of such activities by structures close to the current US leadership, in particular the investment fund Rosemont Seneca, which is headed by Hunter Biden.’
Intelligence experts say the Russian military leader’s allegations were a brazen propaganda ploy to justify president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and sow discord in the US.
But emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show he helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons.
He also introduced Metabiota to an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma, for a ‘science project’ involving high biosecurity level labs in Ukraine.
And although Metabiota is ostensibly a medical data company, its vice president emailed Hunter in 2014 describing how they could ‘assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia’ – an unusual goal for a biotech firm.
Emails and defense contract data reviewed by DailyMail.com suggest that Hunter had a prominent role in making sure Metabiota was able to conduct its pathogen research just a few hundred miles from the border with Russia.
The project turned into a national security liability for Ukraine when Russian forces invaded the country last month.
Metabiota has worked in Ukraine for Black & Veatch, a US defense contractor with deep ties to military intelligence agencies, which built secure labs in Ukraine that analyzed killer diseases and bioweapons.
Earlier this month US officials warned congress that ‘Russian forces may be seeking to gain control’ of these ‘biological research facilities’, prompting fears that deadly and even engineered pathogens could fall into Russian hands.
Hunter and his colleagues at his investment firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) routinely raised millions of dollars for technology companies, hoping the firms would take off and make them all fortunes.
Metabiota was one of those firms. Emails between Hunter and his colleagues excitedly discuss how the company’s monitoring of medical data could become an essential tool for governments and companies looking to spot outbreaks of infectious diseases.
The president’s son and his colleagues invested $500,000 in Metabiota through their firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners.
They raised several million dollars of funding for the company from investment giants including Goldman Sachs.
But emails show Hunter was also particularly involved in Metabiota’s operations in Ukraine.
Hunter’s pitches to investors claimed that they not only organized funding for the firm, they also helped it ‘get new customers’ including ‘government agencies in case of Metabiota’.
He and his business partner Eric Schwerin even discussed subletting their office space to the firm in April 2014, their emails reveal.
That month, Metabiota vice president Mary Guttieri wrote a memo to Hunter outlining how they could ‘assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia’.
‘Thanks so much for taking time out of your intense schedule to meet with Kathy [Dimeo, Metabiota executive] and I on Tuesday. We very much enjoyed our discussion,’ Guttieri wrote.
‘As promised, I’ve prepared the attached memo, which provides an overview of Metabiota, our engagement in Ukraine, and how we can potentially leverage our team, networks, and concepts to assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society.’
Former senior CIA officer Sam Faddis, who has reviewed emails on Hunter’s laptop, told DailyMail.com that the offer to help assert Ukraine’s independence was odd for a biotech executive.
‘It raises the question, what is the real purpose of this venture? It’s very odd,’ he said.
Guttieri had a leading role in Metabiota’s Ukraine operations, meeting with other company executives and US and Ukrainian military officials in October 2016 to discuss ‘cooperation in surveillance and prevention of especially dangerous infectious diseases, including zoonotic diseases in Ukraine and neighboring countries’ according to a 2016 report by the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine.
At the time, Hunter was serving as a board member of Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, owned by former top government official and allegedly corrupt billionaire Mikolay Zlochevsky.
Four days after Guttieri’s April 2014 email, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi wrote to Hunter revealing that the then-Vice President’s son had pitched a ‘science project’ involving Burisma and Metabiota in Ukraine.
‘Please find few initial points to be discussed for the purposes of analyzing the potential of this as you called, ‘Science Ukraine’ project,’ Pozharskyi wrote.
‘As I understand the Metabiota was a subcontract to principal contactor of the DoD B&V [Black & Veatch].
‘What kind of partnership Metabiota is looking for in Ukraine? From potential non-governmental player in Kiev? Rebuilt the ties with respective ministries in Ukraine, and on the basis of that reinstate the financing from the B&V? Or they look for partnership in managing projects in Ukraine, PR with Government institutions here, financing of the projects?’
Faddis told DailyMail.com that the attempt to get Metabiota to form a partnership with Burisma was a perplexing and worrying revelation.
‘His father was the Vice President of the United States and in charge of relations with Ukraine. So why was Hunter not only on the board of a suspect Ukrainian gas firm, but also hooked them up with a company working on bioweapons research?’ Faddis said.
‘It’s an obvious Russian propaganda attempt to take advantage of this. But it doesn’t change the fact that there does seem to be something that needs to be explored here.
‘The DoD position is that there’s nothing nefarious here, this is pandemic early warning research. We don’t know for sure that’s all that was going on.
‘But the question still remains: why is Hunter Biden in the middle of all this? Why is the disgraced son of the vice president at the heart of this – the guy with no discernible skills and a cocaine habit.’
Pozharsky said in his email to Hunter that he had encountered such biological research projects before in his former job as a Ukrainian government official, and claimed that B&V worked on ‘similar or the same projects’ as the proposed contract for Metabiota.
Government spending records show the Department of Defense awarded an $18.4million contract to Metabiota between February 2014 and November 2016, with $307,091 earmarked for ‘Ukraine research projects’.
The US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) also commissioned B&V to build a Biological Safety Level 3 laboratory in Odessa, Ukraine in 2010, which ‘provided enhanced equipment and training to effectively, safely and securely identify especially dangerous pathogens’ according to a company press release.
Such labs are used to ‘study infectious agents or toxins that may be transmitted through the air and cause potentially lethal infections,’ the US Department of Health and Human Services says.
B&V was awarded a further five-year $85million contract in 2012.
Emails and defense contract data reviewed by DailyMail.com suggest that Hunter had a prominent role in making sure Metabiota was able to conduct its pathogen research just a few hundred miles from the border with Russia.
In another sign of the deep ties between Metabiota and the Department of Defense, Hunter’s RSTP business partner Rob Walker said he would ‘have a friend reach out to DoD on the down low’, in order to prove the company’s bona fides to top prospective investors Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in October 2014.
RSTP was a subsidiary of Rosemont Capital, an investment company founded by Hunter and former Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz in 2009.
Metabiota also has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), suspected to be the source of the COVID-19 outbreak.
WIV was a hotspot for controversial ‘gain of function’ research that can create super-strength viruses.
Chinese scientists performed gain of function research on coronaviruses at the WIV, working alongside a US-backed organization EcoHealth Alliance that has since drawn intense scrutiny over its coronavirus research since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Researchers from the Wuhan institute, Metabiota and EcoHealth Alliance published a study together in 2014 on infectious diseases from bats in China, which notes that tests were performed at the WIV.
Shi Zhengli, the WIV Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases who became dubbed the ‘bat lady’ for her central role in bat coronavirus research at the lab, was a contributor to the paper.
Metabiota has been an official partner of EcoHealth Alliance since 2014, according to its website.
Is Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology a tool for deterring war crimes? Yes, according to Clearview AI. Beyond that, the tool is invaluable for solving crimes. Especially child sex crimes. These are all the claims made by Clearview AI’s founder Hoan Ton-That in an interview last month following the reports about the extensive use of Clearview’s services by Ukraine’s military. Uses that include identify dead Russian soldiers and sending notifications to their families.
But the interview wasn’t just about Clearview’s use in Ukraine. Ton-That was pressed on a number of controversial aspects about the company, like privacy concerns and its extensive ties to the far right. And that’s where we saw this remarkable spin. As Ton-That characterizes the company, it solely provides its extensive facial database services to law enforcement and only for retrospective investigations of crimes. There is no real-time usage of their services according to Thon-That.
When asked about all of the previous reports about these services being offer to private companies, like in the financial sector, Thon-That again emphasized that it would purely be used for crime and fraud prevention. Recall how Clearview has been telling the public that its services are only being offered to law enforcement agencies. And yet reports have come out showing how Clearview has been offering its services to more than 2,200 private organizations. Beyond that, Clearview appeared to have certain companies that were given the designation of “Friend” in their web app. Companies given the “Friend” label include SHW Partners LLC, founded by former Trump campaign senior official Jason Miller. Even right-wing think tanks like the Manhattan Institute and the American Enterprise Institute got to access their services.
How about Clearview AI’s extensive ties to the far right? Well, according to Thon-That, Clearview has no political motivation. Also, far right troll Charles Johnson has nothing to do with the company and never has. End of story. Recall how Charles Johnson boasted about how Clearview would be ideal for the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants and eventually signed a contract with ICE. We’re also told that Peter Thiel’s $200,000 in seed capital came after hearing Johnson’s pitch. Also recall how one of the figures who initially signed up to use Clearview’s services was was Paul Nehlen, a former rising star in the GOP who was eventually kicked out of the party for being an open neo-Nazi. Clearview was offering their services to Nehlen during his campaign for “extreme opposition research”. So that’s how Clearview addresses concerns about its extensive ties to the far right: denials and dodges.
Now about about internal controls to address possible abuses of the system? Clearview doesn’t appear to actually have any. Instead, it advises clients on how to self-monitor their usage. So how many clients have ever reported any abuses? None. So it’s all good. That’s seriously the answers Thon-That gave. It’s basically the NSO Group model for preventing client abuses, which is nothing.
And those denials and dodges were all part of this interview about Clearview’s usage in Ukraine. So what did Clearview have to say about how its tools are being used by Ukraine? After all, if ever there was a situation where we should fear government officials abusing this system for the purpose of political purges, it would be Ukraine’s security services — with their deep ties to the far right — in the middle of a war. It’s the perfect situation to liquidate the political opposition in the country...as long as you can identify that political opposition. And as we’ve seen, Clearview’s tools are basically perfect for identifying political opponents. Not only does the service provide you with the identities of people you submit of a photo of, but it also identifies the webpage where the matched photos were scraped. And for Clearview, these photos are overwhelming going to be taken from social media pages where people are most inclined to express their political opinions. So Clearview acts as a service where you can feed in faces and get back social media webpages for the people in that photo. If Ukraine’s far right wanted to pic out the left leaning sympathizers in photo they now have the tools to do it. According to Clearview, there have been ~14k searches conducted by Ukrainian officials.
Thon-That goes on to tout Clearview’s usage for identify dead Russian soldiers and notifying their families back in Russia. He also claims that Clearview can potentially be used for war crimes investigations, given how much surveillance footage that gets generated in the modern battlefield. That’s how Thon-That claims Clearview is going to prevent war crimes.
It also sounds like Clearview’s relationship with the Ukrainian government was formed when one of the lawyers on its advisory board, former National Security Council member Lee Wolosky, just happened to be in Ukraine back in March when the company got the idea of offering its services for use in the war. It’s not clear what Wolosky was doing in Ukraine at that time, but it’s worth noting that Wolosky is the lawyer for none other than Elliot Broidy, one of the ‘international men of mystery’ who figured prominently in the many scandals swirling around the Trump administration, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Ukraine.
Overall, given the generally positive media coverage of how Clearview’s tools are being used by Ukraine, it’s clear that this story is being used to help mainstream Clearview and launder its reputation. And as Thon-That’s interview underscores, the reputation Clearview is trying to achieve is not just that of a responsible company without far right ties, but an invaluable law enforcement tool that makes the public square safer. So if you thought the way the war in Ukraine was being used to launder the reputation of the far right couldn’t get any worse, here’s an example of it getting much worse:
“MR. TON-THAT: So first of all, I would say that the way we collect information is in compliance with all applicable laws around data collection. We have a really great legal team that handles these kinds of issues. And anything that’s out there is public information. So, what I like to talk about is this is kind of like digital public square. And you know, this information is public already. And if it can be used to help solve crimes and make the public safer, I think that’s a really good use case of this information.”
Clearview AI isn’t a creepy for-profit entity run by far right individuals. No no, it’s a mission-driven firm on the question to assist law enforcement, in particular when it comes to solving child sex crimes. And Clearview’s technology is ONLY used retrospectively to solve crimes after the fact. It’s never used to for real-time surveillance. And it’s ONLY sold to governments and law enforcement agencies. Never private companies. A safe service dedicated to public safety, especially child safety. So don’t worry about how this growing database of virtually facial recognition database that covers basically everyone on the planet gets used. Worry instead about how it’s not being used and all the child sex crimes that aren’t going solved as a result. That’s the spin Clearview AI is going with these days:
So what was Ton-That’s response to questions about Clearview’s clear interest in selling its services to private entities like financial companies? He simply asserted that its technology will be used for crime and fraud prevention by the private sector too. So Clearview is only sold to governments and law enforcement agencies and only for solving crimes retrospectively. Except when its sold to private companies and used for crime prevention:
So what kinds of controls does Clearview AI have on how its tools are used? Well, it strongly advises clients to have a facial recognition policy. That’s about it:
And based on these ‘internal controls’, Clearview assures us that they’ve never had a wrongful arrest or misidentification due to their technology. And never a direct report of abuse. So how many clients have revoked access to their own users? It’s a system set up to have the clients self-regulate, so that would be a pretty important metric for assessing how the system is actually being used. But Clearview doesn’t appear to have those numbers and merely assures is that its clients have the tools they need to self-regulate:
Now what about all those lingering questions about the far right politics of the people involved with the founding of the company? People like Peter Thiel and Charles Johnson? Well, Ton-That assures us that Clearview has no political motivation. Also, Charles Johnson has nothing to do with the company and never has been actively involved. Period. That’s his answer:
And that all brings us to Clearview’s services in Ukraine. Services that were apparently initially facilitated by one of the lawyers sitting on Clearview’s advisory board, former National Security Council member Lee Wolosky, who just happened to be meeting people in Ukraine at the time. The services range from identify people at checkpoints and identifying the dead, to apparently preventing war crimes. Yes, Ton-That apparently is touting Clearview AI’s usage in war zone as a deterrent to war crimes. Apparently potential war crime perpetrators will be dissuaded due to fears about be caught on camera and retrospectively identified:
So how heavily has Clearview been used by those six Ukrainian agencies? Well, there are around 410 users who have conducted up to 14,809 searches. And according to Ton-That, each one of these searches “is a potential, you know, checkpoint, identification of war criminal, and/or, you know, many of these cases.” So it sounds like ‘war crimes’ investigations is apparently one of the main uses Ukraine has for Clearview’s services on the battlefield:
Is the processing of battlefield footage by Clearview going to become routine in the conflicts of the future? It’s a market Clearview is obviously trying to create. And that points towards what is arguably the most unsettling aspect of this story: As deep as Clearview’s ties were to the national security state before, they’re only going to get deeper as a result of Clearview turning Ukraine into a giant example of the applications of a global facial recognition database on the battlefield.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, just issued a rather intriguing press release: Meta has rescinded a request to have Facebook’s new Oversight Board adjudicate an issue related to the war in Ukraine, citing ‘ongoing safety and security concerns’.
What was the issue that Meta asked the board to look into? We have no idea. We didn’t even know they made the request in the first place since it was made in secret?
But as the following article reminds us, there’s on big very obvious possible issue involving Meta’s policies in Ukraine that seem like an obvious candidate for outside moderation: Facebook’s decision to allow calls for the deaths for Russian soldiers and leaders in the context of the invasion of Ukraine, along with the parallel decision to allow for the praise of openly Nazi Ukrainian battalions like the Azov battalion specifically in the context of fighting this war. Might that be the secret topic at hand that Meta just dismissed due to “ongoing safety and security concerns”? It’s a likely candidate.
But as we’re going to see in the second article below, there’s another possible Ukraine-related controversy that recently came up: a group of anonymous Facebook moderators went to the press a couple weeks ago complaining about ambiguity in how Facebook was handling the alleged civilian massacres by Russian soldiers in Bucha. The moderators all work for third party contractors like Accenture or Bertelsmann now that Facebook has outsourced its moderation workforce.
The way these moderators described it, Facebook users are barred from posting content that makes violent threats through “references to historical or fictional incidents of violence”. But Facebook hadn’t yet designated the events in Bucha to be one of those historical incidents of violence. So these moderators are apparently forced to keep problematic posts up. The example they gave is a post that showed a T‑shirt featuring a butcher carving up a pig, with Russian text on it reading “??Z?? ? ???? ????? ??V??????” – “Slaughter in Bucha, we can repeat”. In other words, it was post that seemed to be made by a Russian taking credit for the civilian massacres in Bucha and threatening more. That’s the kind of post that’s being allowed to stay up on Facebook as a result of this policy ambiguity. A post where Russians seem to take credit for the massacres in Bucha, which is obviously not a post that’s helpful for Russia in this conflict. Quite the contrary.
So we have to ask: we that public complaint by these third party contracted moderators what Meta was asking its Oversight Board to look into? We don’t know. Meta isn’t saying. All we know is that there was some issue involving the war in Ukraine that Meta felt was thorny enough to hand over to its fancy new Oversight Board. And then it got cold feet:
“Meta confirmed that the policy advisory request was withdrawn in a blog post, but declined to explain what the request entailed, when it was made, or elaborate on why it was pulled.”
Why did Meta pull this request? The company isn’t saying. Nor is it revealing the thorny issue that Meta initially delegated to its Oversight Board in the first place? All we know about this is that Meta made a request, in secret initially, and then publicly withdrew that request. But there’s a very obvious potential issue: Facebook’s decision to temporarily allow call of violence against Russian leaders and soldiers invading Ukraine. Sure, we don’t know if that’s the actual issue Meta asked for guidance on but it sure seems like the kind of issue that Meta might want to delegate to its Oversight Board, if only to deflect criticism onto Board for the ultimate decision:
And don’t forget, Facebook’s decision back in early March wasn’t just to allow for the calling of violence against Russian soldiers and leaders. It also allowed for the praise Nazi battalions like Azov as long as that praise was in the context of fighting Russians. Was that part of what Meta initially asked the board to resolve?
And then there’s the related issue that was raised by the Facebook moderators themselves a couple of weeks ago: these moderators were expressing frustration over what they perceived was a lack of guidance from Meta on how to moderate aspects of the war in Ukraine. In particular, it sounds like the moderators weren’t sure if they were supposed to take down posts that have the appearance of being made by someone in support of alleged Russian civilian massacres in Bucha, but made with just enough ambiguity where it’s not entirely clear if the posts are celebrating the massacres or mocking perceived Russian celebrations of the massacres. It sounds like these moderators are forced to seek out “regional input” from Facebook regarding whether or not posts involving deaths in Bucha can be deleted and that regional input has never arrived and the the flagged posts become much hard to take down. Posts seemingly celebrating Russian civilian massacres in Bucha. The moderators are asking that Facebook instead declare the civilian killings in Bucha to be a “internally designated” event that will allowing these moderators to easily take down these posts.
Note that it only sounds like posts that are somewhat coy about whether or not they are really celebrating the civilian deaths in Bucha fall into this ambiguous territory. Posts unambiguously celebrating the civilian deaths in Bucha can be take down right away.
But also keep in mind that posts on Facebook that appear to be pro-Russian and celebrating the civilian deaths in Bucha area actually running counter to Russian interests and the official Russian line that the civilian massacres in Bucha were staged by the Ukrainians to some extent. An assertion for which there is ample circumstantial evidence. So Meta has been allowing these problematic posts to stay up through this “regional input” bottleneck in its moderation pipeline, posts that actually make Russians look worse on the platform, and now we have a bunch of anonymous moderators going to the press complaining about how Facebook isn’t being hard enough on Russia.
Also keep in mind that if the lack of “regional input” is the bottleneck here, it sounds like the Facebook division that covers Ukraine is ultimately responsible for keeping these problematic posts up. Might that be intentional? Again, the posts that are being left up basically look like Russians celebrating and taking credit for alleged Bucha civilian massacres. It’s not like those posts aren’t in Ukraine’s favor in the big picture.
Interestingly, these moderators were also expressing what they felt like Facebook’s lack of urgency over the issue and attributed that to Facebook being a US company catering to a domestic audience that may not be as focused on Ukraine as these moderators would prefer. As one moderator puts it, “I was quite happy with the initial reaction of Facebook to the war...I was quite happy with the exceptions that were made that allowed dehumanising speech against soldiers. Those changes brought some balance into the policies: victims and oppressors were not treated the same and were not given the same rights. But now, it has become clear that what counts for Facebook is American public opinion. They only care if they look good in the US media.” In other words, these moderators were going public with concerns that Facebook’s policies of allowing the dehumanizing speech against Russian soldiers didn’t go nearly far enough. And yet, based on the examples they give of the ambiguous Bucha posts, it appears that this policy ambiguity was likely created from the same pro-Russian-dehumanizing policy change these moderators were praising. It raises the question as to what exact policy changes are these moderators looking for Meta to impose?
But there’s another interesting detail about how Facebook handles its content moderation that this story reminds us of: Facebook has completely outsourced its moderation to third-party contractors, like Accenture and Bertelsmann. Yes, Bertelsmann is one of the companies actually implementing Facebook’s content moderation. So when we have anonymous moderators going to press complaining about Facebook not being anti-Russia enough during this war, it raises the question as to whether or not these anonymous moderators are purely speaking on their own behalf or if they’re sharing the concerns of their third party employer like Bertelsmann:
“Under Facebook’s public moderation guidelines, users are barred from posting content that makes violent threats through “references to historical or fictional incidents of violence”. But in private documents issued to moderators, who work for third-party contracting firms such as Accenture or Bertelsmann, they are told to wait for regional input from Facebook itself before determining whether a “documented violent incident” counts.”
Meta hires third party contractors from firms like Accenture or Bertelsmann to handling their moderation, including taking down barred content that makes violent threats through “references to historical or fictional incidents of violence.” But threats referring to a repeat of the civilian deaths in Bucha, which these moderators characterize as a “documented violent incident”, fall into a regulatory greyzone that requires the moderators to seek out guidance from Facebook’s regional offices as to whether or not threats alluding to the civilian deaths in Bucha fall into this category. And that regional input from Facebook itself hasn’t been forthcoming. That appears to be the crux of this issue:
And yet, again, there’s no denying that allowing these posts to stay up with statements like “Slaughter in Bucha, we can repeat” are decidedly not in Russia’s interests. So we have content moderators complaining that Facebook’s policy ambiguity and bureaucratic inaction in the face of the stories coming out of Bucha aren’t going far enough to prevent Russian propaganda. And yet the very same behavior by Meta that these moderators are complaining about is effectively allowing posts that look like Russian admissions of guilt over the civilian deaths in Bucha.
So, again, we have to ask: was this the issue that Facebook secretly asked its Oversight Board to look into? We don’t know, but if so, it shouldn’t be too shocking that they rescinded that request given how sordid this situation appears to be. Either way, try not to be super shocked if we see suddenly see a flood of ‘Russian’ social media posts seemingly taking credit for one alleged massacre after another.