Sunday, September 13, 2020

State Dept. Inspector General Report: A Troubling Message on Arms Sales

by Diane Bernabei and Beth Van Schaack

August 26, 2020



The U.S. State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently released a report that, even in its redacted form, makes plain that the Trump administration circumvented U.S. law in multiple ways to carry out arms transfers to the Saudi-led Coalition in Yemen. In doing so, the administration failed to fully and accurately assess the humanitarian impact of U.S. support, according to the report. That is a stunning revelation given the repeated, severe cases of civilian casualties resulting from Saudi-led Coalition operations over the past several years. Although an unredacted version of the report was leaked, a key annex remains classified so the full extent of how this administration’s actions transpired remains hidden from the public. However, what is clear is that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo undertook several steps to evade arms export controls to put lethal munitions into the hands of Coalition members, which human rights groups have alleged have committed war crimes against civilians. (See earlier coverage here). This article discusses the OIG’s findings with reference to what is at stake for the people of Yemen and the worrisome deterioration of U.S. arms control policy under the Trump administration.

The Costly War in Yemen

On August 9, 2018, a school bus carrying children on an excursion in Dhahyan, a city in northern Yemen, was struck by a 500-pound paveway MK-82 laser-precision guided munition, made in the United States by Lockheed Martin and exported to Saudi Arabia for its air force’s use in the war in Yemen. Fifty-one civilians were killed in the strike — 49 of them were children. The incident was just one in a series of attacks on civilians launched by the Saudi-led Coalition, a group that includes Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan (a controversy in itself). (Qatar withdrew in 2017; Morocco withdrew in February of 2019, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) followed suit in July 2019). This operation, like others, was apparently executed with American-made weapons. In March 2016, the coalition used an MK-84 precision-guided munition (PGM) in an attack on a market that killed 97 civilians, including 25 children. Earlier that year, coalition forces deployed a U.S.-made MK-82 PGM in a strike on a funeral hall in Sana’a. One hundred fifty-five people died and 600 were injured. Since 2015, Physicians for Human Rights has documented 120 attacks on medical infrastructure and health workers, a distinctive feature of this already deadly conflict. A similar report counts 380 attacks on, or in close proximity to, educational facilities. Many of these were airstrikes on areas where researchers insist there were no military targets present. Mwatana for Human Rights, the premier human rights documentation organization in Yemen, co-authored both reports based upon their painstaking research on the ground. An open source intelligence investigation by Bell¿ngcat reveals a stunning collection of allegedly unlawful airstrikes by the Coalition in Yemen.

Since its initial involvement in 2015, the Saudi-led Coalition has repeatedly killed or injured civilians in attacks they claimed either targeted legitimate military objectives or were the result of “mistakes.” Yet, it is hard not to wonder how bombing hospitals, wedding parties, funeral processions, markets, schools, and school buses could possibly serve any legitimate military purpose and how such a seemingly sophisticated coalition could make so many mistakes that take such a consistent and flagrant toll on human life. Indeed, Justice Renate Winter — an Austrian expert on the Committee of the Rights of the Child and former judge of the Special Court for Sierra Leone — pointedly asked the Saudi representative in a session before her Committee:


You say it’s an accident. How many such accidents can you bear and how many such accidents can people in the country bear?

Taken together, these strikes blend into a clear and dominant pattern that has emerged around the Coalition’s behavior in the war in Yemen — the reckless, indiscriminate, or intentional targeting of civilians and an overall disregard for human rights. Individuals, armed groups, and states that deliberately or indiscriminately target civilians, or utilize disproportionate force in their operations, are in violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), or the laws of war, and the prohibition on war crimes. Furthermore, the continued use of a knowingly flawed targeting process that cannot distinguish between civilians and military objectives also implicates IHL and the prohibition against war crimes in particular, as has been explained in the past on these pages. To be sure, the Houthi rebels and their supporters are not operating with clean hands either. They too have been credibly accused of war crimes. However, that is no excuse for the Saudi-led coalition, or the United States acting in support, to depart from their legal obligations to respect civilian life.

Restrictions on U.S. Arms Sales to Protect Civilians

Although the United States is not ever listed as a formal member of the Saudi Coalition, its munitions have been instrumental in the Coalition’s operations and the harm to civilians they have caused. Given the magnitude of weapons (ranging from cluster munitions to laser-guided missiles), intelligence, expertise, and logistical support (including, at one point, mid-air refueling) being provided, and even not counting its airstrikes in the country aimed at al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and ISIS, one can query what threshold of involvement would have to be crossed for the United States to be officially considered a member of this Coalition — or, more precisely, a party to the armed conflict between the Saudi-led Coalition and the Houthis — notwithstanding that Washington is assisting from the sidelines. This question has been taken up here; this article focuses on the way in which the Trump administration has managed to avoid civilian protection elements of U.S. arms control measures in its sale of munitions to Saudi Arabia.

While the U.S. arms export regime is primarily designed to protect against the export of sensitive military technology and arms sales that could pose threats to U.S. national security, its underpinnings are also meant to minimize civilian casualties and prevent U.S. weapons from being exported to states where they could be used in violation of IHL. For this reason, the U.S. Munitions List (USML) grants an oversight power for the trade of defense-related articles, services, and equipment to the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs — which must coordinate with State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor — and the Bureau of International Security and Non-proliferation. This system requires a rigorous assessment of end-users, and their history of war fighting, before permission will be granted for foreign military sales or direct commercial sales of U.S.-made weapons to ensure that arms are not used to commit acts that violate the law.

Since Jimmy Carter occupied the White House, the United States has maintained a Conventional Arms Transfer (CAT) Policy. The Obama-era CAT Policy (Presidential Policy Directive 27) explicitly prohibited the State Department from approving arms transfers in instances in which there was a risk the weapons would contribute to abuses of human rights and violations of IHL. In considering arms transfer decisions, the executive branch took into account:


The likelihood that the recipient would use the arms to commit human rights abuses or serious violations of international humanitarian law, retransfer the arms to those who would commit human rights abuses or serious violations of international humanitarian law, or identify the United States with human rights abuses or serious violations of international humanitarian law.

The Obama administration pledged not to authorize any transfer if it knew that arms would be used to commit: genocide; crimes against humanity; grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949; serious violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949; attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians who are legally protected from attack or other war crimes as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2441. Likewise, it would consider whether the transfer of weapons would raise concerns


about undermining international peace and security, serious violations of human rights law, including serious acts of gender-based violence and serious acts of violence against women and children, serious violations of international humanitarian law, terrorism, transnational organized crime, or indiscriminate use.

Congress has a role here as well. Perhaps most importantly, the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), while vesting power in the president to authorize the export of defense articles, also requires a formal advance notification of certain arms sales to Congress. This advance notification (see Sections 36(b), 36(c), and 36(d) of the AECA (22 U.S.C. § 2776)) gives Congress the opportunity to review, deliberate upon, and pass a Joint Resolution of Disapproval in instances in which it would like to block an arms transfer.

President Trump’s Erosion of These Protections

Across the board, the Trump administration has significantly weakened this export regime and these civilian-protection policies, in part to preserve U.S. dominance in the international arms market. The amended Conventional Arms Transfer Policy (National Security Presidential Memorandum 10, issued on April 19, 2018) contains similar references to taking into account the risk that the weapons transferred would be used to commit atrocity crimes. However, it now includes language that narrows the scope of end-user risks to prohibiting only arms transfers in cases in which the United States has actual knowledge its arms exports will be used in attacks “intentionally” directed against civilians. The addition of the word “intentionally” means that arms sales would only be prohibited under a circumstance in which officials have actual knowledge of plans for an intentional civilian massacre, which could exclude instances of U.S. arms being used in indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks when civilians are collateral damage. The use of disproportionate force, even absent an intent to harm civilians, constitutes a war crime under IHL. The International Committee of the Red Cross designates the following as a war crime:


launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

Furthermore, the Trump administration recategorized several lethal articles on the USML as “commercial products” that will now be exported under the authority of the Department of Commerce, therefore no longer requiring end-user vetting from the State Department. (Although the Obama administration migrated a few categories, mostly component parts, none of the categories comprised lethal weapons). Such “commercial products” include lethal munitions such as certain semi-automatic firearms, their ammunition and accessories. Besides nullifying the arms exports laws that apply to these categories, this decision comes with other lethal consequences. Among them, experts expect increased illicit arms trafficking and the increased use of U.S. lethal weapons in human rights violations.

And, in April 2019, President Trump withdrew the U.S. signature from the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). During the Obama administration, the United States was instrumental in negotiating this treaty so that it would be consistent with U.S. export regulations then in place. Secretary of State John Kerry signed the ATT in 2013, and President Obama submitted it to the Senate for ratification. The ATT, whose members and signatories met virtually last week, contains ground-breaking language at Article 6(3) prohibiting any state party from transferring conventional arms if


it has knowledge at the time of authorization that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined by international agreements to which it is a Party.

Although the U.S. never ratified the treaty, its signature indicated its agreement with this approach and its pledge not to violate the object or purpose of the treaty.

These are clear examples of a deterioration in human rights considerations in the arms trade and US arms export policy but over the course of the Trump administration, we have witnessed a disintegration of civilian protections in policies governing U.S. operations as well.

For example, the Trump administration implemented retrograde policies on landmines and cluster munitions. First: the Trump administration reversed an Obama-era prohibition on the use of landmines, which had brought U.S. policy in closer alignment with the Ottawa Convention (the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction) and global humanitarian standards. In 2018 alone, civilians represented more than 70 percent of causalities caused by landmines — more than half of those were children. Under the Trump administration, the Defense Department’s policy on landmines now permits the use and production of anti-personnel landmines. In 2017, DoD also reversed a long-standing policy that required the United States to destroy all but a small selection of its active stockpile of cluster munitions. The new policy grants U.S. military commanders the right to approve the use of cluster munitions, DoD the right to acquire new cluster munitions, and U.S. exporters the right to transfer cluster munitions in accordance with existing law, an overarching policy that seems to indefinitely delay the implementation of regulations more in line with the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.

To provide another pertinent example, the Trump White House issued Executive Order 13862, which revokes an important reporting requirement that mandates the Directorate of National Intelligence to release an annual report on strikes undertaken by all U.S. departments and agencies against terrorist targets, a requirement originally contained in Section 3 of Obama’s EO 13732 on Pre -and Post-Strike Measures to Address Civilian Causalities in U.S. Operations involving the Use of Force.

U.S. Track Record in Training Allies in Airstrikes

Notably, EO 13732 features another policy pertinent to the discussion of this article. It directs U.S. agencies and officials to engage with foreign partners on “best practices for reducing the likelihood of and responding to civilian causalities,” particularly in airstrikes. However, past efforts to convey this training, especially with the Saudi-led Coalition, have been fruitless. The Coalition has time and again eschewed the rules and regulations suggested by U.S. officials. This is according to Larry Lewis, former State Department Adviser on Civilian Harm, who, in commenting on the Obama administration’s decision to withdraw training in an interview with the New York Times, said, “the response was, ‘clearly the Saudis aren’t learning.’” Likewise, former senior DOD official Andrew Exum wrote: “decades of U.S. training missions had not produced a Saudi military capable of independently planning and executing an effective air campaign that minimized collateral damage.”

The State Department Inspector General’s Report on U.S. Breaches of These Policies

However watered-down and weakened, this network of laws and policies still expressly prohibits the State Department from approving the sale of arms — like the Mark 80 precision-guided missile (PGM) series — when officials have knowledge that the arms will be used deliberately against civilians. They also clearly grant Congress the right and authority to exercise oversight over, and to block, such transfers. Yet, in its most recent report on the subject, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) lays bare the fact that the State Department not only neglected its responsibility to consider human rights in approving arms transfers but also intentionally circumvented Congress’s attempt to block the $3.8 billion sale of PGMs to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The OIG reported that on May 23, 2019, Pompeo certified “an emergency existed” in the war in Yemen, referring vaguely to “recent Iranian aggression” in the Persian Gulf. Pompeo thus invoked emergency authorities put forth in Section 36 of the AECA to approve and “fast track” 22 arms transfer transactions — $8.1 billion in defense articles, mostly missiles and missile support systems — to Saudi-led Coalition forces. This process waived congressional review requirements for all 22 transfers and yet, these same items had been the subject of congressional holds in the past: in 2018, Congress put a hold on 15 of these transfers. Six of these had been in place for more than a year. In response to the “emergency” certification, which Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engle described as “phony,” Congress — with bipartisan support — passed three bills, again attempting to block the sales, but Trump vetoed all three and the Senate failed to override the presidential vetoes.

The Inspector General specifically avoided assessing whether this was a bona fide declaration of an emergency — an essential question for determining compliance with the law. While this certification maneuver did indeed expedite the transfers, the unredacted version of the report reveals that the schedule of transfers, despite being “fast tracked,” would still take at least a year to implement, bringing into question whether or not an emergency actually existed or, in the very least, raising doubts about whether or not these transfers could in earnest be considered a response to a true emergency. It also revealed a timeline showing that State Department officials first proposed pursuing an emergency certification on April 3, 2019 — a full month before the White House began releasing statements on Iran —but that it took until May 24th to transmit the certification to Congress. While the OIG’s report avoids commenting on the legal questions around State’s decision to declare an emergency certification with respect to events in Yemen — other than noting that it properly adhered to the certification process — it does reach two other clear and damning conclusions:
First, it states that “the Department [of State] did not fully assess risks and implement mitigation measures to reduce civilian causalities and legal concerns associated with the transfer of PGMs.” Pursuant to this conclusion, the report makes a recommendation that is only articulated in the classified version of the review and so cannot be reported upon.
Second, the report concludes that State, “approved below-threshold arms transfers that included components of precision-guided munitions,” a particularly conniving maneuver that dis-assembled the arms transfers put to Congress for review due to their large size, and re-assembled them into smaller packages that would not require congressional approval.

Pompeo refused to sit for an interview with the IG after being briefed about the report’s conclusions, but R. Clarke Cooper, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, did send a letter to the OIG in which he claimed the Department still “takes the risk of civilian casualties extremely seriously” and stated that “the Department, working with the Department of Defense, established and implemented the Advanced Target Development Initiative,” which is meant to help train end-users of U.S.-made PGMs. Sadly, since this administration took office, the rate of civilian causalities caused by the Saudi-led Coalition has nearly doubled.

The OIG report came out four months after Trump fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick at Pompeo’s request. Linick had not only been investigating these emergency weapons sales but had also been looking into claims that Pompeo had “improperly directed political appointees to run personal errands for him.” Linick’s successor, a Trump insider, has already quit, after only a few months in office. So, it was left to Diana Shaw, acting inspector general, to submit the report, referencing Linick’s removal from office in her very first sentence.

The OIG report reveals that, in addition to formally dismantling the civilian protection export controls, the Trump administration is also attempting to skirt what limitations remain in place by evading congressional review and placing lethal weapons in the hands of the Saudi coalition — all to the detriment of Yemeni civilians. Even in its redacted form, the report underlines a need for significant policy and legislative improvements, but to help experts strengthen laws and close loopholes in the arms export regime, this or the next administration should declassify and release the entire OIG report. In addition to reversing the harmful changes to the USML, CAT, anti-personnel landmines, and cluster munitions policies, lawmakers will also need to implement more robust measures to improve human rights standards in U.S. export laws. As Rachel Stohl and Diana Ohlbaum argue, Congress should “flip the script and require that sales obtain affirmative congressional approval … instead of trying to stop an objectionable sale.”

This pressing need to enhance congressional oversight goes well beyond the obvious humanitarian imperatives, although these are legion. Yemen is a human-made humanitarian tragedy, teetering on the brink of mass famine. Besides these heart-rending considerations, there are legal concerns as well. Given that the United States has knowledge of, and has provided substantial assistance to, its client states’ operations in Yemen, continued provision of lethal munitions and other forms of assistance may actually entail legal liability on the part of the United States, U.S. officials implementing the Yemen policy, and even corporate actors producing the munitions being deployed. If these attacks are indeed war crimes, there are at least three legal grounds, according to Oona Hathaway, under which the United States “would potentially be legally responsible for violations of international humanitarian law committed by the Saudi coalition in Yemen.” First: U.S. actors could be liable under a complicity theory of responsibility. Second: the United States could be liable under principles of State responsibility. Third: the United States could be in breach of Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, which obliges state parties to “ensure respect” for the treaty.

These are matters that a Biden-Harris administration, if not the current administration, would need to urgently take up in order to better align U.S. arms exports with the imperative of atrocities prevention and civilian protection. Dozens of former senior Obama administration officials now agree and have said so publicly in an open letter. Although the support for the Saudis started while he was Vice President, Joe Biden has already signaled during his presidential campaign that he plans to change course, stating bluntly: “It is past time to end U.S. support for the war in Yemen.”

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES —
Defying crackdowns, QAnon continues its relentless global spread
Persistent online conspiracy theory repurposes itself for new audiences around the world.

SIDDHARTH VENKATARAMAKRISHNAN, FINANCIAL TIMES - 9/12/2020, 9:58 AM

Enlarge / BOSTON—A man wearing a QAnon vest held a flag during a No Mandatory Flu Shot Massachusetts rally held outside of the State House in Boston on Aug. 30, 2020, to demonstrate against Gov. Charlie Baker's order for mandatory influenza vaccinations for all students under the age of 30, an effort to lower the burden on the health care system during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Boston Globe | Getty Images



The online phenomenon known as QAnon is evolving beyond its pro-Trump roots and spreading rapidly into new global communities, despite efforts by social media platforms to stamp out the world’s most persistent conspiracy theory.

Cryptic posts by the group or individual known as “Q” first began appearing on the imageboard 4chan in 2017, propagating a theory that swiftly gained traction online in which the US president is leading a battle against a “deep state” that wields control over the country.

In July, TikTok blocked several hashtags, while Twitter banned thousands of accounts. Last month, Facebook launched a sweeping crackdown on the movement, including shutting down 790 QAnon-related groups.

But adherents of QAnon have been swift to adapt to their new conditions, rebranding themselves to avoid detection and piggybacking on to related movements to further propagate their message.

“It’s a meta-conspiracy—it just has so much in it you can pick and choose from, which explains its rapid spread,” said Chine Labbe, European managing editor at NewsGuard, a counter-misinformation organization. “It seduces people in a lot of different circles and across ideologies.”
After the shutdowns

Facebook’s actions succeeded in removing some of the biggest accounts from the platform, including QAnon News and Updates—the largest group on the site, with 200,000 members at its peak. But a range of groups from a wide variety of communities has since absorbed the newly displaced believers.

As of September 9, a search for “QAnon” on Facebook yielded 11 groups with 10,000 or more members, compared with 30 in July. One, a private group called QAnon Update Group, has more than 39,000 likes and predates the first QAnon post, with previous names referring to extraterrestrials, popular video games, and a Vietnamese marketplace.

Meanwhile, members of the closed QAnon groups have used a range of tactics to remain on the platform and continue to spread their message. Some have migrated to other areas, said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, targeting related communities such as anti-mask groups or remnants of the Tea Party, to maintain their network on the platform.

“If [Facebook] had taken their action a year ago, you would not have seen that explosive growth [in QAnon] which began in March,” said Mr. Carusone. “The core infrastructure would not have been able to scale with it.”

Aoife Gallagher, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think-tank, added that some QAnon believers were trying to circumvent detection, sometimes by changing their names. One group with around 3,000 followers had substituted the word Cue for the letter Q.

A spokesperson for Facebook said that the company always removes content which incites violence and had removed QAnon accounts, groups, and pages that had violated the policies in the past. They also said that they were aware that movements and groups can evolve quickly and that the platform’s teams were studying attempts to avoid enforcement.
New dimensions

The social media crackdown came as QAnon had already begun to move into a range of new online communities, tweaking its message in the hope of broadening its network and capturing more adherents.

On Facebook, for instance, QAnon-related content has been posted on a number of spiritual, wellness, and alternative medicine groups. One such group, with over 90,000 members, featured memes about crystal healing, palmistry, and alien technology interspersed with QAnon-related claims about pedophilia and COVID-19 denialism.

“If you post a QAnon meme to one of these groups, they can be distributed far and wide,” said Mr. Carusone.

A newer breed of QAnon believer has emerged from these communities, said Joe Ondrak, senior researcher at Logically, a counter-misinformation organization, which he dubs “lower-case q.” Rather than the political dimension of the conspiracy theory, they are primarily focused on child sex-trafficking claims—one of the other original tenets of QAnon.

“They’re all about the narrative itself—they’re not big on personalities except when it comes to the bad guys,” he said. “It’s not the Trump cult for them—it’s about saving kids from this shadowy cabal.”
“A real knot of different narratives”

QAnon content now circulates freely on anti-child abuse groups on Facebook. Several of these were created in recent months, coinciding with QAnon-driven conspiracies about child trafficking and efforts by believers to hijack hashtags such as #SaveTheChildren.

Content in these groups ranges from genuine news reports of pedophilia and child abuse to misinformation. References are often made to the QAnon mythos, even when the wider movement is not always explicitly named. “They’re mixing fictional problems with real ones, creating a real knot of different narratives,” said Mr. Ondrak.

The problem of disentangling real and QAnon narratives has been further complicated as the movement has spilled into the real world. Logically and outlets including NBC document links between QAnon believers and organizing of global marches against child sexual abuse.

Mr. Ondrak argued that this softer-edged form of the conspiracy requires a particularly nuanced policy response to counter the spread of disinformation while avoiding penalizing genuine advocates for child safety.
Q goes global

At the same time, QAnon is increasingly shedding its US-centric focus. “Every country in the world has elites, so [QAnon advocates] manage to work these local stories to adapt the QAnon framework,” said Ms Labbe.

In France, QAnon ideas have merged with the similarly nebulous Yellow Vest movement, which began two years ago as a protest against fuel prices and the cost of living. Three of the Facebook QAnon groups with more than 10,000 members are Francophone.

According to Similar Web data, Dissept, a French conspiracy theory website created in June 2020, is the single largest site of referrals to Qmap.pub, the major dedicated QAnon website. A NewsGuard report found that, in under two months, it had reached the top 2,500 sites in France by online engagement.

Mr. Ondrak said that narratives could also adapt significantly when crossing international borders, sometimes in seemingly contradictory ways. He pointed to the co-opting of QAnon discourse by Islamophobic groups in the UK, a sentiment not usually present in its US incarnation.

“It’s this weird malleability and localization as it spreads further into Europe,” he said. “They’re folding localized prejudices into the pyramid of [QAnon beliefs].”

© 2020 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved 
QAnon is a Nazi Cult, Rebranded

Image: QAnon buttons lie in a bin for sale next to copies of the far-right-magazine Compact at a gathering of coronavirus skeptics on the eve of a planned protest march on August 28, 2020 in Berlin, Germany. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)





by Gregory Stanton

September 9, 2020


A secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from their . They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media, and the church. They want to disarm the police. They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power.

Does this conspiracy theory sound familiar? It is. The same narrative has been repackaged by QAnon.

I have studied and worked to prevent genocide for forty years. Genocide Watch and the Alliance Against Genocide, the first international anti-genocide coalition, see such hate-filled conspiracy theories as early warning signs of deadly genocidal violence.

The plot, described above, was the conspiracy “revealed” in the most influential anti-Jewish pamphlet of all time. It was called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was written by Russian anti-Jewish propagandists around 1902. It collected myths about a Jewish plot to take over the world that had existed for hundreds of years. Central to its mythology was the Blood Libel, which claimed that Jews kidnapped and slaughtered Christian children and drained their blood to mix in the dough for matzos consumed on Jewish holidays.

The Nazis published a children’s book of the Protocols that they required in the curriculum of every primary school in Germany. The Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer (derived from the German word for “Storm”) spread the Blood Libel. Hitler’s Mein Kampf, his narcissistic autobiography and manifesto for his battle against the Jewish plot to rule the world, copied his conspiracy theories from the Protocols.

The Nazis worshiped Adolf Hitler as the Leader who would rescue the white race from this secret Jewish plot. Nazi “storm troopers” (“storm detachment” – Sturmabteilung) helped bring Hitler to power. Nazi Germany went on to conquer Europe and murder six million Jews and millions of Roma, Slavs, LGBTQ and other people.

America had its own dark side. Henry Ford echoed Nazi hatred of Jews and had 500,000 copies of the Protocols printed and distributed in the U.S. Father Coughlin preached the Protocols on national radio. The Ku Klux Klan combined its white supremacist racism with hatred of Jews.

QAnon’s conspiracy theory is a rebranded version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

QAnon purveys the fantasy that a secret Satan-worshiping cabal is taking over the world. Its members kidnap white children, keep them in secret prisons run by pedophiles, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from the essence in their blood. The cabal held the American Presidency under the Clintons and Obama, nearly took power again in 2016, and lurks in a “Deep State” financed by Jews, including George Soros, and in Jews who control the media. They want to disarm citizens and defund the police. They promote abortion, transgender rights, and homosexuality. They want open borders so brown illegal aliens can invade America and mongrelize the white race.

QAnon true believers think Donald Trump will rescue America from this Satanic cabal. At the time of “The Storm,” supporters of the cabal will be rounded up and executed.

The QAnon conspiracy theory has now spread to neo-Nazis in Germany, where over 200,000 German QAnon accounts infest the internet. A faction known as “Reichsbürger,” or citizens of the Reich, orchestrated a brief storming of Parliament on Aug. 29.

Many people are perplexed at how any rational person could fall for such an irrational conspiracy theory. But modern social science shows that people in groups don’t always think rationally. They respond to fear and terror. They blame their misfortunes on scapegoats. They support narcissistic demagogues they hope will rescue them.

In the 1930’s, millions of Europeans were unemployed. Violent battles between Nazis and Communists raged in city streets. Democratic governments were powerless. Fascist dictators ruled Spain and Italy. Hitler took power in Germany and conquered Western Europe. Stalin’s Communists conquered the East. The Hitler-Stalin Pact sealed totalitarian rule over most of Europe. It took World War II and the deaths of millions to defeat the Nazis’ genocidal tyranny, and another fifty years to free the gulags of the Soviet Union.

Today the American people suffer from a Plague. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Angry mobs roam American cities and battle militarized police and heavily armed militias. The American government seems to be paralyzed. Dictators rule Russia and China. Islamic fascists rule Saudi Arabia and the old Ottoman and Persian empires. The American President appeases Russia, scapegoats China for the pandemic, and looks the other way as Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman murder their opponents.

In July, the Texas Republican party unveiled a new slogan, “We Are the Storm.” Over a dozen Republicans running for Congress have signaled support for the QAnon movement. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican candidate from Georgia who has endorsed QAnon’s views, is likely to win a seat in Congress. The President praises her as a “future Republican star.” The Trump campaign welcomes QAnon supporters to his rallies. When asked about QAnon on national television, the President replied, “I understand that they like me very much, which I appreciate.”

Some leading Republicans have begun to speak out against QAnon. Rep. Liz Cheney, chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, has denounced QAnon as “dangerous lunacy that should have no place in American politics.” Republican leaders such as Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Sen. Ben Sasse have also denounced QAnon. Former Gov. Jeb Bush has said of QAnon, “Nut jobs, racists, haters have no place in either Party.”

The world has seen QAnon before. It was called Nazism. In QAnon, Nazism wants a comeback.



 

Trump officials interfered with CDC reports: Politico

The CDC's weekly MMWR reports are the key link between the CDC and the public.

Politically appointed members of the Department of Health and Human Services' communications teams were allowed to review, change and delay reports authored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a bombshell report published by Politico late Friday.

The Politico report said that the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, a public report compiled by scientists that's served as the key communication avenue between the CDC and health care providers, researchers, journalists and the public since the 1980s, has been tinkered with when CDC findings didn't align with President Donald Trump's public statements about coronavirus.

ABC News has not independently confirmed the Politico report.

"[The assistant secretary for public affairs] clears virtually all public-facing documents for all of its divisions, including CDC," Michael Caputo, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, confirmed to ABC News.

"Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic -- not ulterior deep state motives in the bowels of CDC," Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no scientific or medical background, said in a statement.

According to Politico, in one instance, Caputo and his team pushed to retroactively adjust CDC reports that they said inflated the risk of COVID-19. The critique, in the communication team's opinion, was that the CDC reports did not explicitly point out that Americans with COVID-19 could have become infected because of their own behavior, according to the Politico story.

In another instance, Caputo's team tried to slow down a CDC report on hydroxychloroquine, the controversial malaria drug that Trump frequently referenced as a potential COVID-19 treatment during press briefings. A report about hydroxychloroquine that said "the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks" was withheld for roughly a month while the team investigated the CDC author's political leanings, according to Politico.

Several CDC staff members told ABC News they were infuriated to learn Caputo's team made attempts to revise the weekly reports in ways inconsistent with science, something they would have previously thought not possible.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden weighed in on the Politico report via his campaign manager.

"When Donald Trump told Bob Woodward that he wanted to downplay the virus, this is the exact kind of repugnant betrayal that he meant," Kate Bedingfield, Biden's deputy campaign manager, said in a statement.

"This report is further proof that the Trump Administration has been systematically putting political optics ahead of the safety of the American people," she added. "Trump's failure has left us with 6 million infected, millions more unemployed, and the worst outbreak in the developed world. We deserve so much better."

Political appointees demand ability to rewrite CDC case reports


"CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," reads one email.


JOHN TIMMER - 9/12/2020

Enlarge / Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), listens during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus. Redfield may be finding himself trapped between scientists and political appointees.

Political appointees in the Department of Health and Human services are objecting to reports on the COVID-19 pandemic from the Centers for Disease Control, and are trying to exercise editorial control of future reports. That's the bottom line of an extensive report from Politico that was based on both internal emails and interviews with people in the organization. The problems apparently stem from the fact-based reports from the CDC running counter to the Trump administration's preferred narrative about the spread of the pandemic and the appropriate public health responses.

The CDC documents at issue are termed Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which provide rapid summaries of the state of our knowledge about public health issues. Typically, they're the product of a CDC-backed investigation into a known issue; in the past, they've focused on things like outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. While they don't have the weight of peer-reviewed literature, they're widely considered to be scientifically reliable, and their rapid publication makes them a valuable resource for public health officials.

It's easy to see how the reports' accurate information could be viewed as counter to the preferred message of the Trump administration. Trump has made reopening schools a centerpiece of his pandemic policy, but CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly reports have described how SARS-CoV-2 can spread rapidly in a school-aged population, how young children can bring the disease home and pass it on to adults, and how children can suffer severe complications from the disease.

Rather than recognizing that facts aren't supportive of their policies, the administration's political appointees have apparently decided that the CDC is not presenting the facts because it's trying to undercut Trump. Politico quotes Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official now at Health and Human Services, as saying "Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic—not ulterior deep state motives in the bowels of CDC." One of the emails obtained for the story, written by another political appointee, says "CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration," and another accused the reports of being used to "hurt the president."

Paul Alexander, one of the few involved who has an epidemiology background, complained in another email, "CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening... Very misleading by CDC and shame on them." Yet that's exactly what appears to be happening in many locations, suggesting the CDC has a better grasp on the issue than Alexander does.

The political staff has attempted to block the release of some of the Morbidity and Mortality reports, and demanded the ability to review and edit all future reports. (Alexander, apparently unironically, suggested he needed to ensure the reports were "fair and balanced.") While all of the planned reports were eventually published, Politico indicates that the non-scientific staff are gaining increased oversight of the reports prior to their publication

Trump ally who sought to change CDC Covid reports claims he was fighting 'deep state'

Michael Caputo worked on the Trump campaign in 2015 and 2016 and has links to Russia. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
 in New York

A former Trump campaign official now spokesman for the US health department sought to change key reports on the coronavirus pandemic, in some cases “openly complaining” that they “would undermine the president’s optimistic messages about the outbreak”, according to internal emails seen by Politico.

The official, Michael Caputo, told the website he was attempting to stymie “ulterior deep state motives in the bowels” of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.

The news comes after reports that a whistleblower at the Department of Homeland Security said he was told to stop making Donald Trump “look bad”, via reports on Russian election interference.

It also comes as a new book by Bob Woodward details the president’s reasoning behind optimistic messaging about the coronavirus outbreak.“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward in March, more than a month after telling him the virus was “deadly stuff”.

“I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Trump’s comments – and Woodward’s decision to save them for his book – caused outcry. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, 6.4m people have been infected in the US and more than 192,000 have died. Other counts put the death toll over 200,000.

Caputo, who became spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services in April, is a Republican consultant who worked on the Trump campaign in 2015 and 2016. He has links to Russia, having worked in the country’s energy industry, and to Roger Stone, a Trump ally whose sentence arising from the Russia investigation was commuted by the president.

Politico reported that under Caputo’s direction, CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports were subject to “substantial efforts to align … with Trump’s statements, including the president’s claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether”.

“Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC’s findings,” the website said, “including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior.”

One report Caputo’s team tried to stop, the website said, concerned hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug which Trump and key aides pushed for use in treatment of Covid-19 but which studies have said can be dangerous. The report was published last week, reportedly after being held for a month because its authors’ political views were in question.

In one August email seen by Politico, another political appointee accused the CDC of writing “hit pieces on the administration” and trying to “hurt the president”.

Caputo told the website: “Buried in this good [CDC] work are sometimes stories which seem to purposefully mislead and undermine the president’s Covid response with what some scientists label as poor scholarship – and others call politics disguised in science.”

He also said: “Our intention is to make sure that evidence, science-based data drives policy through this pandemic – not ulterior deep state motives in the bowels of CDC.”

The “deep state” conspiracy theory, enthusiastically propounded by the president and senior aides, holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats and intelligence officials exists to thwart Trump’s agenda.

Trump recently claimed that the “deep state” was responsible for the Food and Drug Administration delaying approval for unproven Covid therapeutics.

Steve Bannon, a former Trump campaign manager and White House strategist now under indictment for fraud, was a key early proponent of the “deep state” theory.

He is on record saying it is “for nut cases” and “none of this is true”.

Another Chinese rocket falls near a school, creating toxic orange cloud
Most of China's launch fleet is powered by hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide.

ERIC BERGER - 9/8/2020
Enlarge / A Long March 4B carrier rocket lifts off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Taiyuan in north China's Shanxi Province in April, 2019.
Xinhua/Liu Qiaoming via Getty Images

On Monday, a Long March 4B rocket launched from China's Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center carrying a remote-sensing satellite. This 50-year-old spaceport is located in north-central China, about 500km to the southwest of Beijing.

As often happens with the first stages of Chinese rockets launching from the inland Taiyuan facility, the spent Long March 4B booster fell downstream of the spaceport. In this case, it landed near a school, creating a predictably large cloud of toxic gas.

Unlike most of the world's spaceports, several of China's launch sites are located at inland locations rather than near water to avoid such hazards. For security purposes, China built three of its major launch centers away from water during the Cold War, amid tensions with both America and the Soviet Union.


Some impressive footage from today's Long March 4B first stage return.
ℹ:https://t.co/9oRPoR0ZdF pic.twitter.com/SEl7t1u5xJ
— LaunchStuff (@LaunchStuff) September 7, 2020

In recent years China has begun to experiment with grid fins to steer its rockets back to Earth—and eventually to potentially land boosters like SpaceX does with its Falcon 9 rocket. However this project seems driven more by a desire to master reuse technology than to protect its population, as China has been launching from Taiyuan since 1968 with seemingly little regard for nearby residents.

Compounding the problem of dropping rocket first stages on the surrounding countryside is that China continues to use toxic hydrazine fuel for its first stages. Hydrazine, which is two nitrogens bound together by hydrogen atoms, is an efficient, storable fuel. But it is also highly corrosive and toxic.

When a Crew Dragon spacecraft exploded during a test in April 2019, it produced large clouds of toxic orange gas that could be seen for miles around on Florida beaches. These reddish clouds were caused by nitrogen tetroxide, the oxidizer that combusts with hydrazine fuel. This spacecraft—and many others in the past, including the space shuttle—used storable propellants for in-space operations. NASA has been working to find "green" propellants that would obviate the use of hydrazine for even in-space operations.

It is a different story for rockets, however. The use of hydrazine as a fuel for launch vehicles has been phased out for most of the world. The last major US rocket to use hydrazine was United Launch Alliance's Delta II rocket, which used the toxic fuel in its second stage. This rocket was retired in 2018. Russia's workhorse Proton rocket uses hydrazine for its first and second stages.


FURTHER READING Once again, a Chinese rocket has doused a village with toxic fuel

Yet the majority of China's launch fleet is powered by hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. This includes its human-rated Long March 2F rocket as well as the widely used Long March 4 family. All of these rockets, with their toxic first stages, launch over land and have caused numerous incidents over the years. These fuels are cheap and relatively easy to use, and it would have been natural for China to use them in the 1980s and 1990s when these boosters were developed. But their use continues unabated today.

China is slowly changing. Its new family of large rockets, the Long March 5 fleet, is fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene, like SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. Paradoxically, however, the Long March 5 rockets typically launch from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site—over the ocean.


ARS TECHNICA
FAKE NEWS 
“Canada has just criminalized all CV19 measures requiring masks, distancing, quarantining & vaccines.”



By Madison Czopek September 11, 2020

No, Canada did not criminalize COVID-19 restrictions


• The Canadian government has not enacted a law that criminalizes COVID-19 restrictions or prevents enforcement of those guidelines.

• There are places in Canada where you can be fined for disobeying COVID-19 public health orders.

• The post appears to be referring to a proclamation issued by a “council of citizens’ assemblies.”

See the sources for this fact-check

Facebook posts stated on September 9, 2020 in a post:

A Facebook post claims Canada passed new legislation against COVID-19 public health orders.

"Canada has just criminalized all CV19 measures requiring masks, distancing, quarantining & vaccines — meaning they cannot force/fine you to wear a mask etc," the text on the photo post reads. "Any attempt to impose such measures is now considered a CRIME."

That’s not true. The caption of the post mentions a "law" passed by "a council of citizens’ assemblies" on Sept. 8. The actions of this group do not have legitimate standing in Canada.

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

Claims about this new "law" have been publicized by a group called the Republic of Kanata, which describes itself as "a new society growing up within the shell of the old. Citizens are united within a new jurisdiction in local Republican Assemblies that replace the existing Canadian government structures."

Republic of Kanata says its law "struck down and criminalized" all COVID-19 measures, such as those requiring masks, social distancing or quarantining. The law also encourages people to "actively resist" coronavirus regulations.

According to a Republic of Kanata press release, "The law was issued by the National Council of Common Law Assemblies (NCCLA), which unites more than forty such Assemblies across Canada within the jurisdiction of the Republic of Kanata."

Although a group of people want this to be law, it is not.

The group has no legal authority in Canada. A spokesperson for the Canadian House of Commons confirmed that no such law has been passed to criminalize public health measures for COVID-19

The post also incorrectly claims that Canadian cities and provinces can no longer implement COVID-19 safety requirements or impose fines for violating those measures.

In several places in Canada, there are fines and other penalties for violating the public health orders designed to slow the spread of COVID-19.

In Canada’s Alberta province, fines for violating orders for self-isolation begin at $1,000. Canada’s capital city of Ottawa has required masks in enclosed public spaces since July, and police officers can impose $200 fines.

On Sept. 10 — two days after the Facebook post’s supposed-law criminalized the COVID-19 measures — officials in Quebec announced the police would begin handing out fines to people who aren’t wearing masks in accordance with public health regulations.
Our ruling

An image on Facebook says, "Canada has just criminalized all CV19 measures requiring masks, distancing, quarantining & vaccines — meaning they cannot force/fine you to wear a mask etc. Any attempt to impose such measures is now considered a CRIME."

The caption of the post refers to a "law" passed by a "a council of citizens’ assemblies" that is not real, enforceable law in Canada. People can also be fined for violating the public health orders designed to slow the spread of COVID-19 in many places in Canada.

We rate this claim False.

Our Sources

CBC, "Quebec will hand out fines to those who refuse to wear masks," Sept. 10, 2020

CTV News Montreal, "Quebec will fine those who don’t wear masks," Sept. 10, 2020

Alberta, "Help prevent the spread," accessed Sept. 10, 2020

Global News, "Ottawa council passes mask bylaw with fines of $200 for violators," July 15, 2020

Ottawa, "Temporary Mandatory Mask By-law (By-law No. 2020 – 186)," accessed Sept. 11, 2020

Ottawa Public Health, "Learn more on the Temporary Mandatory Mask By-law," accessed Sept. 11, 2020

Email interview with Canadian House of Commons spokesperson, Sept. 11, 2020

Canada Department of Justice, "Government of Canada’s response to COVID-19," accessed Sept. 11, 2020

Republic of Kanata, "Republic of Kanata," accessed Sept. 11, 2020

Republic of Kanata, "Media," Sept. 8, 2020

YouTube, "National Law in Canada Strikes Down Police State Measures, Empowers Citizens to Resist," Sept. 7, 2020