India's top court orders probe into Pegasus snooping

Issued on: 27/10/2021 

 JOEL SAGET AFP/File

New Delhi (AFP)

India's Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered an independent investigation into the alleged government use of Pegasus spyware on journalists, opposition politicians and activists with the chief justice calling the implications "Orwellian".

India was one of 45 countries where tens of thousands of numbers were targeted by the spyware made by Israeli firm NSO, according to leaked documents released this year.

More than 1,000 of the numbers were Indian and the Supreme Court order followed petitions from individuals that the chief justice N.V. Ramana said "raise an Orwellian concern".

He added that the court had accepted the petitions because "there has been no specific denial" by the government

The state cannot be given a "free pass every time the spectre of national security is raised," the court said as it named cyber and computer science experts to look into the allegations.

Phones infected with Pegasus software, which is normally only sold to governments or security agencies, give the user access to the target’s messages and photos, and track their location.

Critics say that in India it is part of a growing assault on dissent and civil liberties under the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Indian government would not deny or confirm the use of Pegasus because of national security. It offered to set up its own committee.

Soon after the Pegasus reports emerged in July, India's Parliament was disrupted by opposition calls for an investigation.

The Indian phone numbers put under surveillance reportedly included senior opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, journalists, activists, government critics and former judges.

A woman who had accused India's former chief justice of sexual harassment was also reported to be on the list.

The Washington Post said an analysis of more than 20 Indian phones on the list showed that 10 had been targeted by Pegasus, seven successfully.

© 2021 AFP

'Thuggish and Orwellian Abuses of Power': Dems Demand DOJ End Practice of Spying on Journalists

"Simply put, the government should not collect journalists communications records unless it's investigating them for a crime or as part of an investigation into foreign espionage in which case it should get a warrant."

by

Andrea Germanos, staff writer 

 

Published on Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Then-President Donald Trump talks to reporters before departing the White House March 22, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

A pair of Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday urged the Biden administration to revamp Justice Department guidelines to stop surveillance of journalists as a way to identify their sources.

The call came in a letter sent by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they urged the administration to seize the "opportunity to voluntarily leave behind the thuggish and Orwellian abuses of power of the last administration, and stand up as a world leader for press freedoms."

Very important: Sen. Wyden and Rep. Raskin call for the Biden DOJ to categorically bar the surveillance of journalists for the purpose of going after their sources. https://t.co/qDLNaPlMNY

— Freedom of the Press (@FreedomofPress) May 19, 2021

The letter points to revelations by the Washington Post earlier this month that former President Donald Trump's Justice department, in early 2017, secretly seized phone records and tried to get email records of three Post reporters covering Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Biden's Justice Department defended the seizure and attempted seizure, the Post reported, with department spokesperson Marc Raimondi asserting the targets of the investigations were not the journalists "but rather those with access to the national defense information who provided it to the media and thus failed to protect it as lawfully required."

Wyden and Raskin noted that "in years past, the government would often attempt to force journalists to reveal their sources by dragging them into court."

"Now that most Americans carry always-on, always-recording smartphones, the government prefers to go to telecommunications companies, hoping that records of calls and texts might reveal the source," they wrote.

"While certainly more convenient for the government," they continued, "using subpoenas and surveillance orders to pry into a journalist's communications history is no less invasive and destructive than forcing a journalist to reveal their source."

"Simply put, the government should not collect journalists communications records unless it's investigating them for a crime or as part of an investigation into foreign espionage in which case it should get a warrant," wrote Wyden and Raskin.

The Democrats also wrote that they plan on introducing legislation in the coming months to shield journalists from being forced to reveal their sources.

A press statement from the lawmakers acknowledged that previous administrations have also sought to spy on reporters to identify sources and said, "It is past time that the United States end this invasive practice that threatens freedom of the press.

 

Extremists Want to Ban Discussing Their Abortion Bans

 

Sensing just how unpopular their agenda is, anti-choice extremists are attacking reporters for calling their abortion bans “bans.”

July 29, 2023 by Other Words Leave a Comment

By Jim Hightower

Unfortunately, it’s 1984 again in America.

Not the year. The book. George Orwell’s classic novel tells of a far-right totalitarian clique that uses “newspeak” and “doublethink” to impose their rigid, anti-democratic doctrine on society.

Their regime held power through mind control — they had a “Ministry of Truth” for perverting language and manipulating facts, while their “Thought Police” enforced ideological purity and suppressed dissent.

Thirty-nine years later, here comes a clique of theocratic extremists in our country using Orwellian manipulation in its crusade to take control over every woman’s personal reproductive rights.

Having seized the Supreme Court and practically the entire Republican Party, these present-day autocrats are now demanding that state and national lawmakers enforce the group’s ultimate dictate: A total ban on abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.

To their amazement, however, the great majority of Americans — including many Republican voters — think abortion ought to be generally available, with each woman deciding what’s best for her. Moreover, the idea of Big Brother imposing a federal ban is massively unpopular.

No problem, say today’s Orwellian newspeakers, we’ll just ban the word “ban” from our PR campaigns. Thus their harsh abortion ban has magically morphed linguistically into a “pro-life plan.” There — feel better?

Doubling down on their propaganda ploy, the abortion truth twisters are also plotting to ban reporters from using what one called “the big ban word.” Anti-abortion agents are now barraging news outlets with warnings that any use of that verb will be considered proof of political bias.

Sure enough, rather than risk right-wing fury, some scaredy-cat reporters are already caving in, meekly describing bans as “restrictions on procedures.” How nice — a kinder, gentler tyranny!

To keep up with the 2023 version of Orwell’s Thought Police, follow journalist Jessica Valenti’s diligent tracking of anti-abortion trickery at Jessica.substack.com.

 

—

Previously Published on otherwords.org with Creative Commons License

Rhetorical Question

This is a rhetorical question, right?

Is killing off big, bad wolves the best way to halt attacks?

Of course it is.

Killing wolves is stupid.

Killing wolves works -- briefly

And it is only done to appease stupid ranchers and farmers, who believe that they have the God Given Right to invade the wilderness, and their creation of private property, fenced in enclosures, justifies their wiping out predators.

For generations, ranchers have believed that the only good wolf is a dead wolf.

Predators that they cannot prove kill their cattle.Since wolves and other predators do not enter farms and ranches to kill, they kill the cattle, if they kill them at all on on public land. Land that borders the wilderness. Farmers and Ranchers who celebrate their inherent right to private land allow their Cattle to graze and wander across unenclosed public land. And since wolves don't recognize property rights they come in conflict with humans and their property (cattle).

Of course their stupidity is only matched by the Government of Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (sic) Department;

"The wolves are the primary cause of mortality in the caribou," said Dave Ealey, a spokesman with Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, who also cites weather and human development as contributing factors.

Clever turn of phrase, the caribou population is NOT endagered by the wolves, who yes kill them. They are endangered by the expansion of tourism, oil and coal development. Which of course is not Sustainable developement at all, except in the Orwellian mind of the Alberta Government which uses the phrase sustainable to mean, long term development. To anyone else sustainable development means a balance between wilderness ecology and human development.

And while the government claims Wolves are not endangered, that is another bit of Orwellian logic. True in Alberta we have a large population however in B.C. and to the South of us the wolf population is declining. So geographically we are one of the last prairie sites in either the U.S. or Canadian Pacific North West and Prairies that contains a large wolf population.

I would define that as endangered. More endangered than cute furry seals.





Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Alberta, wolves, wolf, hunt, caribour, farmers, ranchers, predators,

Big Brother Bush

Subpoena for Google Records Raises Privacy Fears



Don't Be Evil:
Google fights back against the Orwellian
Bush Administration and
says 'no' to handing over search data.

The attempt by the Bush administration to get Google to allow it to spy online on millions of the world citizens is another good reason that the Internet Protocol should not be controlled by one country.

China, Arab-League Build New Internets

Recently there was controversy of the addition of a .xxx domain name as the US government twisted the arm of Icann to squash this new domain name. Other countries cited this example of how the US controls the Internet and have subsequently pressed for Icann to be under the UN’s control. As the Internet becomes a bigger part of every country’s daily lives and economy the fear of having US control over such an important network is growing.

In response, the US is saying that countries like China, Libya, Syria and Cuba who complain about US-based Internet control don’t have democracies and as such taking control of the Internet for them means they will use their power for censorship.

Alternatives to Icann are also popping up in Europe where the Open Root Server Network or ORSN mirrors Icann and is there almost as a safeguard in case Icann starts to behave badly. In other words this root can be used as leverage to ensure Icann operates in a fair and equitable manner.

Should World Make Room For Another Wide Web?

Grundmann told Vixie that he set up ORSN in February 2002 because of his distrust of the Bush administration and its foreign policy. He fears that Washington could easily "turn off" the domain name of a country it wanted to attack, crippling the Internet communications of that country's military and government.

To build a better Net

Reforming the Internet to fence off thieves and to shore up performance could make cyberspace safer and possibly faster. In the transition, however, much of what is appealing about the Internet — the abandon with which information is traded; the ability to sound off anonymously; the wealth of links built over the brief, rich history of the World Wide Web — could be lost.

Those are among the reasons researchers are at work on a better Internet. In a room whirring with the soft buzz of computer hard drives financed by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security, computer scientists set up a mock battlefield at the Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research Network, or DETER, on the campus of the University of Southern California. Stocked with a thick library of subversive software, the project offers a “test bed” equal to 2,000 quarantined personal computers where worms and viruses are set free to war against good-guy software.

While Google is an American corporation, its reach is world wide, and as a truly transnational corporation it has responbilities to those who use its search engine, to gurantee our privacy whether we are American citizens or not.

Which is what Google has done in rejecting the search demand made by the Bush Big Brother Regime. While also protecting its commercial software search engine. Intellectual property rights, patent and corporate secrecy trump the American State. Ironic that.

While being done under the auspices of protecting children this is no different than the recent scandals in the US about the Bush administrations warrentless spying on emails, phone calls, mail etc of thousands of Americans.

How Cheney used the NSA for domestic spying prior to 9/11

Instead of using the excuse of National Security or War on Terror, which would immediate raise the hackles of civil libertarians, the Bush administraion uses the red herring of child porn to attempt to sweep through weeks of Google searches.

Spying on innocent Americans unlawful

It doesn't stop with Google, and what is scary is that unnamed commercial Internet sites have been sited as having already complied.

By trying to get Googles records, the Bush Administration is threatening the privacy of the worlds citizens and not just its own.

If Russia or China attempted this same kind of move we would rightly call them authoritarian and view this as a threat to Free Speech. The same applies in this case.

Good for Google, Bad Bush Bad.

Tags
USA
WWW
internet
spyingGoogle

Creationist Cretins

Ok now this is what happens when right wing lunacy and religious dogma once again dominate the public discourse in civil society. Couple sues operators of UC Berkeley Web site that teaches evolution

In that clever Orwellian speak that the right wing uses, they claim that evolution is a 'religious' theory and should not get government funding. Thats because they claim secular science, pluralist society, and humanism itself is a 'religion'.

The plaintiffs are not proponents of "intelligent design" - a theory that living organisms are so complex they must have been created by a higher intelligence - but they object to the teaching of evolution as scientific fact, Jeanne Caldwell said.

Yep evolution is just another 'belief' option. Seems they have believe scientists have 'faith' in evolution like they have 'faith' in the existance of God.

Actually these folks are dyed in the wool creationists, believers that God created the world 4,400 years ago, in a blink of a cosmic eye. The reason we have fossils according to creationists is that every animal and plant, bacteria, amobia, etc. were all created at once and some just happened to get caught in the magma of creation as it cooled between Monday and Friday. Saturday and Sunday remain in dispute due to being the Sabbath.

So if creation began instantly in a blink of the big fellows eye 4,400 years ago explain this;Scientists think they have deduced the moon's birthday from rock and soil samples -- and it's older than they thought. The researchers examined tungsten isotopes in the rocks and concluded that the collision occurred about 30 million to 50 million years after the formation of the solar system. That's just a blip compared with the 4.5 billion years that the Earth and solar system have existed.

Creationism originated with the belief that the world was flat. However contrary to popular belief this minority view was not held by everyone living in the Rennisance world or prior to Columbus's voyage to North and Central America. Only a small sect of christians believed this nonsense. Colombus himself availed himself of ancient Phonecian and Peloponnesian maps for his voyage as did other of his sailing contemporaries. And these maps did not show the world was flat, well ok the maps were, they showed the world as known at that time and what wasn't was called the unknown.

the claims of creation science do not refer to natural causes and cannot be subject to meaningful tests, so they do not qualify as scientific hypotheses.

So there, science is NOT a religion. It is as Bakunin attests, the study of natures laws. And that contradicts faith for nature according to creationists is the mere beast of God.

Science maybe called an outgrowth of philosophy, and that is where the Orwellian Right sneakily equates philosophy with religion. They have an agenda to evangelize the world, to counter what they see as the humanist attempt to free humanity from God and faith by immanitizing the eschaton, a term right wing philospher Eric Voegelin coined in his book The New Science of Politics.

If science is the child of reason, the Rennisance and the revolutionary ideals of the Enlightenment as Voegelin and his pals like Von Mises and William Buckley claim then it is too modern for them. And for creationists and the neo-con religious right.They want to force us backwards into their glorious age of medivalist theocracy and that theocracy was Catholic, while the modern evangelicals are protestants. But I will leave that contradiction for another day.

 

Libertarian or Orwellian: What to make of the vaccine passport? 

BBB y Tim Sandle     Feb 17, 2021

Heralded as key to returning to normal, the digital "vaccine passport" may offer a way to make things easier. However, there are many who baulk at the idea of the mass holding of personal data along with security concerns.

How likely is a digital vaccine passport? Quite probable in some parts of the world. For example, Denmark has put forward plans to develop a digital vaccine passport, designed to identify those who have received the COVID-19 vaccine. Is this concept a force for freedom, allowing people to travel widely? Or is it an unwanted extension of state control? And what happens to the data held within the passport, and what are the concerns of these data falling into the wrong hands?

The concept has, inevitably, attracted interest from technology firms: From facial recognition businesses to digital identity experts, as the BBC reports. But what of cybersecurity?

To look more deeply at the security implications of the digital vaccine passport concept, Digital Journal sought the opinion of Erez Yalon, senior director of security research at Checkmarx. Yalon has especially strong thoughts around cybersecurity and the use of electronic medical records.

Digital Journal: What are the cybersecurity concerns with digital vaccine passports?

Erez Yalon: These ‘software passports’ present a variety of challenges pertaining to security and privacy. Some immediate considerations that should be taken into account include identification: "Who am I?” – Passport carrier identification – There will be a need to ensure that the individual carrying the passport is who they claim they are. This is relatively easy to solve if the process is done manually, where a person can check a picture or ID, but if required to be done automatically, there is a challenge.

DJ: Who can pull (read) the information?

Yalon: System user identification – Who will be allowed to check the data? Anyone? Police? Airline personnel? Bouncers at the doors of clubs and arenas? Authentication of system users, and the correct authorization, are needed to avoid malicious use.

Also, “who can push (write) information?” This is about system component identification. Such a system is complex when considering the multitude of responsible ‘contributors.’ Vaccination information is going to be submitted by various medical outlets including hospitals, public and private clinics, independent doctors and nurses, and more. These submissions will be communicated and reported to local, regional, and national medical centers that should eventually aggregate all information under one organization. Each step of the way must be correctly authenticated and authorized to make sure that data is added to the system only by individuals who are allowed to do so.

DJ: What are the data handling concerns?

Yalon: There is data transfer: The complex network described earlier requires the handling of a lot of “moving data” when being sent and received. It only takes one branch of this network to not be secure enough to place the data at risk.

We also need to be concerned with privacy. Leaking data, especially medical data that is considered sensitive, can cause a huge issue of privacy breach. Considering these ‘software passports’ will potentially hold everything from medical information to travel logs to biometric data, the importance of placing privacy at the forefront is clear.

And there is integrity, If the transportation of data is not secure enough, it might be corrupted or forged, which could damage the integrity of the information and the entire system at-large.

Finally, with data retention. Even when not “on the move,” sensitive data needs to be protected and secured. Controls need to be implemented to ensure that the data cannot be accessed by malicious actors.

DJ: What happens if data needs to be shared?

Yalon: With data sharing and minimization, this is similar to as we saw with contact tracing applications, if individuals will not be mandated to opt-in to this digital identification system, then an opt-in / opt-out mechanism must be made available. Additionally, the PII data that is collected should be kept to a minimum, only gathering the essential information that makes this a viable solution.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/health/libertarian-or-orwellian-what-to-make-of-the-vaccine-passport/article/585513#ixzz6myOz3r42

POST MODERN FALSE FLAG

U.S. Energy Department believes lab leak was most likely the source of COVID, report says

The conclusion is due to new intelligence, but the department made its judgment with “low confidence,” according to people who have read the classified report, The Wall St. Journal said.

By Olivia Konotey-Ahulu

Bloomberg
Mon., Feb. 27, 2023

A laboratory leak was the most likely origin of the COVID-19 virus, according to findings by the U.S. Energy Department, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A classified intelligence report provided to the White House and key members of Congress said the virus likely spread due to a mishap at a Chinese laboratory, The Journal reported on Sunday.

The Energy Department had previously been undecided on the source of the virus. The conclusion is due to new intelligence, but the department made its judgment with “low confidence,” according to people who have read the classified report, The Journal said.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday there’s “a variety of views” in the U.S. intelligence community about whether the virus originated naturally or in a lab and he “can’t confirm or deny” the Wall Street Journal report.

President Joe Biden has asked the National Laboratories, which are part of the Energy Department, to be part of the assessment, Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“And if we gain any further insight or information, we will share it with Congress and we will share it with the American people,” he said. “But, right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question.”

China has long hit back at any suggestion that the COVID-19 virus originated in a lab. The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular working hours.

China Must Be 'More Honest' on COVID Origins, Envoy Says

By Reuters
Feb. 27, 2023

Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns attends the World Peace Forum at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China July 4, 2022. 

REUTERS/Yew Lun Tian

By Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) -China must be more honest about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. ambassador to China said on Monday, after reports that the U.S. Energy Department concluded the pandemic likely arose from a Chinese laboratory leak.

Nicholas Burns, speaking by video link at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event, said it was necessary to push China to take a more active role in the World Health Organization (WHO) if the U.N. health agency was to be strengthened.

China also needed to "be more honest about what happened three years ago in Wuhan with the origin of the COVID-19 crisis," Burns said, referring to the central Chinese city where the first human cases were reported in December 2019.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Sunday that the U.S. Energy Department had concluded the pandemic likely arose from a Chinese laboratory leak, an assessment Beijing denies.

The department made its judgment with "low confidence" in a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress, the Journal said, citing people who had read the intelligence report.

Four other U.S. agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that COVID-19 was likely the result of natural transmission, while two are undecided, the Journal reported.

The Energy Department did not respond to a request for comment.

President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday there were a "variety of views in the intelligence community" on the pandemic's origins.

"A number of them have said they just don't have enough information," Sullivan told CNN.

Asked to comment on the report, which was confirmed by other U.S. media, China's foreign ministry referred to a WHO-China report that pointed toward a natural origin for the pandemic, likely from bats, rather than a lab leak.

"Certain parties should stop rehashing the 'lab leak' narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicizing the origins-tracing issue," foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.

'A LITTLE BIT ORWELLIAN'

Burns told the Chamber event that it was a difficult moment for U.S.-China relations, with Beijing seeking to deflect blame after the U.S. military this month downed an alleged Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the continental United States.

"We're now in this surreal moment where the Chinese, who I think lost the debate over the balloon globally, lost influence and credibility around the world because of what they've done - they're now blaming this on us," Burns said.

"It's a little bit Orwellian. And it's a little bit frustrating, because I think everybody knows the truth here."

China reacted angrily when the U.S. military downed the balloon on Feb. 4, saying it was for monitoring weather conditions and had blown off course.

Burns added that it was the obligation of the United States to maintain its military strength "in and around Taiwan" to ensure the self-governed island claimed by Beijing has the ability to deter any kind of "offensive action" by China.

"It's also ... our responsibility to galvanize the rest of the world to make sure that the Chinese cannot get away with coercion or intimidation against Taiwan itself," he said.

(Reporting by Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom in Washington and the Beijing newsroom; Editing by Don Durfee and Alistair Bell)

China Responds to 'Politicized' Wuhan Lab Leak Theory

BY JOHN FENG ON 2/27/23 

China said Monday that studies into the origins of COVID-19 "should not be politicized" after a new assessment led to fresh scrutiny into a possible laboratory accident in late 2019 in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, pointed to the March 2021 findings of a joint WHO-China report that called the lab leak theory "extremely unlikely." That verdict was "a science-based, authoritative conclusion," she said at a regular press briefing in Beijing.

"Certain parties should stop rehashing the 'lab leak' narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicizing origin tracing," Mao said after The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the United States Department of Energy concluded, with "low confidence," that SARS-CoV-2 had emerged as a result of a lab mishap.

The DOE, which oversees U.S. national laboratories, was previously undecided about the virus's origins. It now joins the FBI's own "moderate confidence" assessment as only the second agency to side with the lab leak theory. Four other agencies still lean toward natural transmission as the most likely explanation for the initial outbreak, while two remain undecided.

This aerial view shows the P4 laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China's central Hubei province on May 27, 2020. China has said that studies into the origins of COVID-19 "should not be politicized."

HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The WHO-China report published almost two years ago was the only authoritative assessment the United Nations health agency was able to produce about the start of the pandemic. Beijing appointed half the researchers on the mission, restricted the team's access to critical data, and blocked WHO attempts to conduct a phase-two study that included a review of Wuhan's surroundings.

Beijing's decisions went some way toward undermining the report's eventual findings, which were largely dismissed by American officials. As a result, the phase-one mission report lacked "extensive recognition from the international community," contrary to China's claim.

Four months after taking office, President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. intelligence community to determine the likely origins of the virus behind the disease that has now killed at least 6.8 million people worldwide, including upward of a million Americans. The report after 90 days was inconclusive, but the agencies judged the virus was not a biological weapon and wasn't released with Beijing's knowledge.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on COVID, said at a press conference on February 15 that the unsuccessful phase-two plans later morphed into the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a multinational panel that included Chinese experts, announced in October 2021.

"I think we need to be perfectly clear that WHO has not abandoned studying the origins of COVID-19. We have not and we will not," Van Kerkhove said in Geneva. "But let me also be very clear that we continue to ask for more cooperation and collaboration with our colleagues in China to advance studies that need to take place in China."

"We will follow the science. We will continue to ask for countries to depoliticize this work, but we need cooperation from our colleagues in China to advance this," she said.

"We will not stop until we understand the origins of this. And it is becoming increasingly difficult because the more time that passes, the more difficult it becomes to really understand what happened in those early stages of the pandemic."

Republicans React to Energy Department’s Reported Finding That COVID ‘Likely’ Leaked From Wuhan Lab

By Gary Bai
February 27, 2023

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) questions Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, former head of security at Twitter, during Senate Judiciary Committee on data security at Twitter, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 13, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Republican lawmakers responded to a news report saying that the U.S. Energy Department had concluded the lab leak theory was “likely,” saying that the finding supports what many have long suspected.

A Wall Street Journal article on Feb. 26 reported that a classified intelligence report by the Energy Department said that the virus likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“So the government caught up to what Real America knew all along,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in a Twitter post on Sunday.

The responses came as GOP lawmakers ramp up investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and allegations of government-big tech censorship of the debate.

The Energy Department was previously undecided on the issue but now joins the FBI in corroborating the lab leak hypothesis, according to the report. Several people who have read the report said the Department’s judgment was made with “low confidence,” the Journal reported.

Responding to the report on Sunday, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN that the intelligence community does not have a “definitive answer” on the matter at this point.

Republican lawmakers have been vocal about the theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan laboratory soon after the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Initially, some health professionals and legacy media outlets dismissed the theory, labeling the theory’s proponents as racist and conspiracy theorists.

Fauci

Some lawmakers also accused Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of colluding with big tech companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, and censoring stories about the lab leak theory via what these companies describe as a crackdown on “misinformation.”

“Fauci knew this immediately but dismissed it because of funding for the Wuhan lab,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) wrote in another post. “We know what happened next — when Fauci spoke Big Tech censored. I exposed this collusion as AG and I’ll work to ensure this type of censorship never happens again.”

“Americans knew this from Day One,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “Unfortunately, Big Tech and Big Government silenced them.”

Republicans and critics of Fauci have raised concerns about the NIAID’s funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology via the non-governmental organization EcoHealth Alliance, including for research described by experts as gain-of-function. The NIAID issued about 3.4 million in grants to EcoHealth.

Gain-of-function research makes the virus more deadly by enhancing its pathogenicity, its ability to cause disease and harm the host, or transmissibility, how easily it spreads.

The NIH has denied that the grants were for gain-of-function research, while Fauci has defended the decision to issue the grants to EcoHealth.

“More evidence continues to mount that COVID came from the Wuhan lab. We’ve uncovered emails showing Dr. Fauci was warned that the virus looked man-made & came from a lab, but he may have acted to cover it up. Why? We need answers & accountability,” wrote the official Twitter account of the House Oversight Republican Committee.

Republicans on the committee previously disclosed internal NIH emails that showed Fauci was informed by senior scientists early in the pandemic that the theory that COVID-19 had a natural origin was “highly unlikely,” even while Fauci was publicly promoting the natural origin theory.

Additional Responses

Republican lawmakers such as Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) took issue with what he described as a lack of transparency in government investigations related to the origins of COVID-19.

“The American people deserve the full truth about #covid origins. No more whitewash. I will again introduce legislation to make the US government’s intelligence reports on covid open to the people,” Hawley wrote.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) echoed Hawley’s view.

“The elites and academics owe everyone who had legitimate questions and concerns about the origins of COVID an apology,” Buck wrote in a Twitter post. “The American people deserve to see all the information concerning the Chinese lab leak and the origins of COVID. This won’t be forgotten.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) says the United States should focus on the further implications of the report, namely, the need for the U.S. government to act to hold the Chinese regime accountable for the pandemic.

“Re. China’s lab leak, being proven right doesn’t matter,” Cotton wrote in a Twitter post. “What matters is holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable so this doesn’t happen again.”

The Epoch Times contacted the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy for comment.

From The Epoch Times

Ankara: The Officious Intermedler in Paris Attacks Against Kurds

by Seth J. Frantzman
The Jerusalem Post
December 27, 2022

This is an abridged version of an article published originally under the title "Turkey Exploits Paris Attack on Kurds While Claiming to Be 'Anti-Terror.'"

Protests erupted in Paris following the murder of three people at a Kurdish cultural center on December 23, 2022.

A 69-year-old Frenchman has been charged with killing three people in Paris last week.

The attack targeted a Kurdish culture center, and three Kurds were murdered. Even though government authorities were quick to condemn the attack at the highest levels, there were days of protests and some riots and clashes after the killing.

Turkey's ruling party and pro-government media have led a campaign to exploit the attack, not sympathizing with the victims but condemning the protesters as "terrorism supporters."

Turkey has also summoned France's ambassador, claiming protesters spread anti-Turkish propaganda. This is a new type of exploitation, where an extremist murders members of a minority, and then a foreign country condemns the minority and bashes the country where it took place.

This is the latest incident of extremism in France. In the past, migrants have been attacked in racist assaults, and other people have been attacked by extremists and terrorists. For instance, a kosher deli was targeted in 2015, and media figures, teachers, a priest, a Jewish school and other people and institutions have been attacked in recent years.

Turkish presence in Paris' internal politics

Turkey has meddled in France's internal politics in the past. After a French teacher named Samuel Paty was beheaded by an extremist, Turkey slammed France for "Islamophobia" – in essence, inflaming the tensions after the beheading.

Ankara's new critique of France comes as Turkey has tried to get Sweden and Finland to crack down on dissidents and critics of Ankara. This often results in the targeting of Kurds, especially Kurds on the Left. Sweden and Finland want to join NATO, but Turkey, which is a member of NATO, has prevented them from joining until they agree to crack down on critics of Ankara. Recently, a court in Sweden appeared to prevent a dissident from being extradited.

"The shooting at a Kurdish cultural center and a nearby hairdressing salon on Friday sparked panic in the city's bustling 10th district, home to numerous shops and restaurants and a large Kurdish population," France24 reported. "Hundreds of people marched in Paris on Monday to pay tribute to the three Kurds shot dead."

In contrast to French media and most international coverage of the attack, Turkish media quickly began to criticize the protesters. Turkish pro-government media called the protesters "terrorists." This narrative was picked up by Ankara's Islamist media and online supporters.

Why would Ankara seek to exploit this case in France?

Turkey claims it is fighting "terrorism" even though there is no evidence of the kind of claims Ankara makes. Ankara wants support for a new invasion of Syria. In Syria, Turkey claims to be fighting the "YPG" and "PKK," two Kurdish groups. It claims that the US-backed SDF, another group, is the same as these "terrorists."

This is a kind of Orwellian rhetoric that condemns every critic and group as "terrorists" as a way to excuse targeting them. For instance, after a recent bombing in Istanbul, Turkey carried out dozens of attacks on Syria, even though there was no evidence linking the bombing to Syria.

By quickly using the media to claim any protesters in Paris were "terrorists," Ankara sought to prevent any criticism of Turkey and to prevent Kurds in France from being able to organize a protest.

Ankara fears Kurdish dissidents and any Kurdish groups abroad. It often works to target the Kurdish language, Kurdish music and flags. Ankara also knows that its opponents will sometimes use these events to raise their flags and voices, so it's easier for Ankara to claim "terrorists" are protesting than to try to segment out the organized critics from the innocent average people.

Major media in the West didn't portray the protesters as "terrorists" and generally sympathized with the Kurdish victims, even if some felt the riots were unacceptable.

The danger that Ankara's intervention represents is that Ankara is always willing to exaggerate and even willing to summon ambassadors of European countries, or try to force NATO not to admit democracies like Sweden, in order to force European countries to suppress critics and minorities in the same way that Ankara does at home.

So far, it appears that France's judicial system is doing the right thing and that peaceful demonstrations are now the norm in Paris. However, it should be noted that this incident of Ankara meddling in internal politics in France, just as it tried to do in 2020 with protests in the US, is a new escalation.

Ankara is seeking to exploit issues in Europe and the West to its benefit. Under the guise of claiming to be against "terrorism," it has warped language to an Orwellian degree.

This is a remnant in some ways of the US "global war on terror" and the way countries such as Turkey took this to mean it could do whatever it wants as long as it labels its adversaries "terrorists."

Seth Frantzman is a Ginsburg-Milstein Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and senior Middle East correspondent at the Jerusalem Post.

US Attack on Yemen Exposes the Lie of Supposed “Rules-Based International Order”


Antony Blinken’s lofty rhetoric about “rules” and “rights” is emptier than ever after Biden’s illegal attack on Yemen.

By Norman Solomon , 

SALON

PublishedJanuary 13, 2024

A Yemeni man inspects a house that was destroyed in an airstrike carried out during the Yemen war by the Saudi-led coalition's warplanes, on February 5, 2021, in Sana'a, Yemen.

MOHAMMED HAMOUD / GETTY IMAGES


Have you heard the one about the U.S. government wanting a “rules-based international order”?

It’s a grimly laughable premise, but the nation’s major media outlets routinely take such claims seriously and credulously. Overall, the default assumption is that top officials in Washington are reluctant to go to war, and do so only as a last resort.

That framing was in evidence when the New York Times published this sentence at the top of the front page: “The United States and a handful of its allies on Thursday carried out military strikes against more than a dozen targets in Yemen controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, U.S. officials said, in an expansion of the war in the Middle East that the Biden administration had sought to avoid for three months.”

So, from the outset, the coverage portrayed the U.S.-led attack as a reluctant action — taken after exploring all peaceful options had failed — rather than an aggressive act in violation of international law.

On Thursday, President Biden issued a statement that sounded righteous enough, saying that “these strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea.” He did not mention that the Houthi attacks have come in response to Israel’s murderous siege of Gaza. In the words of CNN, they “could be intended to inflict economic pain on Israel’s allies in the hope they will pressure it to cease its bombardment of the enclave.”

In fact, as Common Dreams reported, Houthi forces “began launching missiles and drones toward Israel and attacking shipping traffic in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s Gaza onslaught.” And as Trita Parsi at the Quincy Institute pointed out, “the Houthis have declared that they will stop” attacking ships in the Red Sea “if Israel stops” its mass killing in Gaza.

But that would require genuine diplomacy — not the kind of solution that appeals to President Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The duo has been enmeshed for decades, with lofty rhetoric masking the tacit precept that might makes right. (The same approach was implicit all the way back to 2002, when then-Sen. Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearings that promoted support for the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. Blinken was the committee’s chief of staff.)

Now, in charge of the State Department, Blinken is fond of touting the need for a “rules-based international order.” During a 2022 speech in Washington, he proclaimed the necessity “to manage relations between states, to prevent conflict, to uphold the rights of all people.” Two months ago, he declared that the G7 nations were united in support of “a rules-based international order.”

But for more than three months now, Blinken has provided a continuous stream of facile rhetoric to support the ongoing methodical killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Days ago, behind a podium at the U.S. embassy in Israel, he defended that country’s actions in the face of abundant evidence of genocidal warfare, claiming that “the charge of genocide is meritless.”

The Houthis are avowedly in solidarity with Palestinian people, while the U.S. government continues to provide massive arms supplies to the Israeli military as it massacres civilians and systematically destroys Gaza. Blinken is so immersed in Orwellian messaging that, several weeks into the Gaza slaughter, he tweeted that the U.S. and its G7 partners “stand united in our condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, in support of Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international law, and in maintaining a rules-based international order.”

There’s nothing unusual about extreme doublethink being foisted on the public by the people running U.S. foreign policy. What they perpetrate is a good fit for the description of doublethink in George Orwell’s “1984”: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it …”

After news broke about the attack on Yemen, a number of Democrats and Republicans in the House quickly spoke up against Biden’s end-run around Congress, which flagrantly violated the Constitution by effectively going to war on the president’s say-so. Some of the comments were laudably clear, but perhaps none more so than a statement by then-candidate Joe Biden in January of 2020: “A president should never take this nation to war without the informed consent of the American people.”

Like that disposable platitude, all the Orwellian nonsense coming from the top of the U.S. government about seeking a “rules-based international order” is nothing more than a brazen PR scam.

The vast quantity of official smoke-blowing now underway cannot hide the reality that the U.S. government is the most powerful and dangerous outlaw nation in the world.


NORMAN SOLOMON is the national director of RootsAction and the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His lastest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in the summer of 2023 by The New Press.

PAKISTAN

Battle with ‘alternative facts’

Abbas Nasir

Published April 24, 2022

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

ECONOMIC stabilisation through tough, unpopular measures such as withdrawal of the fuel subsidy or a cut in development expenditure, against the backdrop of public mobilisation by the Imran Khan-led PTI, seems a daunting challenge for a new coalition government with a wafer-thin majority.

The latest fuel subsidy was given early last month in a desperate gamble to remain in the saddle by a government facing a united opposition, desertion of allies and dissension in the ranks of its own parliamentarians as a no-confidence motion was around the corner.

Although when it announced the subsidy, instead of a regulator-recommended increase, the government said it would manage the cost of the nearly Rs400 billion subsidy till the summer from higher than expected revenues and savings in other areas.

But the widening deficit in less than two months since the subsidy was awarded is sounding alarm bells in the corridors of power as it is abundantly clear the gamble was meant to thwart a likely no-confidence move at the time, and would have been withdrawn as soon as the danger was averted.

Read: Lessons from Lanka: How can Pakistan's policymakers avoid economic pitfalls?

Two things have happened since. One, the vote was successfully carried and the prime minister, despite trying every trick in the bag, including some constitutionally questionable ones, could not stay in office, and one of his arch rivals was elected and sworn into office.

Miftah Ismail’s credentials are not in doubt; how much elbow room he has is.

Second, the former prime minister has not taken kindly to his constitutional ouster from office and has embarked on an aggressive mass mobilisation campaign, relying on incendiary, populist slogans and is threatening to take to the streets to force an immediate election.

Editorial: Imran's narrative seems to be working for him, and yet he needs to change it

This week, the government categorically said that parliament would complete its term and elections would only be held next year, but Imran Khan’s aggressive campaign, seemingly backed by some renegade elements in a key institution, continues to cast doubts about the incumbents’ longevity.

And this element makes any possible attempt to balance the books fraught with danger. The withdrawal of the fuel subsidy will further spur the back-breaking inflation, particularly for the poor and middle classes, and the voting public will likely punish those it sees as responsible.

When your life is a relentless struggle to put food on the table, it is not surprising that the short-term, rather than the long-term memory, informs your reactions. Who will remember the PTI’s mismanagement and decisions that brought the economy to this pass?

The most likely target for the people’s wrath would be the hand that signed the withdrawal notification. That is why Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif shot down the first summary for a fuel price rise. But this can’t be sustained for too long, as the widening deficit and Islamabad’s commitment to the IMF dictate a changed course.

Perhaps mindful of the consequences of raising this poisoned chalice to its lips the government may consider other options as well to reduce the deficit. And these include a cut in development expenditure.

The proponents of this course argue that roads and bridges and other infrastructure can wait and all the savings from these areas be used to provide targeted relief to the most needy. However, this path isn’t easy either.

Even if parliament is able to complete its term, it has some 16 months to go. Can the governing coalition afford to stay development expenditure in the country, including in swing constituencies, where such projects will likely deliver a political dividend and may be a determinant of who forms the next government?

Some independent economists have high hopes of Finance Minister Miftah Ismail. Even then, given the very few options at his disposal, one wonders if he can pull a rabbit out of his hat. His credentials are not in doubt; how much elbow room he has is.

If meeting these challenges was not enough, the government may have to address another issue that may be equally, or even more, important. Let me explain what I mean. In the Jan 31, 2021, issue of the Dawn’s magazine ‘Eos’ centre spread Carmen Gonzalez, my partner who has been a BBC and Instagram editor, and I covered the topic of ‘fake news’. Here are a few paras from that piece:

“In January 2017, the 45th president of the United States of America was being inaugurated in front of a crowd that — let’s say — wasn’t as large as expected. The live TV images spoke for themselves. The new president’s press secretary swiftly declared this was the ‘largest audience to ever witness an inauguration (…) on the globe’. Challenged about her blatant lie, her response was truly Orwellian. She said her views were ‘alternative facts’.

“Entering truly dystopian territory, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told an astonished Chuck Todd of NBC, ‘Truth isn’t truth!’ And to complete the Orwe­l­­lian scenario, Trump gave a speech in July 2018, where he said: ‘What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening’. Like Orwell warns in 1984, once you are told ‘to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears’, you can expect total alienation.

“The ‘alienated’ assaulted the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, provoked by Trump’s ‘alternative facts’ in a reminder of our very own 2014 ‘D’ Chowk dharna. Trump claimed to have won the November 2020 presidential election. Official data shows Joe Biden got seven million votes more than Trump, giving him 51 per cent of the vote, and 306 seats of the US Electoral College.

“But these ‘alternative facts’ resulted in five dead, dozens arrested; lawmakers’ and their aides’ children terrorised in the crèche inside the Capitol and the US legislature besieged by an inflamed mob. A recent Reuter/Ipsos poll showed 68 per cent of Republican voters still believe the election was rigged, which means a whopping 50 million Ameri­cans have no faith in their democracy anymore.”

Need I say more about what we need to tackle head-on?


abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2022

Why Putin Is Hell-Bent on Capturing Ukraine’s Nuclear Reactors

The takeover of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities is a vital part of the Kremlin’s “fear and control” strategy in the war.

Photo Illustration by Kristen Hazzard/The Daily Beast/Getty

Jeremy Kryt
Published Mar. 13, 2022 8:47PM ET

The world watched in horror as shelling by Russian forces set fire to part of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine. Immediate catastrophe was averted when the flames were put out, but the plant—which is home to six separate reactors—was captured by the Kremlin’s forces on March 4.

Russia has also taken control of the nuclear facility at Chernobyl, which although inactive, still houses deadly radioactive materials. The situation at Chernobyl took a dramatic turn for the worse on March 9 when the power supply was cut off and the electricity-dependent cooling system for spent nuclear rods was endangered. A partial outage at Zaporizhzhya followed a day later.

Ukraine is home to three additional nuclear facilities totaling nine more reactors, and some observers have theorized those are also likely to be targeted as Russia seeks to gain control over the nation’s power supply.

“The Russians will want to secure the other three Ukrainian nuclear facilities as part of this strategy,” Dr. Robert J. Bunker, research director at the security consultancy ℅ Futures LLC, told The Daily Beast. Bunker hypothesized that an “airborne assault could be utilized as an early component of a ground force offensive drive” to seize one or more of the remaining plants. If or when Russian forces are able to regain the offensive, “the three reactors at the South Ukraine facility would be the next logical target in this regard.”


A satellite image shows military vehicles alongside Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Feb. 25, 2022.
BlackSky via Reuters

So what’s behind the Russians’ obsession with Ukraine's nuclear plants?

Let’s start with Russia’s own stated reason for going after the plants, which is that Kyiv had been using material at the sites to build a thermononuclear bomb.Those charges escalated on March 9, when Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharaova told Russian media that Ukraine intended to use its alleged nuclear arsenal against Russia.

The Foreign Ministry Twitter account recorded Zakharova as saying that Russia had occupied Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhya “exclusively to prevent any attempts to stage nuclear provocations, which is a risk that obviously exists.”

U.S. experts interviewed by The Daily Beast pushed back hard on those claims.

“That was a baseless invention by Moscow to justify its invasion and seizures of nuclear power plants,” said retired military intelligence officer Hal Kempfer.

Kempfer, who formerly directed a coalition task force that studied weapons of mass destruction [WMDs], accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of “creating information or ‘facts’ to fit an official narrative, no matter how fake, illogical, ridiculous, unsubstantiated or easily refuted they may be,” said Kempfer, who called the claim that Ukraine had intended to use WMDs “truly Orwellian.”

Fear is a very powerful weapon in warfare.

Bunker, a former professor at the U.S. Army War College, agreed.

“I think the Russian narrative is meant to obscure Putin's strategic objectives as well as use propaganda to make the Ukrainian defenders appear as aggressors and war criminals that must be stopped,” he said. “Also, if a radiological release or nuclear event took place the Russians might try to label it as part of a false flag Ukrainian or even NATO backed plot.”

There might not be a WMD plot afoot, but that doesn’t mean the reactors aren’t valuable targets, in particular because about 50 percent of Ukraine’s electricity is generated by nuclear power.

“There is strategic operation value in controlling energy and communication centers and choke points,” said retired Marine Colonel G.I. Wilson, whose writings originated the popular concept of Fourth Generation Warfare. “That aspect has considerable merit [for the Russians].”

According to Kempfer, part of that merit comes from the fact that such control over the electrical grid would allow the Kremlin to turn the lights off at will over vast swaths of Ukraine.

“Turning off the power nationwide—as [Russian force] have done on a smaller scale in Mariupol—in the middle of winter creates mass hardship and suffering for the Ukrainian population, and that is apparently a weapon Putin feels free to utilize,” Kempfer said.

Such a move could also have a chilling effect on the nation’s commerce.

“The industry and economy of Ukraine can’t function if 50 percent of its power generation capabilities are either controlled by Russian forces or disabled,” said Futures’ research director Bunker, who also pointed out that the reactors could serve as immense “bargaining chips” in any future ceasefire or peace negotiations.

The reactors are also positioned near major railheads that transport nuclear fuel. Those same shipping hubs could be easily repurposed by the Russians for moving armored vehicles and munitions to battlefields around Ukraine, especially since their tanks have been running short on gas.

The targeting of nuclear facilities—including the wanton shelling that set part of Zaporizhzhya ablaze and the ongoing power outages at the plants—also sends a deliberate message that this is a kind of no-holds-barred warfare in which even the risk of nuclear devastation can’t be ruled out.

“It’s a psychological weapon being used to terrorize the population,” said intelligence officer Kempfer. “They’re [targeting nuclear plants] as a way to put tremendous pressure on the Ukrainian government to capitulate. That’s their endgame.”

Kempfer also said the takeovers were a way to warn the U.S. and NATO and against their potential involvement in the conflict.

“[The Kremlin] is able to raise the specter of radioactive calamity without ever introducing nuclear weapons. Putin is a calculating guy and he realizes that we get very concerned any time a nuclear plant is threatened. The world saw Chernobyl, the world saw Fukushima, and we don’t want to see that again.”

Kempfer likened the tactic of going after Ukraine’s nuclear plants to that of Rome sewing salt into Cartheginian soil at the end of the Punic Wars, so that nothing would ever grow there. “They’re saying [...] we might irradiate a big chunk of Ukraine so it’s dead earth and you can never use it again. That’s the implied threat. That they can turn all of Ukraine into one big Chernobyl.”

Ukraine: Putin Plotting False-Flag Chernobyl Terror Attack


Taking risks that could lead to a catastrophic accident might be intended to show Russia’s disregard for the consequences of radioactive fallout, but Bunker said there could also be an even darker, more deliberate motive for going after reactors.

“If the Putin regime wants to play ‘authoritarian hardball’ it can threaten to release radiological material into the atmosphere from the Zaporizhzhia facility under its control,” Bunker said. Such a move could be used to force Kyiv to accept Russian rule or “as a deterrence measure to inhibit Ukrainian forces from retaking the facility.”

Marine Colonel Wilson called such behavior “Russian brinkmanship” designed “to give the impression of upping the ante in a very high-stakes encounter” in which “everything is targetable and nothing is safe.”

“Fear,” Wilson said, “is a very powerful weapon in warfare.”

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