How the U.S. Voting Rights Act was won

In 1965, this historic civil rights law prohibited discrimination against Black voters. Though it has since been gutted, calls are mounting to renew it.

How the U.S. Voting Rights Act was won — and why it’s under fire today

By Erin Blakemore
National Geographic, August 6, 2020

When Fannie Lou Hamer went to a county clerk’s office in Indianola, Mississippi, to register to vote in 1962, she was told to write an essay about a section of the Mississippi state constitution.

“That was impossible,” she recalled in an oral history recorded by the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Oral History & Cultural Heritage. “I didn't even know what it meant, much less [how] to interpret it.” Hamer was threatened with arrest on her way home—and when she got there, her landlord told her to withdraw her voter registration or get out. “I had to leave the same night,” she said.

Hamer’s experience was typical for Americans of color who attempted to vote in the South during the Jim Crow era, when state laws passed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries enforced segregation and racial discrimination. But three years after Hamer was first blocked at the polls, a landmark federal law prohibited the intimidation that she and other would-be voters experienced during an age of widespread voter suppression. Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 enfranchised Americans who had been barred from exercising their constitutional rights for more than a century.

Several years after slavery was abolished in 1865, voting rights for all American men were enshrined in the Constitution. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, affirmed Black Americans’ citizenship, and the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, forbade denying American citizens the right to vote based on their race.

But the reality was much different for people of color. Southern states erected legal barriers, such as confusing literacy tests and steep poll taxes, to exclude Black voters from exercising their constitutional rights. They regularly purged the voter rolls of Black citizens who had managed to register and held primaries that were only open to white voters. And when women won the right to vote with the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, women of color still faced widespread disenfranchisement. (Women fought for decades to win the right to vote.)

State-sanctioned voter suppression was coupled with intimidation, violence, and social pressure throughout the South. People like Hamer were threatened with the loss of their homes, businesses, and even jobs if they insisted on voting—that is, if they could register at all. And on election day, white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan monitored polling sites to ensure registered Black voters would not vote.

Despite a wave of new voter registrations following the 15th Amendment, the number of Black male voters dwindled as Southern states imposed discriminatory voting laws. In Louisiana, for example, more than 130,000 Black voters registered in 1896, but only 1,342 in total were registered in 1904; more than 128,000 had been stripped from the rolls in the intervening years. Six decades later in 1962, only 5 percent of eligible Black voters in Mississippi had registered to vote. A U.S. Department of Justice report from that year noted 11 majority-Black Southern counties with no Black registered voters.

Civil rights leaders had long recognized that voter rights were pivotal to ensuring equality for all. But it would take years of grassroots organizing, protests, and upheaval to build national momentum for civil rights laws that protected all voters.

In 1964, civil rights efforts culminated in the Freedom Summer, a mass voter registration campaign in Mississippi, the state with the lowest number of Black registered voters. Over 10 weeks, more than 1,500 primarily white volunteers flooded the state to register voters. More than 60,000 Black Mississippians participated in meetings and a mock “Freedom Election” designed to show the power of the Black vote.

They were met by rage and violence. Three workers were murdered by Ku Klux Klan members at the beginning of the project, and throughout the rest of the summer at least 80 people were beaten, 35 shot, six killed, and a thousand arrested. Ultimately, only a few hundred Black people were accepted to the voter rolls. (This civil rights leader feared for his life after trying to cast a vote. It convinced him to join the movement.)

The summer raised national awareness of voter suppression and the ongoing denial of civil rights for Black people, and increased popular support for change. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 took effect in July 1964, prohibiting segregation and discrimination in public places and employment, but it did not provide much protection for voters. Although the act banned unequal application of voter standards, it didn’t eliminate literacy tests or outlaw violence and intimidation at the polls.

In 1965, activists turned their attention to a voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama. They participated in a series of high-profile demonstrations, including marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a former Alabama KKK leader and Confederate officer. During one march, Alabama state troopers and lawmen brutally attacked John Lewis, then the 25-year-old chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and other peaceful protesters. Televised footage of what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday” outraged and horrified the nation and finally compelled the federal government to act. Ten days later, on March 17, 1965, lawmakers introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to Congress. Lewis went on to become a U.S. Congressman for the state of Georgia, a role in which he served for nearly 34 years as he continued to fight for the rights of all people.

On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed into law the most sweeping voter rights protections the nation had ever seen. The Voting Rights Act abolished literacy tests and established federal oversight and authority over voter registration in areas with histories of voter discrimination—and required those jurisdictions to seek clearance from the federal government before changing voting guidelines.

The law spurred a tidal wave of voter registration. A quarter of a million Black people registered to vote in 1965 alone, and by the decade’s end, the percentage of eligible Black voters who were registered in the South increased from about 35 percent to nearly 65 percent. It was also a victory for all people of color, especially when the law was expanded in 1975 to forbid voting discrimination against people who spoke a language other than English, a step that effectively halted a purge of Latinos from voter rolls in Texas.

The Voting Rights Act was amended five times in the decades that followed, extending its coverage and increasing the government’s authority to determine where federal oversight was needed.

In recent years, though, legal attacks have eroded the federal government’s ability to enforce the law. State legislatures—mainly those controlled by Republicans in states with increased minority turnout, according to a University of Massachusetts Boston analysis—have challenged the Voting Rights Act by passing a wave of new restrictions, including voter ID laws and reduced early voting.

Those states won a key victory in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down a key section of the act that allowed federal oversight of districts based on their histories of voter discrimination. Shelby County, Alabama claimed the formula used to make that determination was outdated and therefore unconstitutional. The Supreme Court issued a 5-to-4 ruling in Shelby County’s favor, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that the formula was “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day.”

Within hours, Texas announced plans to bring a previously barred voter ID law into effect. North Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama soon followed. In 2018, the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that at least 23 states from Arkansas to Washington State had enacted “newly restrictive” laws and said that the federal government now “has limited tools to address…potentially discriminatory voting procedures and hardly any tools to prevent voting discrimination before it takes place.” The panel recommended Congress restore voter discrimination protections that existed prior to the 2013 Supreme Court decision.

Defenders of the Voting Rights Act have since pressured Congress to amend the law to include a new formula—one that relies on current data—to determine which districts need to obtain federal clearance before changing their voting laws. In 2019, civil rights leader John Lewis presided over the passage of a bill in the House of Representatives that did just that, though the bill was not taken up by the Republican-led Senate. While calls to action intensified after Lewis’ death in July 2020, the bill would require the support of both houses of Congress.

It’s unclear if legislators will restore the law to its full strength any time soon. But there’s no question that the landmark legislation has made a huge difference for voters nationwide in the last half-century. Of the more than 122 million people who voted in the 2018 midterm elections, a record 25 percent were Black, Asian or Latino—who made up more than 36 percent of the population that year. This percentage of voters had increased from 21.7 percent in 2014. According to the Pew Research Center, that record turnout made the 2018 midterms the most racially and ethnically diverse elections ever held in the United States—thanks in great part to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Journalist, film-maker and author, John Pilger is one of two to win British journalism’s highest award twice. For his documentary films, he has won an Emmy and a British Academy Award, a BAFTA. Among numerous other awards, he has won a Royal Television Society Best Documentary Award. His epic 1979 Cambodia Year Zero is ranked by the British Film Institute as one of the ten most important documentaries of the 20th century.

Another Hiroshima is coming – unless we stop it now

John Pilger

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open.

At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite.

I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then I walked down to the river where the survivors still lived in shanties.

I met a man called Yukio, whose chest was etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short," after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead."

Nine years later, I returned to look for him and he was dead from leukaemia.   

"No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said The New York Times front page on 13 September, 1945, a classic of planted disinformation. "General Farrell," reported William L. Lawrence, "denied categorically that [the atomic bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity." Lawrence received the Pulitzer Prize. 

Only one reporter, Wilfred Burchett, an Australian, had braved the perilous journey to Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing, in defiance of the Allied occupation authorities, which controlled the "press pack."

"I write this as a warning to the world," reported Burchett in the London Daily Express of September 5, 1945. Sitting in the rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter, he described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague."

For this, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared. His witness to the truth was never forgiven.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an act of premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of America's war propaganda in the 21st century, casting a new enemy, and target – China.

During the 75 years since Hiroshima, the most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and to save lives.

"Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion.

"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war [against Japan] and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

The National Archives in Washington contains documented Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US made clear the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard." Nothing was done.

The US Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US Air Force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength." Stimson later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the [atomic] bomb".

Stimson's foreign policy colleagues – looking ahead to the post-war era they were then shaping "in our image," as Cold War planner George Kennan famously put it – made clear they were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the [atomic] bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip." General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the atomic bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis."

The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Harry Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment."

The "experiment" continued long after the war was over. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States exploded 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific: the equivalent of more than one Hiroshima every day for 12 years.

The human and environmental consequences were catastrophic. During the filming of my documentary, The Coming War on China, I chartered a small aircraft and flew to Bikini Atoll in the Marshalls. It was here that the United States exploded the world's first Hydrogen Bomb. It remains poisoned earth. My shoes registered "unsafe" on my Geiger counter. Palm trees stood in unworldly formations. There were no birds.

I trekked through the jungle to the concrete bunker where, at 6.45 on the morning of March 1, 1954, the button was pushed. The sun, which had risen, rose again and vaporised an entire island in the lagoon, leaving a vast black hole, which from the air is a menacing spectacle: a deathly void in a place of beauty.

The radioactive fall-out spread quickly and "unexpectedly." The official history claims "the wind changed suddenly." It was the first of many lies, as declassified documents and the victims' testimony reveal.

Gene Curbow, a meteorologist assigned to monitor the test site, said, "They knew where the radioactive fall-out was going to go. Even on the day of the shot, they still had an opportunity to evacuate people, but [people] were not evacuated; I was not evacuated… The United States needed some guinea pigs to study what the effects of radiation would do."

Like Hiroshima, the secret of the Marshall Islands was a calculated experiment on the lives of large numbers of people. This was Project 4.1, which began as a scientific study of mice and became an experiment on "human beings exposed to the radiation of a nuclear weapon."  

The Marshall Islanders I met in 2015 – like the survivors of Hiroshima I interviewed in the 1960s and 70s – suffered from a range of cancers, commonly thyroid cancer; thousands had already died. Miscarriages and stillbirths were common; those babies who lived were often deformed horribly.

Unlike Bikini, nearby Rongelap atoll had not been evacuated during the H-Bomb test. Directly downwind of Bikini, Rongelap's skies darkened and it rained what first appeared to be snowflakes. Food and water were contaminated; and the population fell victim to cancers. That is still true today.

I met Nerje Joseph, who showed me a photograph of herself as a child on Rongelap. She had terrible facial burns and much of her was hair missing. "We were bathing at the well on the day the bomb exploded," she said. "White dust started falling from the sky. I reached to catch the powder. We used it as soap to wash our hair. A few days later, my hair started falling out."

Lemoyo Abon said, "Some of us were in agony. Others had diarrhoea. We were terrified. We thought it must be the end of the world."

US official archive film I included in my film refers to the islanders as "amenable savages." In the wake of the explosion, a US Atomic Energy Agency official is seen boasting that Rongelap "is by far the most contaminated place on earth," adding, "it will be interesting to get a measure of human uptake when people live in a contaminated environment."

American scientists, including medical doctors, built distinguished careers studying the "human uptake." There they are in flickering film, in their white coats, attentive with their clipboards. When an islander died in his teens, his family received a sympathy card from the scientist who studied him.

I have reported from five nuclear "ground zeros" throughout the world – in Japan, the Marshall Islands, Nevada, Polynesia and Maralinga in Australia. Even more than my experience as a war correspondent, this has taught me about the ruthlessness and immorality of great power: that is, imperial power, whose cynicism is the true enemy of humanity.

This struck me forcibly when I filmed at Taranaki Ground Zero at Maralinga in the Australian desert. In a dish-like crater was an obelisk on which was inscribed: "A British atomic weapon was test exploded here on 9 October 1957". On the rim of the crater was this sign:

For as far as the eye could see, and beyond, the ground was irradiated. Raw plutonium lay about, scattered like talcum powder: plutonium is so dangerous to humans that a third of a milligram gives a 50 percent chance of cancer.

The only people who might have seen the sign were Indigenous Australians, for whom there was no warning. According to an official account, if they were lucky "they were shooed off like rabbits."

Today, an unprecedented campaign of propaganda is shooing us all off like rabbits. We are not meant to question the daily torrent of anti-Chinese rhetoric, which is rapidly overtaking the torrent of anti-Russia rhetoric. Anything Chinese is bad, anathema, a threat: Wuhan .... Huawei. How confusing it is when "our" most reviled leader says so.

The current phase of this campaign began not with Trump but with Barack Obama, who in 2011 flew to Australia to declare the greatest build-up of US naval forces in the Asia-Pacific region since World War Two. Suddenly, China was a "threat." This was nonsense, of course. What was threatened was America's unchallenged psychopathic view of itself as the richest, the most successful, the most "indispensable" nation.

What was never in dispute was its prowess as a bully – with more than 30 members of the United Nations suffering American sanctions of some kind and a trail of the blood running through defenceless countries bombed, their governments overthrown, their  elections interfered with, their resources plundered.

Obama's declaration became known as the "pivot to Asia." One of its principal advocates was his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who, as WikiLeaks revealed, wanted to rename the Pacific Ocean "the American Sea."

Whereas Clinton never concealed her warmongering, Obama was a maestro of marketing."I state clearly and with conviction," said the new president in 2009, "that America’s commitment is to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

Obama increased spending on nuclear warheads faster than any president since the end of the Cold War. A "usable" nuclear weapon was developed. Known as the B61 Model 12, it means, according to General James Cartwright, former vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that "going smaller [makes its use] more thinkable."

The target is China. Today, more than 400 American military bases almost encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to South-East Asia, Japan and Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, as one US strategist told me, "the perfect noose." 

A study by the RAND Corporation – which, since Vietnam, has planned America’s wars – is entitled War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable. Commissioned by the US Army, the authors evoke the infamous catch cry of its chief Cold War strategist, Herman Kahn – "thinking the unthinkable." Kahn’s book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a plan for a "winnable" nuclear war.

Kahn's apocalyptic view is shared by Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an evangelical fanatic who believes in the "rapture of the End." He is perhaps the most dangerous man alive. "I was CIA director," he boasted, "We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses." Pompeo's obsession is China.

The endgame of Pompeo's extremism is rarely if ever discussed in the Anglo-American media, where the myths and fabrications about China are standard fare, as were the lies about Iraq. A virulent racism is the sub-text of this propaganda. Classified "yellow" even though they were white, the Chinese are the only ethnic group to have been banned by an "exclusion act" from entering the United States, because they were Chinese. Popular culture declared them sinister, untrustworthy, "sneaky," depraved, diseased, immoral.

An Australian magazine, The Bulletin, was devoted to promoting fear of the "yellow peril" as if all of Asia was about to fall down on the whites-only colony by the force of gravity.

As the historian Martin Powers writes, acknowledging China's  modernism, its secular morality and "contributions to liberal thought threatened European face, so it became necessary to suppress China's role in the Enlightenment debate .... For centuries, China's threat to the myth of Western superiority has made it an easy target for race-baiting." 

In the Sydney Morning Herald, tireless China-basher Peter Hartcher described those who spread Chinese influence in Australia as "rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows." Hartcher, who favourably quotes the American demagogue Steve Bannon, likes to interpret the "dreams" of the current Chinese elite, to which he is apparently privy. These are inspired by yearnings for the "Mandate of Heaven" of 2,000 years ago. Ad nausea.

To combat this "mandate," the Australian government of Scott Morrison has committed one of the most secure countries on earth, whose major trading partner is China, to hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of American missiles that can be fired at China.

The trickle down is already evident. In a country historically scarred by violent racism towards Asians, Australians of Chinese descent have formed a vigilante group to protect delivery riders. Phone videos show a delivery rider punched in the face and a Chinese couple racially abused in a supermarket. Between April and June, there were almost 400 racist attacks on Asian-Australians.  

"We are not your enemy," a high-ranking strategist in China told me, "but if you [in the West] decide we are, we must prepare without delay." China’s arsenal is small compared with America’s, but it is growing fast, especially the development of maritime missiles designed to destroy fleets of ships.

"For the first time," wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists, "China is discussing putting its nuclear missiles on high alert so that they can be launched quickly on warning of an attack… This would be a significant and dangerous change in Chinese policy…"

In Washington, I met Amitai Etzioni, distinguished professor of international affairs at George Washington University, who wrote that a "blinding attack on China" was planned, "with strikes that could be mistakenly perceived [by the Chinese] as pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma [that would] lead to nuclear war."

In 2015, the US staged its biggest single military exercise since the Cold War, much of it in high secrecy. An armada of ships and long-range bombers rehearsed an "Air-Sea Battle Concept for China" – ASB – blocking sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and cutting off China’s access to oil, gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.

It is fear of such a blockade that has seen China develop its Belt and Road Initiative along the old Silk Road to Europe and urgently build strategic airstrips on disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands.

In Shanghai, I met Lijia Zhang, a Beijing journalist and novelist, typical of a new class of outspoken mavericks. Her best-selling book has the ironic title Socialism Is Great! Having grown up in the chaotic, brutal Cultural Revolution, she has travelled and lived in the US and Europe. "Many Americans imagine," she said, "that Chinese people live a miserable, repressed life with no freedom whatsoever. The [idea of] the yellow peril has never left them… They have no idea there are some 500 million people being lifted out of poverty, and some would say it’s 600 million."

Modern China's epic achievements, its defeat of mass poverty, and the pride and contentment of its people (measured forensically by American pollsters such as Pew) are wilfully unknown or misunderstood in the West. This alone is a commentary on the lamentable state of Western journalism and the abandonment of honest reporting.

China's repressive dark side and what we like to call its "authoritarianism" are the facade we are allowed to see almost exclusively. It is as if we are fed unending tales of the evil super-villain Dr. Fu Manchu. And it is time we asked why: before it is too late to stop the next Hiroshima.

Hitler is not a dirty word in India!

The dictator’s face and quotes are often used on merchandise like mouse pads and coasters!

Why Hitler is not a dirty word in India

Manimugdha S Sharma
Apr 29, 2018

From coffee mugs and laptop cases to ice cream and artwork, everything sells in the Fuhrer’s name in India.

Last month, a Delhi-based publisher grabbed headlines when it released a children’s book titled Great Leaders, and put Adolf Hitler on the cover. Last week, BJP leader Chandra Kumar Bose, who is also the grandnephew of Subhas Chandra Bose, pitted Jawaharlal Nehru against the Nazi leader and declared Nehru a traitor and Hitler a “nationalist who never betrayed his nation”.

Clearly, the man much of the world views as a monster isn’t as reviled in India. In fact, Hitler is big here. His 1925 autobiography, Mein Kampf, has been a bestseller since it was first published here in 1928.

Indian management students scour it for leadership lessons, Slideshare has presentations and Quora features questions on it. But that’s not all. An ice cream brand in north India is called Hitler. A Mumbai café and an Ahmedabad apparel store were also named after him, though bad press led to a name change. Hitler’s name sells scores of products on e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Flipkart — coffee mugs, Swastika and Hitler posters, laptop casings, motorcycle helmets like the Stahlhelm worn by Hitler’s troops, T-shirts, cardigans, coasters, spikebusters, extension cords, locks, iPhone covers, jewellery boxes, lamp stands…

Colorpur, an online platform for designer artworks, has three types of Hitler merchandise

Abhinav Singh says: “We are just a platform, we don’t design anything ourselves. And we don’t make any moralistic judgement unless of course it is absolutely controversial. We don’t tell anyone to create or not to create anything.”

The Schutzstaffel, better known as the infamous SS, served as Hitler’s bodyguards

Aligarh’s Ishtiaq Ahmed, owner of Hitler Locks Enterprise, says it was the name’s popularity that worked for him. “Back in 1989 when we started the company, there were so many lock makers here. To stand out, we had to find a name that would stand out. Hitler was the perfect choice. There has been no dictator like Hitler, so nobody can forget that name,” Ahmed says.

But is he aware of Hitler’s misdeeds? “Yes, but we have nothing to do with that,” he says.

In many developed countries, like France and Austria, displaying Nazi memorabilia is a punishable offence. Not in India, where Hitler has always been a fascinating figure. Historians attribute this to ignorance about the Third Reich, and Indians’ physical and emotional disconnect from the Holocaust.

Over the decades, ‘Hitler’ became a soft pejorative used for strict teachers, bosses, even family patriarchs. Romantic soaps showed boyfriends flirtatiously calling their ladylove “Hitler-like”. A TV serial on a rather strict woman was called Hitler Didi, while the all-time superhit Sholay had an overblown caricature of Hitler in the form of a strict jailor. These representations have made Hitler more acceptable, even cute, in India.

Historians say all this isn’t entirely harmless. Prof Anirudh Deshpande of Delhi University says Indians have been influenced by fascism since the 1930s, “especially upper-caste Indians who believe they are Aryan cousins of the Germans”. In India, the anti-Semitism of Germany was replaced with the anti-Muslim and anti-Christian prejudices of the RSS.

“Compared with Britain or the US, India is a new nation state with multiple problems. Insecure people who internalise a feeling of having been historically wronged are vulnerable to fascism,” he says.

Despande says most Indians admire Hitler without knowing much about him.

“The average Hitler T-shirt-wearing Indian hasn’t even heard of the Holocaust. The steady failure of the Indian state over the last 30 years has discredited democracy in the country and strengthened the popular appeal of what the Japanese historian Yoshiaki calls ‘grassroots fascism’.”

But the Hitler cult also exists because certain nationalists believe he was great as Bose had allied with him and even raised an Indian army in Germany called Freies Indien Legion.

Corruption at World Health Organization (WHO)

This article, translated from French, was written prior to the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic outbreak.

Politics and Corruption at the World Health Organization (WHO)
By Dr. Pascal Sacré
Global Research, July 08, 2020

The WHO [OMS in French] is the World Health Organisation. ‘WHO’ in English – and that’s much more appropriate.

WHO: who is it really?

Would the world be getting along any better without this outfit, which is in theory such a good idea? Would we be in better health?

The question is as serious as it is relevant.

Though even one death is one too many, compared with the alarmist forecasts from this professional
organisation that were foisted on all the ministries of health the world over, one could say that the H1N1
viral pandemic, version 2009, has so far produced not much more than a mouse.

But what a fabulous show for the media!

What a brilliantly organized panic!

How many millions of euros spent, and best of all, what worrying rumours, about the health risks linked this time to the vaccination, which might not even work!

Thus arose a psychosis that might have stolen the headlines even from a much more palpable threat, much more deadly and with effects that have already been felt to the bone by a large part of the world’s population: the climatic effects of pollution and of the way of life engendered by the currently prevailing ideology, that of extreme and unfair capitalism, “deregulated” as it is called in the sober phraseology of its well-heeled master thieves.

Meanwhile the media, ignoring for a moment its celebrities and football matches, chose to focus the limelight – and thus the gaze of the spectator sheep – on the representatives, experts and spokespersons of this organization, the WHO. Until this year its existence may have been news to some people, but now its importance is plain to see.

We have been shown people with serious faces and a professional air, the sort to whom ordinary mortals tend to ascribe genuine competence and evident integrity.

Their herald, elevated by some to hero, is called Margaret Chan. If her manner does not excite much sympathy, her curriculum vitae speaks for itself.

WHO: the Facts

Like other world organisations born from the ashes of the war of 1940-45 (the WTO, successor to GATT, the IMF, the UN, successor to the League of Nations), the WHO is a sort of transnational superministry, in this case for health.

Its power overrides that of its national equivalents. It is not subjected to genuinely democratic electoral
procedures, in the sense of representing the choice expressed by the populations of its member countries. This is true of all these organisations that in fact control our daily lives in their respective fields. Its constitution came into force on 7 April 1948.

All these organisations are in a way like the arms, the tentacles of an enormous octopus whose purpose is to coordinate, improve and reinforce significant action on a planetary scale.

To clarify a crucial point: it would be misleading to think that these organisations undertake anything at all independently of each other. One could as well imagine that the liver can go on doing its own thing without being at all involved with the heart or the kidneys.

All of them work towards the same goals, each in their own specialist sphere, and all of them answer to the UN and to those who provide their funding.

The WHO has nothing to blame itself for

If you go to the official WHO site, you will of course get the impression that this organisation has a
spotless record, and deserves to be praised for its humanitarian deeds.

It’s a bit like Monsanto, this multinational that dominates the market in agribusiness and wants to impose on the whole world its GM seeds complete with the Terminator gene (1), yet which tries to make you believe that the well-being and development of poor countries is its main concern.

Anyway, as in any court of law, it’s democratic, enlightened, modern, to give the “accused” party the chance to put its case.

As for the accusations of corruption and collusion with the pharmaceutical companies in the context of the worldwide vaccination campaign of 2009, it is Margaret Chan in person who has stepped up to the plate to defend the reputation of the WHO.

It’s important to realise that the accusations are weighty, well argued, and made by institutions that are
well established, and pronounced by scientists and investigative journalists who are credible and trustworthy.

It is difficult to dismiss all of them as a handful of conspiracy theorists, as regularly happens nowadays as soon as an interesting and well-argued debate is launched on a sensitive issue (the official version of the 9/11 attacks, the GIEC’s theory of global warming, Iran’s nuclear intentions, and so on).

It’s true that there is a certain logic in having a measure of collaboration between the WHO and the
pharmaceutical companies that produce the medications.

However it is legitimate to ask questions about the exact part played by these firms in the decisions finally taken by the WHO, and on their real influence.

According to the WHO, there are many guarantees in place for managing potential conflicts of interest, as well as how they are perceived by public opinion.

The external experts who advise the WHO are […] obliged to provide a declaration of absence of conflict of interest as well as full professional and financial details that might compromise the impartiality of their opinions. Procedures are in place to identify, research and evaluate any potential conflicts of interest, to divulge them and take appropriate measures, such as excluding an expert from a consultative body, an expert study group or a meeting.

Still according to the WHO, the members of the Emergency Committee have to swear to the absence of any conflict of interest. The members of the Committee are chosen from a list of about 160 experts covering a range of areas of public health. The international health regulations (IHR) that came into force in 2007 envisage also a ruling that aims to coordinate the response to public health emergencies on an international scale, such as the H1N1virus pandemic. But the IHR also includes provisions for setting up, if a pandemic arises, an Emergency Committee that advises the Director General on such questions as the need to raise the level of alert, to recommend temporary measures, and so on. All the members of the Emergency Committee will have signed a confidentiality agreement, provided a declaration of no conflict of interest, and agreed to devote time as a consultant to fulfil their duty, without compensation.

Admirable principles, but without any basis in fact!

More details regarding France:

Who are the French experts? On behalf of France, we find among the consultants for the WHO and the Group SAGE, several members of the Agence de Médecine Préventive (AMP), an agency that lists its industrial partner as Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi Aventis. We also find Prof. Daniel Floret, President of the Comité Technique de Vaccination, who lists numerous collaborations with the pharmaceutical industry; several members of the Sanofi Pasteurlaboratory, declared as such; a member of the Sanofi Pasteur MSD laboratory; and some other members from the pharmaceutical industry who are based in France.

Thanks to the site Santé log for providing the extracts (in italic, above) of a document from the WHO.

The WHO must give an account of itself

If, unlike most people who only stop to admire the window display, we actually go into the shop, we’ll
discover two things:

While the fine words are there to soothe our feelings of distrust, it is still true that the close ties
between the WHO experts and the pharmaceutical industry are very dangerous, very obscure and difficult to unravel.

Without being a conspiracy theorist for the fun of it, as if it was a sport or a pastime – as the crusaders
backing the official versions and the window-dressing of the official sites seem to think – one thing is clear to my mind, that being obscure does not sit well with being truthful.

If the complexity that characterizes all modern institutions bewilders the outsider and puts major hurdles in the way of ordinary people like me pursuing their interests, it is an unintended consequence of modernity and of the ever-multiplying range of tasks and objectives.

Being deliberately obscure is something else. It is intended to hide something, to conceal intentionally.

The financing of the WHO

Have you ever heard anything about public-private partnerships?

In the beginning, the WHO was supposed to receive funds only from the governments of United Nations members, but a few years ago, in order to swell its coffers WHO set up what it calls a “private partnership” that allows it to receive financial support from private industries. But which industries?

Since that time its credibility, seriously tarnished, has not improved very much, and its independence is
seriously questioned because of its total lack of transparency with regard to the scientific proof that
supports its recommendations, and its collusion with the multinationals. It is obvious that on the world
stage, business and politics have a powerful influence on health. (2)

The spotless reputation of the WHO was already besmirched by a book that came out in 1997, Le OMS : Bateau ivre de la santé publique [The WHO, the drunken sailor of public health], ed. L’Harmattan, by Bertrand Deveaud, a journalist, and Bertrand Lemennicier, professor of economics, who had spent two years making enquiries throughout the world and consulting numerous official and confidential reports. Two medical journals well-respected by the profession had already sown doubts as to the integrity and the infallibility of the WHO, The British Medical Journal (BMJ) in regard to the management of the bird flu in 2005, and The Lancet (3), which described the WHO as an institution that was corrupt and on its last legs.

I leave you to ponder awhile these phrases, reported by the journalist Sylvie Simon in one of her articles

(4), particularly the passages in bold (my emphasis):

Doctors Andrew Oxman and Atle Fretheim, from the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services and Dr John Lavis, from McMaster University in Canada, interviewed the management of the WHO and analysed its various recommendations. Andrew Oxman concluded that “it is difficult to evaluate the confidence that one can have in the recommendations of the WHO without knowing how they were prepared.”* (*Obscurity).

“We know that our credibility is at stake,” admitted Dr Tikki Pang, director of research for the WHO. “The lack of time and the shortage of information and of money can sometimes compromise the work of the WHO.” Some senior officials of the organisation have also admitted that in many cases the proof that was supposed to be the basis of a recommendation did not exist.

Many testimonies have revealed that when the results don’t match those that the industries and companies are hoping for in order to validate their products, standards are altered and the results manipulated.

Contrary to any procedure that is genuinely scientific and independent, which should base its conclusions on the verified results of its experiments, it seems that the tendency is to do just the opposite, and that results are adapted to produce the desired conclusions; desired that is by the firms producing the medicines, vaccines, and other products concerned.

To cite one example:

Dr Oxman criticized the WHO for having its own quality control methods. In 1999 when its views on the treatment of hypertension were criticised, mainly because of the high price of the medicines recommended without any proof that they were more effective than cheaper ones, the Organisation published some “recommendations for preparing recommendations” which led to a revision of the advice on treating hypertension. (5)

Other murky issues have been brought to the surface by courageous researchers: cholesterol and statins (6), mobile telephony, with manipulation of the data on the harmfulness of electromagnetic radiation (7)…and of course, serious doubts are being expressed on the real danger of the 2009 viral H1N1 pandemic, which has enabled the pharmaceutical companies to rake in millions of dollars of profit.

The bank JP Morgan on Wall Street estimated that, thanks mainly to the pandemic alert issued by the WHO, the pharmaceutical giants, who also finance the work of the ESWI run by Albert Osterhaus, were set to make $7.5-$10 billion profit. (8)

The ESWI, European Scientific Working group on Influenza, describes itself as “a multidisciplinary group of leaders of opinion on the flu, whose purpose is to fight against the repercussions of a flu epidemic or pandemic”. As its members themselves explain, the ESWI, directed by Osterhaus, is the central pivot “between the WHO in Geneva, the Institut Robert Koch in Berlin and the University of Connecticut in the United States”.

The most significant thing about the ESWI is that its work is entirely financed by the same pharmaceutical laboratories that are making millions thanks to the pandemic emergency, while it is the pronouncements made by the WHO that compel the governments of the whole world to buy and to stock the vaccines. The ESWI receives funding from the manufacturers and distributors of the H1N1 vaccines, such as Baxter Vaccines, MedImmune, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur and others, including

Novartis, who produces the vaccine, and the distributor of Tamiflu, Hofmann-La Roche.(9)

Who is Albert Osterhaus?

Nicknamed “Dr Flu”, Albert Osterhaus, the best known virologist in the world, official consultant on the H1N1 virus to the British and Dutch governments and head of the Department of Virology in the Medical Centre of Erasmus University, has a seat among the élite of the WHO gathered together in the SAGE Group, and is president of the ESWI, which is supported by the pharmaceutical industry.

In its turn the ESWI recommended extraordinary measures to vaccinate the whole world, considering that there was a high risk of a new pandemic which, they insisted, could be comparable to the terrifying pandemic of “Spanish” flu in 1918. (10)

Albert Osterhaus is not the only senior consultant to the WHO whose name is implicated in the dossiers on corruption and possible collusion between the WHO and the pharmaceutical firms, and an industry that wants to sell its products whatever it costs: others are David Salisbury (3)(9), Frederick Hayden (9), Arnold Monto (9), Henry L. Niman, Klaus Stöhr (11).

Professor David Salisbury, who is attached to the British Ministry of Health, is the head of SAGE at the
WHO. At the same time he directs the Consultative Group on H1N1 at the WHO. Salisbury is a fervent defender of the pharmaceutical industry. In Britain the health action group One Click (10) accused him of concealing the proven correlation between vaccine use and the steep increase in autism in children, as well as the correlation between the vaccine Gardasil and cases of paralysis and even death.

Dr Frederick Hayden is at the same time member of SAGE at the WHO and of the Wellcome Trust in London; in fact he is one of the close friends of Osterhaus. In exchange for “consultative” services, Hayden receives money from Roche and from GlaxoSmithKline as well as from other pharmaceutical giants engaged in producing goods connected with the H1N1 crisis. (12)

There is yet another member of the WHO enjoying close relations with the vaccine manufacturers who profit from SAGE’s recommendations, in the person of Dr Arnold Monto, a consultant paid by the vaccine manufacturers MedImmune, Glaxo and ViroPharma. (13)

[interview with Wolfgang Wodarg]…Without going so far as outright corruption, which I’m sure exists, there are a hundred and one ways in which the labs can bring their influence to bear on decisions. I noticed specifically, for example, how Klaus Stöhr, who was the head of the epidemiology department at the WHO during the time of the bird flu, and who had therefore prepared the plans for dealing with a pandemic that I referred to earlier, had meanwhile become part of the senior management at Novartis. And similar links exist between Glaxo, Baxter, etc. and influential WHO members. These big firms have “their people” in the system and somehow manage things so that good political decisions are taken – that’s to say, decisions that enable them to pump the maximum amount of money out of the taxpayers. (14)

As for “Dr Flu” Osterhaus, it’s so bad that the Dutch Parliament (15) has serious doubts about him and has opened an enquiry into conflict of interest and bribery.

Outside the Netherlands and the Dutch media, only a few lines in the well-respected British journal Science (16) have made mention of the sensational investigation into the affairs of Osterhaus, who still has the confidence of his Minister of Health.

What all these experts have in common is the concealment of their connections with the pharmaceutical
companies while they hold a senior and influential position in the decision-making hierarchy at the WHO, and the fact that they are never challenged. The conflict of interest is obvious, yet systematically minimized.

It is not their expertise or their intrinsic competence that is being questioned, but their independence and
their integrity.

The whole matter is sufficiently serious, given the topic in question – our health, to sow doubt and to
justify pursuing every investigation, every question, with means that match the urgency of the issue, and by organizations of irreproachable reputation that are truly independent.

It is not the WHO that should investigate the WHO

It’s as if the accused was allowed to lead the enquiry into the crimes imputed to them. If I were an impartial prosecutor, not aiming for scandal or publicity but only for the truth, whatever it may be, even if it is worse than the worst of the lies, I would call to the bar:

Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, president of the Health Commission of the Council of Europe. This member of the German parliament, an epidemiologist, has just requested the Council for a commission of enquiry. In his interview with the paper Der Spiegel, Dr. Wodarg did not hesitate to talk about “one of the greatest medical scandals of the century”. (17)

Next, Alison Katz,

A researcher who spent 17 years at the WHO, and who on 22 January 2007 sent an open letter to the new director of the agency, the Chinese Margaret Chan, accusing the organisation of “corruption, nepotism, violation of its statutes and ineffectiveness in its internal control system”, and concluding that “the WHO has become a victim of neo-liberal globalisation”. She denounced “the commercialisation of science and the close ties between the industry and academic institutions” and “corporatist” private science, and considered that “the WHO ought to be the leader of a movement to transform the way in which scientific research is done, including its sources of funding, as well as the acquisition and use of knowledge” and that the officials of an international organization do not have the right “not to know”. (18)

Lastly, Tom Jefferson, a renowned epidemiologist, member of the Cochrane Collaboration, an organisation of independent scientists including a commission that evaluates all the studies carried out on influenza. In an interview given to the German magazine Der Spiegel, he revealed the consequences of the privatisation of the WHO and the way in which health has been turned into a money-making machine. (19)

Tom Jefferson: “[…] one of the most bizarre characteristics of this flu, and of all the saga that has
played out, is that year after year people make more and more pessimistic forecasts. So far none of them has come true, but these people are still there repeating their predictions. For instance, what happened to the bird flu that was supposed to kill us all off? Nothing. But that doesn’t stop these people from making their predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that the whole industry is starting to hope for a pandemic.”

Der Spiegel: “Who are you referring to? The WHO?”

J: “The WHO and those in charge of public health, the virologists and the pharmaceutical laboratories.

They’ve created a whole system around the imminence of a pandemic. There is a lot of money at stake, as well as networks of influence, careers and whole institutions! And the minute one of the flu viruses mutates we’d see the whole machine roll into action.” (20)

When he was asked if the WHO had deliberately declared a pandemic emergency in order to create a huge market for the H1N1 vaccines and medications, Jefferson replied:

“Don’t you find it remarkable that the WHO had changed its definition of a pandemic? The old one specified a new virus, one that spread rapidly, for which there was no immunity and that caused a high rate of illness and of death. Now these last two points on the levels of infection have been deleted, and that’s how the A flu became classed in the pandemic category.” (21)

Very conveniently, the WHO published the new definition of a pandemic in April 2009, just in time to enable them, on the advice coming from, among others, SAGE, “Dr Flu” (alias Albert Osterhaus), and David Salisbury, to declare that mild cases of the flu, renamed A H1N1, signalled a pandemic emergency. (22)

Yes, Tom Jefferson, Alison Katz, Wolfgang Wodarg, among others, and investigative journalists who are neither conspiracy fanatics nor yes-men, would be on my list of witnesses to call.

Conclusions

Strangely enough, while the media were so agitated at the peak of the virus panic during 2009, as soon as a few rumours started spreading about strange goings-on at the WHO involving some scarcely known names, they switched off the spotlights, preferring to redirect the docile spectators to more amusing topics such as the antics of Johnny Hallyday, the comeback in Belgian women’s tennis, the escapades of Michel Daerden or of Nicolas Sarkozy (politicians Belgian and French respectively), and the hopeful proclamations of Barack PeaceObama – at the same time hinting that, while that was all well and good, we should still, as our obedient ministers were saying, be sure to go and get vaccinated while the wicked flu was offering a brief respite.

The dirty conspiracy rumours of corruption, the names so well-known in the business but so unknown to the general public – let’s forget them! Above all, let’s not rock the boat!

The vaccines have been bought, the recommendations given and millions of doses of poison already injected.

Does the truth frighten us so much that we prefer lies, and more and more of them, in our controlled lives, even when it is our health that is at stake?

It may all look very complicated but actually it is very easy.

For each new item of information, a “lite” sweetened version is made up, relayed by the bought-and-paid-for media and sold to us, the viewers, who swallow it without question.

The main drivers of this globalisation are fear and ignorance, the result of this insipid simplification of

everything, which takes away any depth, any questioning that is necessary, in fact indispensable, if one wants to understand what is really happening.

It’s the same again with terrorism, where any unexplained event is always blamed on the same scary monster: Al Qaeda – without raising the slightest query about this attribution.(23) An explosion? Al Qaeda. A hijacking?

Al Qaeda. An attack on civilians? Al Qaeda. An earthquake? Al Qaeda.

It’s the same again with the dogmatic statements about manmade global warming. This no longer brooks any discussion, any further research, any questioning: it’s a heresy to even think of it. Human CO2 is the Al Qaeda equivalent of the uncertainty factor in global warming.

It’s the same again with pandemics and other health cataclysms of the future. As the GIEC tells us about CO2, the WHO simplifies the problem for us and we thank them: “Get vaccinated. Don’t ask any questions. We have the most trustworthy and competent experts. The pharmaceutical firms, overflowing with philanthropy, are working day and night to save us.” And we believe it.

Humanity of the 21st century is in grave danger, a deadly danger that lurks within each of us.

It’s not Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (24), this Nigerian student of 23, the Christmas present from Al Qaeda to the war strategy of Peace Obama.

It’s not a virus, the St Valentine’s present to Baxter, GSK, Novartis and the rest.

It’s not our CO2, Nature’s present to our bankrupt politicians. It’s not even Al Gore, that serial sweet
talker, condemned by the courts in Great Britain for no less than 11 flagrant lies and misrepresentations
noted in his film, which inconveniences only the truth. (25) It’s not Al Qaeda, or any other extremist Islamic organisation.

All those are nothing but scary monsters that press the fear button, that’s to say, they are enemies but
relatively minor ones.

It’s our abdication. That’s our enemy number one.

We are living in a time when globalisation has not, as it was expected to in the beginning, brought about a world that is better governed, more just, more transparent, but on the contrary, has created a system that is harder to decipher and understand, and is all-powerful.

This brew of omnipotence and dense secrecy, of being all-powerful and totally resistant to democratic
investigation, is deadly. That’s the greatest threat to mankind today.

We have surrendered, preferring to go on deluding ourselves, when so many signs that something is going wrong should have impelled us to regain control.

Instead of which we put ourselves in the hands of these great authorities who are suspected of bribery and corruption, endowed with bad faith and a cynicism that balks at nothing.

Guided by the media and looking only at the things they turn their spotlight on, held by the hand, we choose to believe them instead of asking questions.

Given the present situation, I’ll answer my own question without hesitating:

The world would be getting along much better without these international organisations whose original mission has been hijacked for the sake of financial profits for the few.

As far as the WHO is concerned, we would be in much better health.

Sources:

WTO: World Trade Organisation, succeeded GATT in 1994.

GATT: General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, created in 1947.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Tariffs_and_Trade

IMF: international Monetary Fund, created in 1944. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMF

LON: League of Nations, created in 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations

UN: United Nations Organisation, continuation of the LON, created in 1945.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations

SAGE: Strategic Advisory Group of Experts. http://www.who.int/immunization/sage/SAGE_TORs_Full_21_11_08.pdf

Notes

1. Monsanto Terminator: http://www.greenpeace.org/france/news/ogm-monsanto

2. Article by Sylvie Simon, well-known journalist on health topics:

http://www.lepost.fr/article/2009/12/23/1854889_l-oms-ocean-de-corruption-et-d-inefficacite.html

3. The Lancet, http://www.republicain-lorrain.fr/fr/permalien/article/1006828/La-credibilite-de-l-OMS-remise-en-question.html

4. Sylvie Simon, op. cit.

5. Ibid.

6. Cholesterol, lies and propaganda, http://www.lanutrition.fr/Le-lobby-du-cholest%C3%A9rol-au-bord-de-la-crise-cardiaque-a-1708-90.html

7. The worrying connections between Margaret Chan, Michael Repacholi, Bernard Veyret and the mobile phone manufacturers: http://www.next-up.org/pdf/Mobile_phones_and_real_pandemics_05_01_2010.pdfhttp://www.next-up.org/pdf/Serge_Sargentini_Mobilfunk_und_wahre_Pandemien_06_01_2010.pdf

http://videos.next-up.org/FoxNews/Protect_your_self_from_electromagnetic_waves/13_12_2009.html

Mobile phones: falsified data http://www.next-up.org/pdf/Adlkofer_Rudiger_Vienna_Scandal.pdf

8. Quoted in the Dutch article by Louise Voller & Kristian Villesen, “Stærk lobbyisme bag WHO-beslutningom massevaccination“, Information, Copenhagen, 15 November 2009.

9. http://www.voltairenet.org/article163315.html, article by F. William Engdahl, an American journalistwho has published many works devoted to questions of energy and geopolitics.

engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Swine_Flu/Flu_Pope/flu_pope.html

Most recent books in French: Pétrole, une guerre d’un siècle : L’ordre mondial anglo-américain (Jean-
Cyrille Godefroy éd., 2007) et OGM : semences de destruction: L’arme de la faim (Jean-Cyrille Godefroy éd., 2008).

10. Ibid.

12. Jane Bryant et al., “The One Click Group Response: Prof. David Salisbury Threatens Legal Action”, 4 March 2009. Download

13. William Engdahl, op.cit.

14. L’Humanité: http://www.humanite.fr/Grippe-A-Ils-ont-organise-la-psychose

 15. Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal (Lower Chamber of the Dutch Parliament.)

16. Martin Enserink, in “Holland, the Public Face of Flu Takes a Hit”, Science, 16 October 2009, Vol. 326, n° 5951, pp. 350–351 ; DOI : 10.1126/science.326_350b.

17. L’Humanité, op.cit., http://www.mondialisation.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16818 TheEuropean Parliament will investigate the WHO and the “pandemic” scandal: http://www.santelog.com/modules/connaissances/actualite-sante-le-député-européen-w.-wodarg-dénonce-«-une-fausse-pandemie-»_2483.htm

18. Sylvie Simon, op. cit. http://www.next-up.org/pdf/AlisonKatzOpenLetterMargaretChanWHO.pdf

19. William Engdahl, op. cit.

20. Conversation with Tom Jefferson: C’est toute une industrie qui espère une pandémie de grippe, Der Spiegel, 21 July 2009.

21. Ibid.

22. Article in Dutch, Louise Voller & Kristian Villesen, “Mystisk ændring af WHO’s definition af enpandemi“, Copenhagen Information, 15 November 2009.

23. http://polidics.com/cia/top-ranking-cia-operatives-admit-al-qaeda-is-a-complete-fabrication.html

24. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17184

25. http://leconservateur.bafweb.com/index.php?2007/10/11/978-un-juge-britannique-met-en-garde-contre-le-film-d-al-gore-une-verite-quiderange;timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article2632660.ece

Gold has always been a “universal asset”...

Gold has been coveted by humans throughout the centuries, and still has immense value today, but what is its history? This piece examines!

Gold has always been a “universal asset”; here’s the story behind it

AFP, July 27, 2020

The Egyptians were the first to mine gold somewhere around 3000 BC. The fairly balanced distribution of gold across the planet meant numerous civilisations used the metal in their societies.
History of Gold shows it in use as currency as early as 700BC

If the metal was first used for its aesthetic qualities, from 700 BC it began to be used as money along with silver.

Being rare, relatively easy to extract and work, as well as rustproof, gold was well suited for use as a medium of exchange.

It maintained a central role in monetary systems for centuries.

It was only less than 50 years ago that gold lost its role underpinning the international monetary system. It was in 1971 that US President Richard Nixon abandoned the convertibility of the US dollar to gold which had underpinned the post-World War II international monetary system.

If gold has lost that monetary role, that doesn’t mean it has lost a role as a means of storing value, particularly when other investments could be hit by recession or inflation.
History of Gold: a lot of value stored in a small metal

Carlo Alberto De Casa, an analyst at ActivTrades and an author of a book about the precious metal, said one advantage of gold is that “a lot of value can be stored in a small environment” due to rarity and price.

Production of gold has remained relatively stable over time compared with other raw materials. Take for example oil, where the OPEC oil cartel has used its ability to turn on and off the taps to support prices for decades.

Between 2018 and 2019, gold production inched up around one percent, and only thanks to recycling did supply increase by a total of three percent.

Another important feature is that “gold, in contrast to the greenback and other currencies, cannot be printed,” De Casa told AFP.

While central banks like the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have not printed cash, they have done virtually the same thing by creating electronic money to buy assets such as government and corporate bonds.

Over the past years, they have injected vast amounts of money into their economies in this manner to support growth.

This flood of liquidity tends to lower the value of currencies, and the fact that interest to be earned on government bonds has fallen as central banks snap them up tends to sap demand from foreign investors.
Gold as a security: does not offer interest, dividends

Gold, in contrast to bonds, does not offer interest. And there are no dividends for investors, unlike when they place their money in stocks.

So, during good times, the investment argument for gold may not glitter.

But it is during times of crisis that it shines — its value is completely disconnected from the real economy.

The value of stocks may fall during recessions as the prospects for profits fall, and investors could lose everything if they hold onto shares in companies that go bankrupt.

Inflation eats away at the value of bonds.

Investors thus seek gold out as a “safe haven” during times of economic crisis or volatility.

While other precious metals such as silver and palladium also enjoy something of safe haven status, their use in industrial products means that during recessions their price tends to slide as demand from manufacturers slides.

Analysts said fears about the future were driving the current rally in gold.

Swissquote Bank’s Ipek Ozkardeskaya said “capital continued pouring into the precious metal on the back of an uncertain appetite for risk and waning trust regarding the strength and the viability of gains in global equities.”

Gold: has a fair share of critics

While gold is appreciated by many investors and has a huge history of proving itself useful, it does have its detractors.

Prominent among them is legendary investor Warren Buffett, the “Sage of Omaha”, whose investment decisions are closely followed by many.

He most famously expounded on the metal in a 1998 speech when he said gold “gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again, and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

Much before that economist John Maynard Keynes derided the gold standard as “a barbarous relic”.

While gold may provide a safe haven of sorts, that safety is relative.

Investments by speculators can increase short-term volatility and over the long term, a recovery in global growth will see investors sell off and the price fall.

How Cops Secretly Track Your Phone!

A guide to stingray surveillance technology, which may have been deployed at recent protests.

How Cops Can Secretly Track Your Phone

Kim Zetter
The Intercept, July 31 2020

Since May, as protesters around the country have marched against police brutality and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, activists have spotted a recurring presence in the skies: mysterious planes and helicopters hovering overhead, apparently conducting surveillance on protesters. A press release from the Justice Department at the end of May revealed that the Drug Enforcement Agency and U.S. Marshals Service were asked by the Justice Department to provide unspecified support to law enforcement during protests. A few days later, a memo obtained by BuzzFeed News offered a little more insight on the matter; it revealed that shortly after protests began in various cities, the DEA had sought special authority from the Justice Department to covertly spy on Black Lives Matter protesters on behalf of law enforcement.

Although the press release and memo didn’t say what form the support and surveillance would take, it’s likely that the two agencies were being asked to assist police for a particular reason. Both the DEA and the Marshals possess airplanes outfitted with so-called stingrays or dirtboxes: powerful technologies capable of tracking mobile phones or, depending on how they’re configured, collecting data and communications from mobile phones in bulk.

Stingrays have been used on the ground and in the air by law enforcement for years but are highly controversial because they don’t just collect data from targeted phones; they collect data from any phone in the vicinity of a device. That data can be used to identify people — protesters, for example — and track their movements during and after demonstrations, as well as to identify others who associate with them. They also can inject spying software onto specific phones or direct the browser of a phone to a website where malware can be loaded onto it, though it’s not clear if any U.S. law enforcement agencies have used them for this purpose.

Although law enforcement has been using the technologies since the 1990s, the general public learned about them only in the last decade, and much about their capabilities remains unknown because law enforcement agencies and the companies that make the devices have gone to great lengths to keep details secret. Stingrays are routinely used to target suspects in drug and other criminal investigations, but activists also believe the devices were used during protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, and against Black Lives Matter protesters over the last three months. The Justice Department requires federal agents to obtain a probable cause warrant to use the technology in criminal cases, but there is a carve-out for national security. Given that President Donald Trump has referred to protesters as “terrorists,” and that paramilitary-style officers from the Department of Homeland Security have been deployed to the streets of Portland, Oregon, it’s conceivable that surveillance conducted at recent demonstrations has been deemed a national security matter — raising the possibility that the government may have used stingray technology to collect data on protesters without warrants.

To better understand the kind of surveillance that may be directed at protesters, here’s a breakdown of what we know and still don’t know about stingrays, and why their use is so controversial.

What is a stingray?

Stingray is the generic name for an electronic surveillance tool that simulates a cell phone tower in order to force mobile phones and other devices to connect to it instead of to a legitimate cell tower. In doing so, the phone or other device reveals information about itself and its user to the operator of the stingray. Other common names for the tool are “cell-site simulator” and “IMSI catcher.”

Why is it called a stingray?

The name stingray comes from the brand name of a specific commercial model of IMSI catcher made by the Florida-based Harris Corporation. That company’s StingRay is a briefcase-sized device that can be operated from a vehicle while plugged into the cigarette lighter. Harris also makes products like the Harpoon, a signal booster that makes the StingRay more powerful, and the KingFish, a smaller hand-held device that operates like a stingray and can be used by a law enforcement agent while walking around outside a vehicle. About a dozen other companies make variants of the stingray with different capabilities. The surveillance equipment is pricey and often sold as a package. For example, in documents obtained by Motherboard in 2016, Harris offered a KingFish package that cost $157,300 and a StingRay package that cost $148,000, not including training and maintenance. Documents obtained this year by the American Civil Liberties Union indicate that Harris has upgraded the StingRay to a newer device it calls a Crossbow, though not a lot of information is known about how it works. Separately, a classified catalog of surveillance tools leaked to The Intercept in 2015 describes other similar devices.

How does the stingray work?

Phones periodically and automatically broadcast their presence to the cell tower that is nearest to them, so that the phone carrier’s network can provide them with service in that location. They do this even when the phone is not being used to make or receive a call. When a phone communicates with a cell tower, it reveals the unique ID or IMSI number (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) associated with the SIM card in the phone. The IMSI number identifies that phone and its owner as a paying customer of a cell carrier, and that number can be matched by the carrier to the owner’s name, address, and phone number.

A stingray masquerades as a cell tower in order to get phones to ping it instead of legitimate cell towers, and in doing so, reveal the phones’ IMSI numbers. In the past, it did this by emitting a signal that was stronger than the signal generated by legitimate cell towers around it. The switch to 4G networks was supposed to address this in part by adding an authentication step so that mobile phones could tell if a cell tower is legitimate. But a security researcher named Roger Piqueras Jover found that the authentication on 4G doesn’t occur until after the phone has already revealed its IMSI number, which means that stingrays can still grab this data before the phone determines it’s not communicating with an authentic cell tower and switches to one that is authenticated. That vulnerability still exists in the 5G protocol, says Jover. Though the 5G protocol offers a feature that encrypts the IMSI when it’s disclosed during pre-authentication communication, law enforcement would simply be able to ask phone carriers to decrypt it for them. And a group of researchers from Purdue University and the University of Iowa also found a way to guess an IMSI number without needing to get a carrier to decrypt it.

Because a stingray is not really a tower on the carrier’s network, calls and messages to and from a phone can’t go through while the phone is communicating with the stingray. So after the stingray captures the device’s IMSI number and location, the stingray “releases” the phone so that it can connect to a real cell tower. It can do this by broadcasting a message to that phone that effectively tells the phone to find a different tower.

What can law enforcement do with the IMSI number?

Law enforcement can use a stingray either to identify all of the phones in the vicinity of the stingray or a specific phone, even when the phones are not in use. Law enforcement can then, with a subpoena, ask a phone carrier to provide the customer name and address associated with that number or numbers. They can also obtain a historical log of all of the cell towers a phone has pinged in the recent past to track where it has been, or they can obtain the cell towers it’s pinging in real time to identify the user’s current location. By catching multiple IMSI numbers in the vicinity of a stingray, law enforcement can also potentially uncover associations between people by seeing which phones ping the same cell towers around the same time.

If law enforcement already knows the IMSI number of a specific phone and person they are trying to locate, they can program that IMSI number into the stingray and it will tell them if that phone is nearby. Law enforcement can also home in on the location of a specific phone and its user by moving the stingray around a geographical area and measuring the phone’s signal strength as it connects to the stingray. The Harris StingRay can be operated from a patrol vehicle as it drives around a neighborhood to narrow a suspect’s location to a specific cluster of homes or a building, at which point law enforcement can switch to the hand-held KingFish, which offers even more precision. For example, once law enforcement has narrowed the location of a phone and suspect to an office or apartment complex using the StingRay, they can walk through the complex and hallways using the KingFish to find the specific office or apartment where a mobile phone and its user are located.
Does the device only track mobile phones?

No. In 2008, authorities used a StingRay and a KingFish to locate a suspect who was using an air card: an internet-connectivity device that plugs into a computer and allows the user to get online through a wireless cellular network. The suspect, Daniel Rigmaiden, was an identity thief who was operating from an apartment in San Jose, California. Rigmaiden had used a stolen credit card number and a fake name and address to register his internet account with Verizon. With Verizon’s help, the FBI was able to identify him. They determined the general neighborhood in San Jose where Rigmaiden was using the air card so they could position their stingray in the area and move it around until they found the apartment building from which his signal was coming. They then walked around the apartment complex with a hand-held KingFish or similar device to pinpoint the precise apartment Rigmaiden was using.

What is a dirtbox?

A dirtbox is the common name for specific models of an IMSI catcher that are made by a Boeing subsidiary, Maryland-based Digital Receiver Technology — hence the name “DRT box.” They are reportedly used by the DEA and Marshals Service from airplanes to intercept data from mobile phones. A 2014 Wall Street Journal article revealed that the Marshals Service began using dirtboxes in Cessna airplanes in 2007. An airborne dirtbox has the ability to collect data on many more phones than a ground-based stingray; it can also move more easily and quickly over wide areas. According to the 2006 catalog of surveillance technologies leaked in 2015, models of dirtboxes described in that document can be configured to track up to 10,000 targeted IMSI numbers or phones.
Do stingrays and dirtboxes have other capabilities?

Stingrays and dirtboxes can be configured for use in either active or passive mode. In active mode, these technologies broadcast to devices and communicate with them. Passive mode involves grabbing whatever data and communication is occurring in real time across cellular networks without requiring the phone to communicate directly with the interception device. The data captured can include the IMSI number as well as text messages, email, and voice calls.

If that data or communication is encrypted, then it would be useless to anyone intercepting it if they don’t also have a way to  decrypt it. Phones that are using 4G employ strong encryption. But stingrays can force phones to downgrade to 2G, a less secure protocol, and tell the phone to use either no encryption or use a weak encryption that can be cracked. They can do this because even though most people use 4G these days, there are some areas of the world where 2G networks are still common, and therefore all phones have to have the ability to communicate on those networks.

The versions of stingrays used by the military can intercept the contents of mobile communications — text messages, email, and voice calls — and decrypt some types of this mobile communication. The military also uses a jamming or denial-of-service feature that prevents adversaries from detonating bombs with a mobile phone.

In addition to collecting the IMSI number of a device and intercepting communications, military-grade IMSI catchers can also spoof text messages to a phone, according to David Burgess, a telecommunications engineer who used to work with U.S. defense contractors supporting overseas military operations. Burgess says that if the military knows the phone number and IMSI number of a target, it can use an IMSI catcher to send messages to other phones as if they are coming from the target’s phone. They can also use the IMSI catcher for a so-called man in the middle attack so that calls from one target pass through the IMSI catcher to the target phone. In this way, they can record the call in real time and potentially listen to the conversation if it is unencrypted, or if they are able to decrypt it. The military systems can also send a silent SMS message to a phone to alter its settings so that the phone will send text messages through a server the military controls instead of the mobile carrier’s server.

Can the devices be used to infect phones with malware?

Versions of the devices used by the military and intelligence agencies can potentially inject malware into targeted phones, depending on how secure the phone is. They can do this in two ways: They can either redirect the phone’s browser to a malicious web site where malware can be downloaded to the phone if the browser has a software vulnerability the attackers can exploit; or they can inject malware from the stingray directly into the baseband of the phone if the baseband software has a vulnerability. Malware injected into the baseband of a phone is harder to detect. Such malware can be used to turn the phone into a listening device to spy on conversations. Recently, Amnesty International reported on the cases of two Moroccan activists whose phones may have been targeted through such network injection attacks to install spyware made by an Israeli company.

U.S. law enforcement use of stingrays domestically is more curtailed, given that they, unlike the military, need to obtain warrants or court orders to use the devices in federal investigations. But there is little transparency or oversight around how the devices are used by federal agents and local police, so there is still a lot that is unknown: for example, whether they’ve ever been used to record the contents of mobile phone communications or to install malware on phones.

News stories suggest that some models of stingrays used by the Marshals Service can extract text messages, contacts, and photos from phones, though they don’t say how the devices do this. Documents obtained by the ACLU in 2015 also indicate such devices do have the ability to record the numbers of incoming and outgoing calls and the date, time, and duration of the calls, as well as to intercept the content of voice and text communications. But the Justice Department has long asserted publicly that the stingrays it uses domestically do not intercept the content of communications. The Justice Department has stated that the devices “may be capable of intercepting the contents of communications and, therefore, such devices must be configured to disable the interception function, unless interceptions have been authorized by a Title III [wiretapping] order.”

As for jamming communications domestically, Dakota Access pipeline protesters at Standing Rock, North Dakota, in 2016 described planes and helicopters flying overhead that they believed were using technology to jam mobile phones. Protesters described having problems such as phones crashing, live streams being interrupted, and issues uploading videos and other posts to social media.

Why are stingrays and dirtboxes so controversial?

The devices don’t just pick up data about targeted phones. Law enforcement may be tracking a specific phone of a known suspect, but any phone in the vicinity of the stingray that is using the same cellular network as the targeted phone or device will connect to the stingray. Documents in a 2011 criminal case in Canada showed that devices used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had a range of a third of a mile, and in just three minutes of use, one device had intercepted 136 different phones.

Law enforcement can also use a stingray in a less targeted way to sweep up information about all nearby phones. During the time a phone is connecting to or communicating with a stingray, service is disrupted for those phones until the stingray releases them. The connection should last only as long as it takes for the phone to reveal its IMSI number to the stingray, but it’s not clear what kind of testing and oversight the Justice Department has done to ensure that the devices release phones. Stingrays are supposed to allow 911 calls to pass through to a legitimate cell tower to avoid disrupting emergency services, but other emergency calls a user may try to make while their phone is connected to a stingray will not get through until the stingray releases their phone. It’s also not clear how effective the devices are at letting 911 calls go through. The FBI and DHS have indicated that they haven’t commissioned studies to measure this, but a study conducted by federal police in Canada found that the 911 bypass didn’t always work.

Depending on how many phones are in the vicinity of a stingray, hundreds could connect to the device and potentially have service disrupted.

How long has law enforcement been using stingrays?

The technology is believed to have originated in the military, though it’s not clear when it was first used in combat zones or domestically in the U.S. The earliest public mention of a stingray-like device being used by U.S. law enforcement occurred in 1994, when the FBI used a crude, jury-rigged version of the tool to track former hacker Kevin Mitnick; authorities referred to that device as a Triggerfish. In a case in Utah in 2009, an FBI agent revealed in a court document that cell-site simulators had been in use by law enforcement for more than a decade. He also said they weren’t just used by the FBI but also by the Marshals Service, the Secret Service, and other agencies. Recent documents obtained by the ACLU also indicate that between 2017 and 2019, the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations unit has used stingrays at least 466 times in investigations. BuzzFeed News had previously obtained records showing that from 2013 to 2017, HSI had used the technology 1,885 times.
Aside from the potential for widespread surveillance, are there other problems with the technology?

The other controversy with stingrays involves secrecy and lack of transparency around their use. Law enforcement agencies and the companies that make the devices have prevented the public from obtaining information about their capabilities and from learning how often the technology is deployed in investigations. Agencies sign nondisclosure agreements with the companies, which they use as a shield whenever journalists or others file public records requests to obtain information about the technology. Law enforcement agencies claim criminals could craft anti-surveillance methods to undermine the technology if they knew how it worked. The companies themselves cite trade secrets and proprietary information to prevent the public from obtaining sales literature and manuals about the technology.

For years, law enforcement used the devices without obtaining a court order or warrant. Even when they did seek approval from a court, they often described the technology in misleading terms to make it seem less invasive. They would often refer to stingrays in court documents as a “pen register device,” passive devices that sit on a network and record the numbers dialed from a certain phone number. They withheld the fact that the devices force phones to connect to them, that they force other phones that aren’t the target device to connect to them, and that they can perform more functions than simply grabbing an IMSI number. Most significantly, they withheld the fact that the device emits signals that can track a user and their phone inside a private residence. After the FBI used a stingray to track Rigmaiden (the identity thief in San Jose) in his apartment, Rigmaiden’s lawyers got the Justice Department to acknowledge it qualified as a Fourth Amendment search that would require a warrant.

Law enforcement agents have not only deceived judges, however; they’ve also misled defense attorneys seeking information about how agents tracked their clients. In some court documents, law enforcement officials have indicated that they obtained location information about the defendant from a “confidential source,” when in truth they used a stingray to track them.

To address this deception, the Justice Department in 2015 implemented a new policy requiring all federal agents engaged in criminal investigations to obtain a probable cause search warrant before using a stingray. It also requires agents and prosecutors to tell judges when the warrant they are seeking is for a stingray; and it requires them to limit the use of the stingray’s capabilities to tracking the location of a phone and logging the phone numbers for calls received and made by the phone. They cannot collect the contents of communication, such as text messages and emails. And agents are required to purge the data they collect from non-targeted phones within 24 hours or 30 days, depending on the circumstances.

The problem, however, is that Justice Department policy is not law. And although the policy includes state and local law enforcement agencies when they are working on a case with federal agents and want to use the devices, it does not cover those agencies when they are working on cases alone. To address this loophole, lawmakers would need to pass a federal law banning the use of stingrays without a warrant, but efforts to do so have so far been unsuccessful.

One bigger issue with the Justice Department policy is that, as noted above, it only applies to criminal investigations, not national security ones, and it also includes a carve-out for “exigent circumstances” that are not clearly defined. Federal agents are not required to seek a warrant to use the technology in cases involving such circumstances. Whether the government has used the technology against Black Lives Matter protesters without a warrant is likely something that will remain a secret for some time.