Bio-Warfare, Authoritarian Rule and the Corona Virus Epidemic
Kees van der Pijl, April 20201
In March 2020 the world went into lock-down to combat an outbreak of the latest version of a corona virus, Covid-19. Following on earlier versions (notably, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, SARS, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, MERS), the new corona virus was recognised first in China in late 2019. It created a beginning epidemic in Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province, to which the Chinese government responded with draconian measures that effectively stopped the spread by the time the rest of the world entered the crisis phase. In the meantime, Iran, Italy and Spain too had been seriously affected. On 11 March, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the ongoing outbreak of the corona virus disease (Covid-19) to be a global pandemic, the first since the H1N1 swine flu in 2009.
Viruses are tiny droplets of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) wrapped in protein. The most common ones cause a seasonal cold but every virus infection can also trigger bacterial infections such as pneumonia. Covid-19 proved very dangerous precisely in that respect. However, for this complication to occur, the weakness of patients is a key factor. Advanced age and existing, underlying illnesses are the main factor in explaining the death rate of patients. In hard-hit Italy, half of the dead had three other illnesses, one- quarter two, and the other quarter, one; only 0.8 percent of the dead had been in good health (Bloomberg 2020).
On the basis of existing information, I start from the assumption that it is unlikely that the spread of this virus was intentionally initiated with the aim of triggering what is now slowly becoming a world-wide standstill of normal life. However, as with previous epochal events, notably the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, but also the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014 (see my 2018), the way the event has been exploited for other purposes is more important than the forensics of the event itself.
Soon after the epidemic began or, better: was proclaimed to be developing into one,1 First draft. Thanks to Karel van Wolferen & Twitter correspondent Roel for key materials.
Kees van der Pijl, April 20201
In March 2020 the world went into lock-down to combat an outbreak of the latest version of a corona virus, Covid-19. Following on earlier versions (notably, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, SARS, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, MERS), the new corona virus was recognised first in China in late 2019. It created a beginning epidemic in Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province, to which the Chinese government responded with draconian measures that effectively stopped the spread by the time the rest of the world entered the crisis phase. In the meantime, Iran, Italy and Spain too had been seriously affected. On 11 March, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the ongoing outbreak of the corona virus disease (Covid-19) to be a global pandemic, the first since the H1N1 swine flu in 2009.
Viruses are tiny droplets of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) wrapped in protein. The most common ones cause a seasonal cold but every virus infection can also trigger bacterial infections such as pneumonia. Covid-19 proved very dangerous precisely in that respect. However, for this complication to occur, the weakness of patients is a key factor. Advanced age and existing, underlying illnesses are the main factor in explaining the death rate of patients. In hard-hit Italy, half of the dead had three other illnesses, one- quarter two, and the other quarter, one; only 0.8 percent of the dead had been in good health (Bloomberg 2020).
On the basis of existing information, I start from the assumption that it is unlikely that the spread of this virus was intentionally initiated with the aim of triggering what is now slowly becoming a world-wide standstill of normal life. However, as with previous epochal events, notably the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, but also the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014 (see my 2018), the way the event has been exploited for other purposes is more important than the forensics of the event itself.
Soon after the epidemic began or, better: was proclaimed to be developing into one,1 First draft. Thanks to Karel van Wolferen & Twitter correspondent Roel for key materials.
1
an ‘official’ interpretation emerged to back up measures that often had little to do with the crisis itself. The authoritarian reflex in contemporary capitalism, prompted by the vulnerability of speculative capital running the show in the West, the global spread of product chains, and the instability of the underlying social contract, is key here (Desai 2020). The supporting role of media and parliamentary politics in whipping up fear is another major factor. In the current epidemic, Naomi Klein’s ‘disaster capitalism’ is up and running (Klein 2007). In the words of a Belgian journalist, Senta Depuydt,
It is undeniable that the coronavirus epidemic has come on the scene at a crucial moment, when people everywhere are in revolt against the power of international financial institutions and multinational pharmaceutical corporations, whose stranglehold on governments is no longer hidden. Many scandals have shaken confidence. The bankruptcy of an aberrant economic system is accelerating, and attempts to start a third world war are multiplying. While it is impossible to know how the "coronavirus pandemic" will influence the redistribution of power, it is certain that many are seeking to have Covid-19 serve the political interests of a global governance project. (Depuydt 2020)
In the case of viruses and other microbes, a crucial factor is the role of biological experimentation for military purposes. The Covid-19 outbreak provides an opportunity to bring into focus the role that the United States in particular is playing in this research, in breach of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. The array of dedicated laboratories both in the US itself and on the borders of Russia and China (as well as in the northern frontier zone of black Africa) leaves no doubt as to the intentions of the Pentagon when it comes to deploying biological agents against the inhabitants, livestock and crops of other countries. Also specific to the current Covid-19 outbreak is the aspect of commercial exploitation of remedies like vaccines. Some of the richest people in the world such as Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, are active in this domain, following their ideas about global governance and health security. Framing health and other issues as questions of ‘security’ has been analysed as a way of bolstering state power in times of crisis (Elbe 2009: 15).
In what follows I address these aspects one by one, following the method of providing the broadest possible context without drawing inferences not warranted by the evidence .
It is undeniable that the coronavirus epidemic has come on the scene at a crucial moment, when people everywhere are in revolt against the power of international financial institutions and multinational pharmaceutical corporations, whose stranglehold on governments is no longer hidden. Many scandals have shaken confidence. The bankruptcy of an aberrant economic system is accelerating, and attempts to start a third world war are multiplying. While it is impossible to know how the "coronavirus pandemic" will influence the redistribution of power, it is certain that many are seeking to have Covid-19 serve the political interests of a global governance project. (Depuydt 2020)
In the case of viruses and other microbes, a crucial factor is the role of biological experimentation for military purposes. The Covid-19 outbreak provides an opportunity to bring into focus the role that the United States in particular is playing in this research, in breach of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. The array of dedicated laboratories both in the US itself and on the borders of Russia and China (as well as in the northern frontier zone of black Africa) leaves no doubt as to the intentions of the Pentagon when it comes to deploying biological agents against the inhabitants, livestock and crops of other countries. Also specific to the current Covid-19 outbreak is the aspect of commercial exploitation of remedies like vaccines. Some of the richest people in the world such as Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, are active in this domain, following their ideas about global governance and health security. Framing health and other issues as questions of ‘security’ has been analysed as a way of bolstering state power in times of crisis (Elbe 2009: 15).
In what follows I address these aspects one by one, following the method of providing the broadest possible context without drawing inferences not warranted by the evidence .
2
1. Habitat Compression and Epidemics
The general background of the new corona virus outbreak is the degradation of the Earth’s biosphere due to the growth of humanity and its disproportionate claim on land and resources. Aggravated by the exploitative capitalist organisation of the economy and society, the exhaustion of the social and natural foundations of life is a paramount cause of the spread of disease as well.
The destruction of wildlife habitats as a result of deforestation, pollution, precipitate climate change, and other forms of destruction of the biosphere has had the result that hundreds of pathogenic microbes have appeared in regions where they had been unknown before, especially in the most recent decades. HIV, Ebola in West-Africa, or Zika on the American continent are examples. 60 percent of them are of animal origin, of which one- third of domestic animals; two-thirds come from wild animals. Because of deforestation, urbanisation and industrialisation, microbes that are no problem for wild animals have had a greater change to invade humans and adapt to them (Shah 2020: 1).
Viruses can also cause epidemics more easily because of the time/space compression as a result of air travel in ever-greater numbers. This has created a direct contiguity between disease-prone regions with patchy medical infrastructure and better-equipped, richer areas. Thus it was found that several African militaries had extraordinarily high levels of HIV/AIDS (Elbe 2010: 31-2, 34). Air pollution aggravates the effects of a virus infection: if lungs have been subjected to foul air for decades, they will have greater difficulty dealing with pneumonia once a virus has been inhaled.
Thus the crisis of the biosphere as a result of the growth of humankind under conditions of industrialisation and urbanisation is the general background of any epidemic. Ebola according to a study of 2017 appeared in West-African regions where deforestation was rampant and bats, carriers of microbes that humans should not be exposed to, came in close proximity to human habitats. Besides Ebola, Nipah (in Malaysia and Bangla Desh), and Marburg (mainly in East Africa) have made this species- to-species leap. In North America, birds (in rapid decline) are carriers of the Western Nile virus, which via domestic birds can leap to humans by mosquito bites.
To feed a growing appetite for meat, humanity has razed forests the equivalent of the African continent to allow vast herds of animals to graze, and more land to grow the extra
The general background of the new corona virus outbreak is the degradation of the Earth’s biosphere due to the growth of humanity and its disproportionate claim on land and resources. Aggravated by the exploitative capitalist organisation of the economy and society, the exhaustion of the social and natural foundations of life is a paramount cause of the spread of disease as well.
The destruction of wildlife habitats as a result of deforestation, pollution, precipitate climate change, and other forms of destruction of the biosphere has had the result that hundreds of pathogenic microbes have appeared in regions where they had been unknown before, especially in the most recent decades. HIV, Ebola in West-Africa, or Zika on the American continent are examples. 60 percent of them are of animal origin, of which one- third of domestic animals; two-thirds come from wild animals. Because of deforestation, urbanisation and industrialisation, microbes that are no problem for wild animals have had a greater change to invade humans and adapt to them (Shah 2020: 1).
Viruses can also cause epidemics more easily because of the time/space compression as a result of air travel in ever-greater numbers. This has created a direct contiguity between disease-prone regions with patchy medical infrastructure and better-equipped, richer areas. Thus it was found that several African militaries had extraordinarily high levels of HIV/AIDS (Elbe 2010: 31-2, 34). Air pollution aggravates the effects of a virus infection: if lungs have been subjected to foul air for decades, they will have greater difficulty dealing with pneumonia once a virus has been inhaled.
Thus the crisis of the biosphere as a result of the growth of humankind under conditions of industrialisation and urbanisation is the general background of any epidemic. Ebola according to a study of 2017 appeared in West-African regions where deforestation was rampant and bats, carriers of microbes that humans should not be exposed to, came in close proximity to human habitats. Besides Ebola, Nipah (in Malaysia and Bangla Desh), and Marburg (mainly in East Africa) have made this species- to-species leap. In North America, birds (in rapid decline) are carriers of the Western Nile virus, which via domestic birds can leap to humans by mosquito bites.
To feed a growing appetite for meat, humanity has razed forests the equivalent of the African continent to allow vast herds of animals to graze, and more land to grow the extra
3
fodder to raise the body weight of animals slaughtered prematurely as calves, piglets, etc. These domestic animals in turn can serve as a bridge for microbes to leap to humans. SARS erupted in Guangdong in November 2002, presumably in a market where live animals were sold freshly slaughtered. At the time the Chinese government took several months before reporting the incidence of the illness to the World Healh Organization (WHO). In the meantime, a local Guangdong doctor who had travelled to Hong Kong had infected several thousands of others (Elbe 2010: 36-7). Bird flu, inherent in water fowl, also jumped to chickens and mutated into H5N1, a virus infecting humans and killing half its hosts, but so far, with only a limited human-to-human infection rate (Shah 2020: 21; Elbe 2010: 49).
The Covid-19 Outbreak: Habitat Compression and/or Laboratory Origin?
Chinese virologists, writing in Nature, conclude that ‘despite intense research efforts, how, when and where new diseases appear are still a source of considerable uncertainty’ (Fan Wu et al. 2020). The first patient of what the WHO later labelled Covid-19 was hospitalised in December 2019, probably picked it up at a seafood market in Wuhan, where he worked. ‘The virus was most closely related (89.1% nucleotide similarity) to a group of SARS-like corona viruses (genus Betacoronavirus, subgenus Sarbecovirus) that had previously been found in bats in China’. The subsequent infection of others in the area suggest ‘the ongoing ability of viral spill-over from animals to cause severe disease in humans’. Notably, in addition to fish and shellfish, a variety of live wild animals for sale in the market —including hedgehogs, badgers, snakes and birds (turtledoves)—were available before the outbreak began, as well as animal carcasses and meat (but no bats) (Fan Wu et al. 2020).
In the case of Covid-19, the first Wuhan patient’s RNA was closely related to a bat SARS-like coronavirus (CoV) isolate that had previously been sampled in China. By tracing the evolutionary relationship between Covid-19 (which they still called WHCV), the researchers came to the conclusion that whilst close to SARS and MERS, recombination had occurred in this group of viruses in the past.
The high similarities of the amino acid sequences and predicted protein structures of the RBD domains of [Covid-19] and SARS-CoV suggest that [Covid-19] may
The Covid-19 Outbreak: Habitat Compression and/or Laboratory Origin?
Chinese virologists, writing in Nature, conclude that ‘despite intense research efforts, how, when and where new diseases appear are still a source of considerable uncertainty’ (Fan Wu et al. 2020). The first patient of what the WHO later labelled Covid-19 was hospitalised in December 2019, probably picked it up at a seafood market in Wuhan, where he worked. ‘The virus was most closely related (89.1% nucleotide similarity) to a group of SARS-like corona viruses (genus Betacoronavirus, subgenus Sarbecovirus) that had previously been found in bats in China’. The subsequent infection of others in the area suggest ‘the ongoing ability of viral spill-over from animals to cause severe disease in humans’. Notably, in addition to fish and shellfish, a variety of live wild animals for sale in the market —including hedgehogs, badgers, snakes and birds (turtledoves)—were available before the outbreak began, as well as animal carcasses and meat (but no bats) (Fan Wu et al. 2020).
In the case of Covid-19, the first Wuhan patient’s RNA was closely related to a bat SARS-like coronavirus (CoV) isolate that had previously been sampled in China. By tracing the evolutionary relationship between Covid-19 (which they still called WHCV), the researchers came to the conclusion that whilst close to SARS and MERS, recombination had occurred in this group of viruses in the past.
The high similarities of the amino acid sequences and predicted protein structures of the RBD domains of [Covid-19] and SARS-CoV suggest that [Covid-19] may
4
efficiently use human ACE2 [Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2] as a receptor for cellular entry, which could potentially facilitate human-to-human transmission. There was no significant evidence for recombination across the genome as a whole. However, some evidence for past recombination was detected in the S gene of WHCV, SARS-CoV and bat SARS-like CoVs (Fan Wu et al., 2020).
A preliminary study on Covid-19 found that the receptor (ACE2), which is identical to the one used by the SARS coronavirus, is more prevalent among East Asians. ‘East Asians present a much higher ratio of lung cells that express that receptor than the other ethnicities (Caucasian and African-American) included in the study. However, such findings are preliminary and the sample size too small to draw any definitive conclusions from that preliminary data’ (Webb 2020).
The putative recombination events in the evolutionary history of the sarbecoviruses, the whole-genome sequence of [Covid-19] and four representative coronaviruses—bat SARS-like CoV Rp3, CoVZC45, CoVZXC21 and SARS-CoV Tor2—were analysed using the Recombination Detection Program v.4 (RDP4). The new corona-virus was most closely related to bat SL-CoVZC45 and bat SL-CoVZXC21. However, whilst recombination events seem relatively common among sarbecoviruses, ‘there is no evidence that recombination has facilitated the emergence of [Covid-19]’ (Fan Wu et al. 2020). Besides SARS, the MERS outbreak in 2012 was also a forerunner of Covid-19. Even so, ‘the exact origin of human-infected coronaviruses remains unclear’ (Fan Wu et al.. 2020, emphasis added).
The assumption that this virus too originated in China has meanwhile been challenged. In August 2019 the United States reported the first death from ‘vaping’ (electronic cigarette smoking), a respirator illness spreading fast. Most patients sufferied from difficulty breathing, chest pain, vomiting, and fatigue, all symptoms of Covid-19, but they were mostly adolescents or young adults. In Italy, on the other hand, GPs noticed strange forms of pneumonia among old people as early as November 2019 (Roberts 2020; I come back to this below).
One possibility of a new virus to appear is that it escapes from one of the many research facilities dedicated, for purposes good or bad, to the study of microbes. In the case of Covid-19, this possibility was raised as well. Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, in a New York Post report in
A preliminary study on Covid-19 found that the receptor (ACE2), which is identical to the one used by the SARS coronavirus, is more prevalent among East Asians. ‘East Asians present a much higher ratio of lung cells that express that receptor than the other ethnicities (Caucasian and African-American) included in the study. However, such findings are preliminary and the sample size too small to draw any definitive conclusions from that preliminary data’ (Webb 2020).
The putative recombination events in the evolutionary history of the sarbecoviruses, the whole-genome sequence of [Covid-19] and four representative coronaviruses—bat SARS-like CoV Rp3, CoVZC45, CoVZXC21 and SARS-CoV Tor2—were analysed using the Recombination Detection Program v.4 (RDP4). The new corona-virus was most closely related to bat SL-CoVZC45 and bat SL-CoVZXC21. However, whilst recombination events seem relatively common among sarbecoviruses, ‘there is no evidence that recombination has facilitated the emergence of [Covid-19]’ (Fan Wu et al. 2020). Besides SARS, the MERS outbreak in 2012 was also a forerunner of Covid-19. Even so, ‘the exact origin of human-infected coronaviruses remains unclear’ (Fan Wu et al.. 2020, emphasis added).
The assumption that this virus too originated in China has meanwhile been challenged. In August 2019 the United States reported the first death from ‘vaping’ (electronic cigarette smoking), a respirator illness spreading fast. Most patients sufferied from difficulty breathing, chest pain, vomiting, and fatigue, all symptoms of Covid-19, but they were mostly adolescents or young adults. In Italy, on the other hand, GPs noticed strange forms of pneumonia among old people as early as November 2019 (Roberts 2020; I come back to this below).
One possibility of a new virus to appear is that it escapes from one of the many research facilities dedicated, for purposes good or bad, to the study of microbes. In the case of Covid-19, this possibility was raised as well. Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, in a New York Post report in
5
February was reported to claim that the new virus accidentally escaped from China’s National Biosafety Laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where scientists study bat corona viruses. Some epidemiologists have rejected this given the strict safety protocols in such laboratories; one made this claim also on the basis of his own genomic analysis of Covid-19 (cited in Makowski 2020).
However, after the first outbreak of SARS, the virus reappeared as a result of poor safety practices in laboratories in Singapore, Taipei and Beijing (Elbe 2010: 41). The WHO updated SARS surveillance guidelines for this reason in 2004 and China replaced the director of Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Makowski 2020). As we see below, in July 2019 the federal authorities in the United States in fact closed down the biological laboratories at Fort Detrick in Maryland over safety issues.
There have also been claims that Covid-19 was an experimentally engineered virus, and it is a fact that ‘researchers throughout the world, including in the US and China, have conducted research involving the creation of ... hybrid corona viruses’ (Makowski 2020). This takes us to the role of such research for military uses.
2. The Role of US Biological Weapons Research
Humans do not exist in a unmediated connection to nature, or to viruses for that matter. Human communities originated in the process of ethnogenesis, through which they transformed from groups of primates to communities occupying separate social spaces and geographic conditions (climate, topography, exposure to microbes) and considering each other as outsiders (see my 2007: 16-24). On the basis of the mobilisation of its own abilities to function as a collective, a community not only engages with others, but also with surrounding nature, which it likewise considers as a set of potentially threatening, alien forces to be negotiated, appeased, and exploited. When communities are exposed to microbes their immune system is not familiar with (as when native Americans faced the advent of Iberian explorers), mass extermination can follow.
In the modern world, different ethnogenetic make-ups still play a role in international relations but the most advanced societies also developed the ability to actively shape the genetic environment. In the late 19th century, the countries of the Anglo-American capitalist heartland and the main contender states challenging the liberal state/society
However, after the first outbreak of SARS, the virus reappeared as a result of poor safety practices in laboratories in Singapore, Taipei and Beijing (Elbe 2010: 41). The WHO updated SARS surveillance guidelines for this reason in 2004 and China replaced the director of Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Makowski 2020). As we see below, in July 2019 the federal authorities in the United States in fact closed down the biological laboratories at Fort Detrick in Maryland over safety issues.
There have also been claims that Covid-19 was an experimentally engineered virus, and it is a fact that ‘researchers throughout the world, including in the US and China, have conducted research involving the creation of ... hybrid corona viruses’ (Makowski 2020). This takes us to the role of such research for military uses.
2. The Role of US Biological Weapons Research
Humans do not exist in a unmediated connection to nature, or to viruses for that matter. Human communities originated in the process of ethnogenesis, through which they transformed from groups of primates to communities occupying separate social spaces and geographic conditions (climate, topography, exposure to microbes) and considering each other as outsiders (see my 2007: 16-24). On the basis of the mobilisation of its own abilities to function as a collective, a community not only engages with others, but also with surrounding nature, which it likewise considers as a set of potentially threatening, alien forces to be negotiated, appeased, and exploited. When communities are exposed to microbes their immune system is not familiar with (as when native Americans faced the advent of Iberian explorers), mass extermination can follow.
In the modern world, different ethnogenetic make-ups still play a role in international relations but the most advanced societies also developed the ability to actively shape the genetic environment. In the late 19th century, the countries of the Anglo-American capitalist heartland and the main contender states challenging the liberal state/society
6
complex (Germany, Japan...) were passing through the ‘second industrial revolution’, characterised by the application of science to production. This allowed the synthetic production of chemicals not only for civilian commercial applications but also for warfare, as the horrors of gas use in the First World War were to demonstrate. By the time of the Second World War, advances in molecular biology and medicine also made it possible to consider the use of pathogens for military use.
In 1925, the Geneva Protocol banning biological weapons was agreed. Japan signed but did not ratify the Protocol; in World War Two it bombarded Chinese cities with pathogens whilst its scientists experimented with cholera and haemorrhagic fevers on prisoners. Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army collected data by performing deadly experiments on humans and testing ‘plague bombs’ on Chinese cities to see whether they could start disease outbreaks (Parry 2020).
Since 1942 the US had its own biological warfare laboratory in Fort Detrick in Maryland, where experiments with anthrax, botulism, plague, tularaemia, Q fever, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, and brucellosis were undertaken. Other Allies (Britain and the USSR) also had bio-warfare branches but not as comprehensive (Elbe 2010: 70). Fort Detrick’s possible role in the origin of the Covid-19 virus outbreak will concern us below.
After the war the US granted Japanese and Nazi scientists immunity from war crimes prosecution on the condition they hand over their findings. During the Korean War the US military used germ warfare targeting both North Korea and China ‘by dropping diseased insects and voles carrying a variety of pathogens—including bubonic plague and haemorrhagic fever—from planes in the middle of the night,’ writes Whitney Webb (2020). ‘Despite the mountain of evidence and the testimony of US soldiers involved in that program, the US government and military denied the claims and ordered the destruction of relevant documentation.’
The post-war CIA’s Project MKULTRA (experiments with LSD and other substances, on the pretext of the Korean War era story of communist ‘brainwashing’), coordinated with the US Army Biological Warfare Laboratories, according to Stephen Kinzer, author of Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control, was ‘Essentially a continuation of work that began in Japanese and Nazi concentration camps. Not only was it roughly based on those experiments, but the CIA actually hired the vivisectionists and the torturers who had worked in Japan and in Nazi concentration
In 1925, the Geneva Protocol banning biological weapons was agreed. Japan signed but did not ratify the Protocol; in World War Two it bombarded Chinese cities with pathogens whilst its scientists experimented with cholera and haemorrhagic fevers on prisoners. Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army collected data by performing deadly experiments on humans and testing ‘plague bombs’ on Chinese cities to see whether they could start disease outbreaks (Parry 2020).
Since 1942 the US had its own biological warfare laboratory in Fort Detrick in Maryland, where experiments with anthrax, botulism, plague, tularaemia, Q fever, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, and brucellosis were undertaken. Other Allies (Britain and the USSR) also had bio-warfare branches but not as comprehensive (Elbe 2010: 70). Fort Detrick’s possible role in the origin of the Covid-19 virus outbreak will concern us below.
After the war the US granted Japanese and Nazi scientists immunity from war crimes prosecution on the condition they hand over their findings. During the Korean War the US military used germ warfare targeting both North Korea and China ‘by dropping diseased insects and voles carrying a variety of pathogens—including bubonic plague and haemorrhagic fever—from planes in the middle of the night,’ writes Whitney Webb (2020). ‘Despite the mountain of evidence and the testimony of US soldiers involved in that program, the US government and military denied the claims and ordered the destruction of relevant documentation.’
The post-war CIA’s Project MKULTRA (experiments with LSD and other substances, on the pretext of the Korean War era story of communist ‘brainwashing’), coordinated with the US Army Biological Warfare Laboratories, according to Stephen Kinzer, author of Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control, was ‘Essentially a continuation of work that began in Japanese and Nazi concentration camps. Not only was it roughly based on those experiments, but the CIA actually hired the vivisectionists and the torturers who had worked in Japan and in Nazi concentration
7
camps to come and explain what they had found out so that we could build on their research’ (cited in Parry 2020). Gottlieb, a CIA employee with credentials as a top chemist who joined the agency in 1951 as a poison expert, was involved in MKULTRA. He also worked on poisons to be used against Fidel Castro and Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba and worked for defence contractor Lockheed.
Frank Olson, one of the bio-warfare scientists and CIA employees in the program who died under mysterious circumstances in 1953, may have been a potential government whistleblower on the CIA’s activities and US bio-war crimes (Parry 2020).
In 1969, President Richard Nixon ordered the destruction of all US biological weapons. His Statement on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs declared that the United States would renounce the use of lethal biological agents and that it would only conduct biological research for protection, such as immunization and safety measures. With the ratification of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, that should have terminated the bio-warfare programmes of the main signatories (including the USSR and Britain). Following this, the US Army’s Biological Warfare Laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, changed its name to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). ‘The CIA merely transferred its bio-war programs to USAMRIID and continued bio-warfare research under the cover of "non-proliferation" enforcement and research’ (Madsen 2016)). The CIA held on to ‘anthrax and shellfish toxins and cultures for tularaemia, brucellosis, Venezuelan equine encephalocitis and smallpox’; in 2001 it was revealed the US had continued working on bio-weapons (Elbe 2010: 73).
The US according to questions asked in the House of Representatives in July 2019, in the period between 1950 and 1975 also may have been experimenting with weaponising insects and Lyme disease (Webb 2020). In a letter from CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner to Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) of 2 August, 1977, Turner explained that Fort Detrick was working on projects part of the MKUltra programme, with bio-warfare coming under the Project MKNAOMI.
MKNAOMI was the code name for a joint Department of Defense/CIA research program lasting from the 1950s through the 1970s. Unclassified information about the MKNAOMI program and the related Special Operations Division is scarce. It is generally reported to be a successor to the MKULTRA project and to have focused
Frank Olson, one of the bio-warfare scientists and CIA employees in the program who died under mysterious circumstances in 1953, may have been a potential government whistleblower on the CIA’s activities and US bio-war crimes (Parry 2020).
In 1969, President Richard Nixon ordered the destruction of all US biological weapons. His Statement on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs declared that the United States would renounce the use of lethal biological agents and that it would only conduct biological research for protection, such as immunization and safety measures. With the ratification of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, that should have terminated the bio-warfare programmes of the main signatories (including the USSR and Britain). Following this, the US Army’s Biological Warfare Laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, changed its name to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). ‘The CIA merely transferred its bio-war programs to USAMRIID and continued bio-warfare research under the cover of "non-proliferation" enforcement and research’ (Madsen 2016)). The CIA held on to ‘anthrax and shellfish toxins and cultures for tularaemia, brucellosis, Venezuelan equine encephalocitis and smallpox’; in 2001 it was revealed the US had continued working on bio-weapons (Elbe 2010: 73).
The US according to questions asked in the House of Representatives in July 2019, in the period between 1950 and 1975 also may have been experimenting with weaponising insects and Lyme disease (Webb 2020). In a letter from CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner to Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) of 2 August, 1977, Turner explained that Fort Detrick was working on projects part of the MKUltra programme, with bio-warfare coming under the Project MKNAOMI.
MKNAOMI was the code name for a joint Department of Defense/CIA research program lasting from the 1950s through the 1970s. Unclassified information about the MKNAOMI program and the related Special Operations Division is scarce. It is generally reported to be a successor to the MKULTRA project and to have focused
8
on biological projects including biological warfare agents—specifically, to store materials that could either incapacitate or kill a test subject and to develop devices for the diffusion of such materials (Wikipedia, ‘MKNAOMI’)
Besides agents against humans, the project also involved substances targeting animals and crops. Richard Helms, who was director of the CIA from 1966 to 1973, ordered the MKNAOMI files destroyed (Madsen 2016).
Wayne Madsen suggests that Gottlieb may have been involved in the emergence of two novel viruses in the 1980s during the CIA’s illegal war in Zaire and Angola, Ebola and HIV, but according to Wikipedia, Gottlieb resigned from the CIA in 1972 (Wikipedia, ‘Sidney Gottlieb’; Madsen 2016). Towards the end of the Cold War, the germ warfare stocks assembled by the Apartheid regime in South Africa, developed under ‘Project Coast’, were transferred to Fort Detrick and USAMRIID. They included West Nile virus and anthrax (Madsen 2016). As Max Parry writes, the documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld, which won an award at the 2019 Sundance film festival,‘puts forth a chilling theory that a South African white supremacist organization deliberately spread HIV/AIDS among black Africans through vaccines in previous decades.’ In 1998 a document surfaced in the Truth and Reconciliation process in post-apartheid South Africa authored by a paramilitary unit called the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR) with evidence about this programme (Parry 2020).
Under Clinton but unbeknownst to him, the US military worked on a variety of anthrax resistant to vaccine. When the president learned about it he ordered it to be discontinued, but the incoming Bush administration had the project resumed. In July 2001 it also withdrew from negotiations about a verification scheme concerning biological weapons (Elbe 2010: 73-4).
After 9/11 Fort Detrick made headlines when letters containing weaponised anthrax were sent to US media and to two members of Congress including Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle. The Ames type of anthrax made clear this had a domest5ic origin (Elbe 2010: 77-8); Webster Tarpley considers this dispatch of deadly pathogens to politicians who could have held up the passage of the Patriot Act, as the clearest sign that 9/11 was a seizure of power within the United States (Tarpley 2007: 311ff). The weapons-grade anthrax was found to have originated at USAMRIID and a scientist working there, Dr Bruce Ivins, was identified as a suspect by the FBI in spite of limited evidence. Ivins
Besides agents against humans, the project also involved substances targeting animals and crops. Richard Helms, who was director of the CIA from 1966 to 1973, ordered the MKNAOMI files destroyed (Madsen 2016).
Wayne Madsen suggests that Gottlieb may have been involved in the emergence of two novel viruses in the 1980s during the CIA’s illegal war in Zaire and Angola, Ebola and HIV, but according to Wikipedia, Gottlieb resigned from the CIA in 1972 (Wikipedia, ‘Sidney Gottlieb’; Madsen 2016). Towards the end of the Cold War, the germ warfare stocks assembled by the Apartheid regime in South Africa, developed under ‘Project Coast’, were transferred to Fort Detrick and USAMRIID. They included West Nile virus and anthrax (Madsen 2016). As Max Parry writes, the documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld, which won an award at the 2019 Sundance film festival,‘puts forth a chilling theory that a South African white supremacist organization deliberately spread HIV/AIDS among black Africans through vaccines in previous decades.’ In 1998 a document surfaced in the Truth and Reconciliation process in post-apartheid South Africa authored by a paramilitary unit called the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR) with evidence about this programme (Parry 2020).
Under Clinton but unbeknownst to him, the US military worked on a variety of anthrax resistant to vaccine. When the president learned about it he ordered it to be discontinued, but the incoming Bush administration had the project resumed. In July 2001 it also withdrew from negotiations about a verification scheme concerning biological weapons (Elbe 2010: 73-4).
After 9/11 Fort Detrick made headlines when letters containing weaponised anthrax were sent to US media and to two members of Congress including Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle. The Ames type of anthrax made clear this had a domest5ic origin (Elbe 2010: 77-8); Webster Tarpley considers this dispatch of deadly pathogens to politicians who could have held up the passage of the Patriot Act, as the clearest sign that 9/11 was a seizure of power within the United States (Tarpley 2007: 311ff). The weapons-grade anthrax was found to have originated at USAMRIID and a scientist working there, Dr Bruce Ivins, was identified as a suspect by the FBI in spite of limited evidence. Ivins
9
committed suicide in 2008 after learning the FBI was going to charge him with terrorism. Fort Detrick was placed under tighter restrictions and the Bureau declared the case closed, naming Ivins the chief perpetrator (Madsen 2016; Parry 2020, who claims there is evidence suggesting Ivins was framed by the FBI).
The 2001 anthrax letters were also claimed to have been sent by Iraq. This story was spread by former Israeli military intelligence agent and biowarfare specialist Dany Shoham, although it was later found that Iraq possessed neither the chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction that had been the pretext for the invasion of 2003. In fact it was Shoham’s former employer in Israel, which according to reports in the late 1990s, had been developing ‘a genetic bioweapon that would target Arabs, specifically Iraqis, but leave Israeli Jews unaffected’ (Webb 2020; Wired 1999).
The continuation of bio-warfare research according to Wayne Madsen may be concluded from a Top Secret/Special Intelligence/Talent-Keyhole Signals Intelligence Directorate newsletter dated November 6, 2003, in which the National Security Agency (NSA), headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, not far from USAMRIID, referred to it (without using the USAMRIID acronym) as the ‘US Army’s bio-weapons research facility’. The newsletter also noted that the facility worked closely with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center (AFMIC) (Madsen 2016). Of course this was the year when the invasion of Iraq was legitimated among others by the alleged threat of biological warfare on the part of Saddam Hussein.
The Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which played an important role in the run-up to the 2000 election of George W. Bush and 9/11 (and has meanwhile folded) among its proposals in ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ included the development of ethnically specific bio-weapons, after the example of Israel’s alleged anti-Arab bio- warfare project. Thus it mused that in the future, ‘combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes... advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool’ (cited in Webb 2020).
In 2004 the United States championed the adoption of Resolution 1540 by the UN Security Council, tightening the control regime concerning weapons of mass destruction including biological weapons. This aimed at ‘rogue states’ harbouring terrorists—whilst the US itself withdrew from a universal regime for these weapons (Elbe 2010: 81). Indeed in 2010, a report for the US Air Force speculated about the threat of ‘binary
The 2001 anthrax letters were also claimed to have been sent by Iraq. This story was spread by former Israeli military intelligence agent and biowarfare specialist Dany Shoham, although it was later found that Iraq possessed neither the chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction that had been the pretext for the invasion of 2003. In fact it was Shoham’s former employer in Israel, which according to reports in the late 1990s, had been developing ‘a genetic bioweapon that would target Arabs, specifically Iraqis, but leave Israeli Jews unaffected’ (Webb 2020; Wired 1999).
The continuation of bio-warfare research according to Wayne Madsen may be concluded from a Top Secret/Special Intelligence/Talent-Keyhole Signals Intelligence Directorate newsletter dated November 6, 2003, in which the National Security Agency (NSA), headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, not far from USAMRIID, referred to it (without using the USAMRIID acronym) as the ‘US Army’s bio-weapons research facility’. The newsletter also noted that the facility worked closely with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center (AFMIC) (Madsen 2016). Of course this was the year when the invasion of Iraq was legitimated among others by the alleged threat of biological warfare on the part of Saddam Hussein.
The Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which played an important role in the run-up to the 2000 election of George W. Bush and 9/11 (and has meanwhile folded) among its proposals in ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’ included the development of ethnically specific bio-weapons, after the example of Israel’s alleged anti-Arab bio- warfare project. Thus it mused that in the future, ‘combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes... advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool’ (cited in Webb 2020).
In 2004 the United States championed the adoption of Resolution 1540 by the UN Security Council, tightening the control regime concerning weapons of mass destruction including biological weapons. This aimed at ‘rogue states’ harbouring terrorists—whilst the US itself withdrew from a universal regime for these weapons (Elbe 2010: 81). Indeed in 2010, a report for the US Air Force speculated about the threat of ‘binary
10
biological weapons, designer genes, gene therapy as a weapon, stealth viruses, host- swapping diseases, and designer diseases’, suggesting ongoing interest in these type of weapons (Webb 2020 citing Almosara 2010).
Since the NSA also monitors all communications of the WHO, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Red Cross, it will know of any virulent disease outbreak anywhere without delay. Thus in 2003 the NSA and AFMIC were aware of the SARS epidemic in China, cholera in Liberia, and a series of epidemics in Iraq. The NSA’s Target Office of Primary Interest (TOPI) had health ministries, hospitals, international and local Red Cross and Red Crescent chapters in affected countries under surveillance (Madsen 2016).
The US Army produces and tests bio-agents at a special military facility located at Dugway Proving Ground (West Desert Test Center, Utah), as proven in a 2012 US Army report. The facility is overseen by the Army Test and Evaluation Command. The Life Sciences Division (LSD) at Dugway Proving Ground is tasked with the production of bio-agents. According to the Army report, scientists from this division produce and test aerosolized bio-agents at Lothar Saloman Life Sciences Test Facility (LSTF). The Life Sciences Division consists of an Aerosol Technology branch and a Microbiology Branch. The Aerosol Technology Branch aerosolizes biological agents and stimulants. The Microbiology branch produces toxins, bacteria, viruses and agent-like organisms which are used in chamber and field testing (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
The 2009 H1N1 swine influenza “novel” strain, which became a worldwide pandemic in 2009, was the product of resurrecting the deadly 1918 Spanish flu from DNA extracted from the corpse of a female Inuit teen who died from the disease in 1918 by scientists from the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland, not far from Fort Detrick. Although there were the usual denials from the US government about genetic engineering of various pathogens, on October 16, 2014, the Obama White House announced that it was cutting off funding to risky government experimentation that studied certain infectious agents by making them more dangerous (Madsen 2016).
In fact in 2018, after Trump had taken over, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), began spending millions on research into novel
Since the NSA also monitors all communications of the WHO, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Red Cross, it will know of any virulent disease outbreak anywhere without delay. Thus in 2003 the NSA and AFMIC were aware of the SARS epidemic in China, cholera in Liberia, and a series of epidemics in Iraq. The NSA’s Target Office of Primary Interest (TOPI) had health ministries, hospitals, international and local Red Cross and Red Crescent chapters in affected countries under surveillance (Madsen 2016).
The US Army produces and tests bio-agents at a special military facility located at Dugway Proving Ground (West Desert Test Center, Utah), as proven in a 2012 US Army report. The facility is overseen by the Army Test and Evaluation Command. The Life Sciences Division (LSD) at Dugway Proving Ground is tasked with the production of bio-agents. According to the Army report, scientists from this division produce and test aerosolized bio-agents at Lothar Saloman Life Sciences Test Facility (LSTF). The Life Sciences Division consists of an Aerosol Technology branch and a Microbiology Branch. The Aerosol Technology Branch aerosolizes biological agents and stimulants. The Microbiology branch produces toxins, bacteria, viruses and agent-like organisms which are used in chamber and field testing (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
The 2009 H1N1 swine influenza “novel” strain, which became a worldwide pandemic in 2009, was the product of resurrecting the deadly 1918 Spanish flu from DNA extracted from the corpse of a female Inuit teen who died from the disease in 1918 by scientists from the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland, not far from Fort Detrick. Although there were the usual denials from the US government about genetic engineering of various pathogens, on October 16, 2014, the Obama White House announced that it was cutting off funding to risky government experimentation that studied certain infectious agents by making them more dangerous (Madsen 2016).
In fact in 2018, after Trump had taken over, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), began spending millions on research into novel
11
coronaviruses, specifically those transmitted from bats to humans. At the same time ‘these DARPA-backed companies are developing controversial DNA and mRNA vaccines for this particular coronavirus strain, a category of vaccine that has never previously been approved for human use in the United States’ (Webb 2020). Below I come back to the military vaccine projects in a separate section.
At least two of DARPA’s studies using this controversial technology were classified and 'focused on the potential military application of gene drive technology and use of gene drives in agriculture‘ (Webb 2020). The co-director of an NGO that obtained FOIA emails documenting this, argued that the dual use nature of altering and eradicating entire populations is as much a threat to peace and food security as it is a threat to ecosystems. 'Militarisation of gene drive funding may even contravene the [convention] against hostile uses of environmental modification technologies.’ A participant of one of the projects confirmed that ‘the US military’s centrality to gene tech funding meant that researchers who depend on grants for their research may reorient their projects to fit the narrow aims of these military agencies’. Between 2008 and 2014, the US government spent about $820m on synthetic biology, most of it funded through DARPA and military agencies (Neslen 2017).
A private company, Battelle Memorial Institute, also operates at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) at Fort Detrick, under a Department of Homeland Security contract awarded for 2006-’16 and a smaller one for 2015-’26 (details in Gaytandzhieva 2018). The experiments at Fort Detrick include tests of aerosolised toxins, powder dissemination, and testing Meliodosis, a viral disease with the potential of a biological weapon, on primates At Fort Detrick Battelle already produced other bioterrorism agents at Biosafety Level 4.
Insects too have been an area of US military interest. New recombinant DNA technologies have also made it possible to use insects to transmit diseases. Transgenic manipulation of wasps, bees and mosquitoes could be developed to deliver protein-based biological agents on a large scale (Elbe 2010: 75). The US Army Chemical Research and Development Command, Biological Weapons Branch, studied outdoor mosquito biting activity in a number of field tests at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, in 1960. In 1970 and 1972, USAMRIID still in 1982 experimented with sand flies and mosquitoes could be vectors of Rift Valley Virus, Dengue, Chikungunya and Eastern Equine Encephalitis – viruses, which the US Army researched for their potential as bio-weapons. Gaytandzhieva
At least two of DARPA’s studies using this controversial technology were classified and 'focused on the potential military application of gene drive technology and use of gene drives in agriculture‘ (Webb 2020). The co-director of an NGO that obtained FOIA emails documenting this, argued that the dual use nature of altering and eradicating entire populations is as much a threat to peace and food security as it is a threat to ecosystems. 'Militarisation of gene drive funding may even contravene the [convention] against hostile uses of environmental modification technologies.’ A participant of one of the projects confirmed that ‘the US military’s centrality to gene tech funding meant that researchers who depend on grants for their research may reorient their projects to fit the narrow aims of these military agencies’. Between 2008 and 2014, the US government spent about $820m on synthetic biology, most of it funded through DARPA and military agencies (Neslen 2017).
A private company, Battelle Memorial Institute, also operates at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) at Fort Detrick, under a Department of Homeland Security contract awarded for 2006-’16 and a smaller one for 2015-’26 (details in Gaytandzhieva 2018). The experiments at Fort Detrick include tests of aerosolised toxins, powder dissemination, and testing Meliodosis, a viral disease with the potential of a biological weapon, on primates At Fort Detrick Battelle already produced other bioterrorism agents at Biosafety Level 4.
Insects too have been an area of US military interest. New recombinant DNA technologies have also made it possible to use insects to transmit diseases. Transgenic manipulation of wasps, bees and mosquitoes could be developed to deliver protein-based biological agents on a large scale (Elbe 2010: 75). The US Army Chemical Research and Development Command, Biological Weapons Branch, studied outdoor mosquito biting activity in a number of field tests at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, in 1960. In 1970 and 1972, USAMRIID still in 1982 experimented with sand flies and mosquitoes could be vectors of Rift Valley Virus, Dengue, Chikungunya and Eastern Equine Encephalitis – viruses, which the US Army researched for their potential as bio-weapons. Gaytandzhieva
12
writes that ‘a US Army report in 1981 compared two scenarios – 16 simultaneous attacks on a city by A. Aegupti mosquitoes, infected with Yellow Fever, and Tularemia aerosol attack, and assesses their effectiveness in cost and casualties’. The Zika virus, which causes genetic malformations in newborns and recently emerged in Latin America , was among the diseases carried by Aedes Aegypti, also known as yellow fever mosquito (Gaytandzhieva 2018). In 2003 during the US invasion of Iraq American soldiers were severely bitten by sand flies and contracted Leishmoniasis which if left untreated the acute form of can be fatal (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
US Bio-Warfare Research Abroad
The Pentagon sees Russia and China as the two greatest threats to its military pre- eminence and the inclusion of biotechnology in its defence research is clearly directed against them. The international dispersion of US bio-warfare facilities has been analysed exhaustively by Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva (2018). Most of this section summarises her work.
Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines biological experiments as war crimes. The US, however, is not a state party to the treaty, and cannot be held accountable. The 1972 UN Convention on the prohibition of Biological Weapons is being violated with impunity as the US Army regularly produces deadly viruses, bacteria and toxins, exposing hundreds of thousands of people to dangerous pathogens and the often incurable diseases they cause. The Pentagon operates bio-warfare laboratories in 25 countries across the world. These laboratories are funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) via a Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP) to the tune of $2.1 billion and are located in former Soviet Union countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa. The location of bio-warfare laboratories on the frontiers of Russia and China stands out.
Of the former Soviet republics, Georgia is prominent as a testing ground for bioweapons. The Lugar Center, named after US Senator Richard Lugar, 17 kilometres from the US military airbase Vaziani, near the capital Tbilisi, employs biologists from the US Army Medical Research Unit-Georgia (USAMRU-G) and private contractors. The US federal contracts registry consulted by Gaytandzhieva reveals that research included
US Bio-Warfare Research Abroad
The Pentagon sees Russia and China as the two greatest threats to its military pre- eminence and the inclusion of biotechnology in its defence research is clearly directed against them. The international dispersion of US bio-warfare facilities has been analysed exhaustively by Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva (2018). Most of this section summarises her work.
Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines biological experiments as war crimes. The US, however, is not a state party to the treaty, and cannot be held accountable. The 1972 UN Convention on the prohibition of Biological Weapons is being violated with impunity as the US Army regularly produces deadly viruses, bacteria and toxins, exposing hundreds of thousands of people to dangerous pathogens and the often incurable diseases they cause. The Pentagon operates bio-warfare laboratories in 25 countries across the world. These laboratories are funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) via a Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP) to the tune of $2.1 billion and are located in former Soviet Union countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa. The location of bio-warfare laboratories on the frontiers of Russia and China stands out.
Of the former Soviet republics, Georgia is prominent as a testing ground for bioweapons. The Lugar Center, named after US Senator Richard Lugar, 17 kilometres from the US military airbase Vaziani, near the capital Tbilisi, employs biologists from the US Army Medical Research Unit-Georgia (USAMRU-G) and private contractors. The US federal contracts registry consulted by Gaytandzhieva reveals that research included
13
work on biological agents such as anthrax and tularaemia as well as viral diseases (e.g. Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever, CCHF, a variety of haemorrhagic Dengue fever). In the run-up to the US invasion of Afghanistan CCHF emerged among civilians there (and in Pakistan) (Madsen 2016). The map below shows the US laboratories abroad.
Source: Gaytanzhieva 2018
The outsourcing of research to private contractors by the DTRA has the advantage of by-passing Congressional control and removes it from legal constraints. Gaytandzhieva identified three private American companies that work at the US bio-laboratory in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi: CH2M Hill, Battelle and Metabiota. Diplomatic status for all researchers under the 2002 US-Georgia Agreement on defence cooperation also grants them immunity from Georgian law enforcement. In addition to the Pentagon, the private contractors perform research for the CIA and various other US government agencies. CH2M Hill also has DTRA contracts for work in Uganda, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan, and South East Asia, but the Georgian contract, at half the total, is the largest.
Bio-warfare scientists also work for Battelle Memorial Institute, a subcontractor at the Lugar Centre. It has bio laboratories working for the Pentagon and other US government agencies in a number of other countries, and ranks 23 on the Top 100 US government contractors list. It also worked with the CIA, on a project to reconstruct and test Soviet- era anthrax bomblets. Metabiota Inc., finally, also had contracts under the Pentagon’s
Source: Gaytanzhieva 2018
The outsourcing of research to private contractors by the DTRA has the advantage of by-passing Congressional control and removes it from legal constraints. Gaytandzhieva identified three private American companies that work at the US bio-laboratory in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi: CH2M Hill, Battelle and Metabiota. Diplomatic status for all researchers under the 2002 US-Georgia Agreement on defence cooperation also grants them immunity from Georgian law enforcement. In addition to the Pentagon, the private contractors perform research for the CIA and various other US government agencies. CH2M Hill also has DTRA contracts for work in Uganda, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan, and South East Asia, but the Georgian contract, at half the total, is the largest.
Bio-warfare scientists also work for Battelle Memorial Institute, a subcontractor at the Lugar Centre. It has bio laboratories working for the Pentagon and other US government agencies in a number of other countries, and ranks 23 on the Top 100 US government contractors list. It also worked with the CIA, on a project to reconstruct and test Soviet- era anthrax bomblets. Metabiota Inc., finally, also had contracts under the Pentagon’s
14
DTRA program in Georgia and Ukraine for scientific and technical consulting. Its work was concentrated in global field-based biological threat research, pathogen discovery, outbreak response and clinical trials. During the Ebola crisis in West Africa it was awarded a large contract for work in Sierra Leone, one of the countries at the centre of the epidemic in 2012-’15.
In 2014 The Lugar Center in Georgia was equipped with an insect facility, which among other things may have had a connection with the fact that Tbilisi has been infested with biting flies since 2015. Flies similar to those in Georgia have appeared in neighbouring Dagestan (Russia). Also in 2014, under another DTRA project a tropical mosquito Aedes albopictus appeared in Georgia as well in the Krasnodar region in Russia and in Turkey (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
Besides Georgia, Ukraine, another former Soviet republic bordering on Russia, also hosts US bio-warfare experiments. DTRA has funded eleven bio-laboratories in the country, over which Kiev has no control. In 2005, an agreement between the Pentagon and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine was concluded which prohibits the government in Kiev 'from public disclosure of sensitive information about the US program and Ukraine is obliged to transfer to the US Department of Defense (DoD) dangerous pathogens for biological research. The Pentagon has been granted access to certain state secrets of Ukraine in connection with the projects under their agreement’ (Gaytandzhieva 2018). One of the Pentagon laboratories is located in Kharkiv, where in January 2016 at least 20 Ukrainian soldiers of a flu-like virus infection in two days, and 200 more were hospitalized, but Kiev did not report this incident. In March 2016, across Ukraine, 364 deaths were reported, mostly caused by Swine Flu A (H1N1), which according to intelligence from the Donetsk authorities leading the separatist rebellion there, was due to leakage from the US bio lab in Kharkiv. A suspicious spread of Hepatitis A infection in the south-east of Ukraine, where most of the US labs are located, as well as cases of cholera, was reported to have been caused by contaminated drinking water.
Finally, a new, highly virulent variety of the cholera agent Vibrio cholera, with a marked genetic similarity to the strains reported in Ukraine, hit Moscow in 2014. According to a Russian Research Anti-Plague Institute study in that year, the strain isolated in Moscow was similar to the bacteria which caused the epidemic in neighbouring Ukraine. Still according to Gaytandzhieva, Southern Research Institute, one of the US contractors working at the bio-laboratories in Ukraine, has projects on cholera,
In 2014 The Lugar Center in Georgia was equipped with an insect facility, which among other things may have had a connection with the fact that Tbilisi has been infested with biting flies since 2015. Flies similar to those in Georgia have appeared in neighbouring Dagestan (Russia). Also in 2014, under another DTRA project a tropical mosquito Aedes albopictus appeared in Georgia as well in the Krasnodar region in Russia and in Turkey (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
Besides Georgia, Ukraine, another former Soviet republic bordering on Russia, also hosts US bio-warfare experiments. DTRA has funded eleven bio-laboratories in the country, over which Kiev has no control. In 2005, an agreement between the Pentagon and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine was concluded which prohibits the government in Kiev 'from public disclosure of sensitive information about the US program and Ukraine is obliged to transfer to the US Department of Defense (DoD) dangerous pathogens for biological research. The Pentagon has been granted access to certain state secrets of Ukraine in connection with the projects under their agreement’ (Gaytandzhieva 2018). One of the Pentagon laboratories is located in Kharkiv, where in January 2016 at least 20 Ukrainian soldiers of a flu-like virus infection in two days, and 200 more were hospitalized, but Kiev did not report this incident. In March 2016, across Ukraine, 364 deaths were reported, mostly caused by Swine Flu A (H1N1), which according to intelligence from the Donetsk authorities leading the separatist rebellion there, was due to leakage from the US bio lab in Kharkiv. A suspicious spread of Hepatitis A infection in the south-east of Ukraine, where most of the US labs are located, as well as cases of cholera, was reported to have been caused by contaminated drinking water.
Finally, a new, highly virulent variety of the cholera agent Vibrio cholera, with a marked genetic similarity to the strains reported in Ukraine, hit Moscow in 2014. According to a Russian Research Anti-Plague Institute study in that year, the strain isolated in Moscow was similar to the bacteria which caused the epidemic in neighbouring Ukraine. Still according to Gaytandzhieva, Southern Research Institute, one of the US contractors working at the bio-laboratories in Ukraine, has projects on cholera,
15
as well as on influenza and zika—all pathogens of military importance to the Pentagon. Southern Research Institute has been a prime subcontractor under the DTRA program in Ukraine since 2008. Southern Research Institute was also a subcontractor on a Pentagon program for anthrax research, at a time when the prime contractor was Advanced Biosystems, led by Ken Alibek (a former Soviet microbiologist and biological warfare expert from Kazakhstan who after the collapse of the USSR moved to the US. There have also been allegations that field tests were performed within Russia itself: ‘In the spring of 2017 local citizens reported on a drone disseminating white powder close to the Russian border with Georgia. Neither the Georgian border police, nor the US personnel operating on the Georgia-Russia border, commented on this information’ (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
Covid-19: An Outcome of US Military Research?
The claim that the Covid-19 virus originated in a US laboratory, which the Chinese foreign ministry has subscribed to as well, so far has not been substantiated. But in light of the above, it cannot be easily dismissed either. The latest instalment of DARPA-funded bio-warfare research happened to involve bats as transmitters of deadly pathogens for humans. Since 2018 claims have surfaced that this research, which uncannily corresponds to the source of corona viruses, was ongoing. According to the Washington Post the Pentagon’s interest in this line of research was motivated by Russian efforts to weaponise bats. However, as Whitney Webb writes, although the Soviet Union engaged in covert research involving the Marburg virus, this did not involve bats and ended with the collapse of the USSR (Webb 2020).
Bats are allegedly the reservoir of the Ebola virus, MERS and other deadly diseases. However, the precise ways these viruses are transmitted to humans are currently unknown. Numerous studies have been performed under the DTRA programme, CBEP, in a search for deadly pathogens of military importance in bats. Bats have also been blamed for the deadly Ebola outbreak in Africa (2014-’16). However, no conclusive evidence of exactly how the virus jumped to humans has ever been provided, which raises suspicions of intentional and not natural infection. MERS corona virus is thought to originate from bats and to spread directly to humans and/or camels. However, like Ebola, the precise ways the virus spreads are unknown. 1,980 cases with 699 deaths were reported in 15 countries across the world (as of June 2017) caused by MERS; according
Covid-19: An Outcome of US Military Research?
The claim that the Covid-19 virus originated in a US laboratory, which the Chinese foreign ministry has subscribed to as well, so far has not been substantiated. But in light of the above, it cannot be easily dismissed either. The latest instalment of DARPA-funded bio-warfare research happened to involve bats as transmitters of deadly pathogens for humans. Since 2018 claims have surfaced that this research, which uncannily corresponds to the source of corona viruses, was ongoing. According to the Washington Post the Pentagon’s interest in this line of research was motivated by Russian efforts to weaponise bats. However, as Whitney Webb writes, although the Soviet Union engaged in covert research involving the Marburg virus, this did not involve bats and ended with the collapse of the USSR (Webb 2020).
Bats are allegedly the reservoir of the Ebola virus, MERS and other deadly diseases. However, the precise ways these viruses are transmitted to humans are currently unknown. Numerous studies have been performed under the DTRA programme, CBEP, in a search for deadly pathogens of military importance in bats. Bats have also been blamed for the deadly Ebola outbreak in Africa (2014-’16). However, no conclusive evidence of exactly how the virus jumped to humans has ever been provided, which raises suspicions of intentional and not natural infection. MERS corona virus is thought to originate from bats and to spread directly to humans and/or camels. However, like Ebola, the precise ways the virus spreads are unknown. 1,980 cases with 699 deaths were reported in 15 countries across the world (as of June 2017) caused by MERS; according
16
to the WHO, 3 to 4 out of every 10 patients reported with MERS have died (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
MERS is also one of the viruses that have been engineered by the US and studied by the Pentagon, as well as Influenza and SARS. Confirmation of this practice was Obama’s temporary ban on government funding for such ‘dual-use’ research. The moratorium was lifted in 2017 by the Trump administration and experiments have been resumed. Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens (PPPs) experiments are legal in the US; they aim to increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
The Pentagon claim that its research is for defensive uses, a response to mythical Russian efforts, has been a familiar refrain ever since the Cold War arms races. DARPA’s most recent programme, the Insect Allies programme, likewise is not a defensive project at all; it is aimed at a ‘new class of biological weapon’. This was the conclusion of a group of scientists writing in Science, led by Richard Guy Reeves, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany. They warn that using insects as the vehicle for horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents (HEGAAS)—revealed ‘an intention to develop a means of delivery of HEGAAS for offensive purposes’ (cited in Webb 2020).
It is the same with DARPA’s bat research. Whitney Webb lists a number of research projects under this umbrella meant ‘to unravel the complex causes of bat-borne viruses that have recently made the jump to humans, causing concern among global health officials’. Other US military-funded studies discovered several strains of novel coronaviruses carried by bats, both within China and on its borders (Webb 2020).
DARPA’s Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT) was officially announced in April 2018. It focuses on animal reservoirs of disease, specifically bats.This is an example of ‘gain-of-function’ studies, defined as a
type of research ...ostensibly about trying to stay one step ahead of nature. By making super-viruses that are more pathogenic and easily transmissible, scientists are able to study the way these viruses may evolve and how genetic changes affect the way a virus interacts with its host. Using this information, the scientists can try to pre-empt the natural emergence of these traits by developing antiviral medications that are capable of staving off a pandemic (cited in Webb 2020).
MERS is also one of the viruses that have been engineered by the US and studied by the Pentagon, as well as Influenza and SARS. Confirmation of this practice was Obama’s temporary ban on government funding for such ‘dual-use’ research. The moratorium was lifted in 2017 by the Trump administration and experiments have been resumed. Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens (PPPs) experiments are legal in the US; they aim to increase the transmissibility and/or virulence of pathogens (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
The Pentagon claim that its research is for defensive uses, a response to mythical Russian efforts, has been a familiar refrain ever since the Cold War arms races. DARPA’s most recent programme, the Insect Allies programme, likewise is not a defensive project at all; it is aimed at a ‘new class of biological weapon’. This was the conclusion of a group of scientists writing in Science, led by Richard Guy Reeves, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany. They warn that using insects as the vehicle for horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents (HEGAAS)—revealed ‘an intention to develop a means of delivery of HEGAAS for offensive purposes’ (cited in Webb 2020).
It is the same with DARPA’s bat research. Whitney Webb lists a number of research projects under this umbrella meant ‘to unravel the complex causes of bat-borne viruses that have recently made the jump to humans, causing concern among global health officials’. Other US military-funded studies discovered several strains of novel coronaviruses carried by bats, both within China and on its borders (Webb 2020).
DARPA’s Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats (PREEMPT) was officially announced in April 2018. It focuses on animal reservoirs of disease, specifically bats.This is an example of ‘gain-of-function’ studies, defined as a
type of research ...ostensibly about trying to stay one step ahead of nature. By making super-viruses that are more pathogenic and easily transmissible, scientists are able to study the way these viruses may evolve and how genetic changes affect the way a virus interacts with its host. Using this information, the scientists can try to pre-empt the natural emergence of these traits by developing antiviral medications that are capable of staving off a pandemic (cited in Webb 2020).
17
However, it needs no great leap of the imagination to understand that the same research allows weaponising the pathogens discovered. DARPA’s PREEMPT programme and the Pentagon’s open interest in bats as bioweapons were announced in 2018 and the US military—specifically the Department of Defense’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program—began studying bats and the corona viruses MERS and SARS they carried. (Webb 2020). It was this research that was interrupted when Fort Detrick, the military’s key laboratory involving the study of deadly pathogens, including corona viruses, Ebola and others, was shut down in July 2019 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on grounds of major ‘biosafety lapses’ (Webb 2020). USAMRIID at Fort Detrick was forced to halt all research into deadly pathogens because it lacked ‘sufficient systems to decontaminate wastewater’, although in November it was allowed to ‘partially resume’ research.
This is also important because USAMRIID has a decades-old and close partnership with the University of Wuhan’s Institute of Medical Virology, located in the alleged epicentre of the Covid-19 outbreak. In 2018 a study jointly funded by the Chinese government’s Ministry of Science and Technology and USAID (long considered a front for US intelligence), and the U.S. National Institute of Health (which likewise has a history of collaboration with the CIA and the Pentagon in research on infectious disease and bioweapons research) sequenced the complete genomes for two coronavirus strains. It noted that existing MERS vaccines would be ineffective in targeting these viruses, leading them to suggest that one should be developed in advance (Webb 2020).
Another study, focusing on bats in Kazakhstan with corona viruses, was entirely funded by the Pentagon the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) as part of a project investigating corona viruses similar to MERS. Kazakhstan, too, is dotted with US- funded bio-research studies, not so unexpected since the country is strategically located facing both Russia and China. Duke University, a key partner of DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) programme, is involved in this project, but also partnered with China’s Wuhan University. This resulted in the opening of the China-based Duke Kunshan University (DKU) in 2018. Wuhan University also includes a multi-lab Institute of Medical Virology that has worked closely with the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, USAMRIID at Fort Detrick, since the 1980 (Webb 2020).
Whether this collaboration is a way of obtaining materials for the US military to obtain 18
This is also important because USAMRIID has a decades-old and close partnership with the University of Wuhan’s Institute of Medical Virology, located in the alleged epicentre of the Covid-19 outbreak. In 2018 a study jointly funded by the Chinese government’s Ministry of Science and Technology and USAID (long considered a front for US intelligence), and the U.S. National Institute of Health (which likewise has a history of collaboration with the CIA and the Pentagon in research on infectious disease and bioweapons research) sequenced the complete genomes for two coronavirus strains. It noted that existing MERS vaccines would be ineffective in targeting these viruses, leading them to suggest that one should be developed in advance (Webb 2020).
Another study, focusing on bats in Kazakhstan with corona viruses, was entirely funded by the Pentagon the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) as part of a project investigating corona viruses similar to MERS. Kazakhstan, too, is dotted with US- funded bio-research studies, not so unexpected since the country is strategically located facing both Russia and China. Duke University, a key partner of DARPA’s Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) programme, is involved in this project, but also partnered with China’s Wuhan University. This resulted in the opening of the China-based Duke Kunshan University (DKU) in 2018. Wuhan University also includes a multi-lab Institute of Medical Virology that has worked closely with the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, USAMRIID at Fort Detrick, since the 1980 (Webb 2020).
Whether this collaboration is a way of obtaining materials for the US military to obtain 18
materials from which ‘designer diseases’, diseases affecting only a certain ethnic group, can be developed, is an unanswered question. Since the United States and China are not military allies, on the contrary, and DARPA too participates in this collaboration, we cannot exclude this.
There are several examples of suspected thnic targeting. According to Russian military sources, the harvesting of DNA from Russians and Chinese as part of a covert bio- weapon program. The US Air Force has been specifically collecting Russian RNA and synovial tissue samples, raising fears in Moscow of a covert US ethnic bio-weapons programme. Chinese DNA was obtained through a Harvard research project in China, involving 200 000 peasants whose data were obtained without their consent. I already mentioned that a preliminary study found that the receptor enzyme of Covid-19 (and SARS) in lung cells is more prevalent among Asians although this still requires further study (Webb 2020). Officially of course, there does not exist research and development of ethnic bio-weapons, However, Gaytandzhieva found documents that show that the US collects biological material from certain ethnic groups—again, Russians and Chinese. Te US has been collecting cancer patients’ data and biological material in China. Still according to Gaytandzhieva, the National Cancer Institute has collected biological samples from 300 subjects from Linxian, Zhengzhou, and Chengdu in China. While another federal project, titled Serum Metabolic biomarkers, a study of Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma in China, includes analysis of 349 serum samples which have been collected from Chinese patients. The US National Cancer Institute has been collecting biological material from patients of the Chinese Cancer Hospital in Beijing. Chinese biological material has been collected under a series of federal projects including saliva and cancer tissue (details and sources, Gaytandzhieva 2018).
3. From Fort Detrick to Wuhan: Fatal Trail or Coincidence?
We have seen that Fort Detrick since 1942 has been at the centre of US bio-warfare research. In late July, the home base of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID, referred to already) was found by the CDC to be in breach of biosafety rules. In July 2019 this required it to be closed, although an USAMRIID spokesperson told a local newspaper that ‘no disease-causing materials have been found outside authorized areas at the site’ (cited in Williams 2019).
There are several examples of suspected thnic targeting. According to Russian military sources, the harvesting of DNA from Russians and Chinese as part of a covert bio- weapon program. The US Air Force has been specifically collecting Russian RNA and synovial tissue samples, raising fears in Moscow of a covert US ethnic bio-weapons programme. Chinese DNA was obtained through a Harvard research project in China, involving 200 000 peasants whose data were obtained without their consent. I already mentioned that a preliminary study found that the receptor enzyme of Covid-19 (and SARS) in lung cells is more prevalent among Asians although this still requires further study (Webb 2020). Officially of course, there does not exist research and development of ethnic bio-weapons, However, Gaytandzhieva found documents that show that the US collects biological material from certain ethnic groups—again, Russians and Chinese. Te US has been collecting cancer patients’ data and biological material in China. Still according to Gaytandzhieva, the National Cancer Institute has collected biological samples from 300 subjects from Linxian, Zhengzhou, and Chengdu in China. While another federal project, titled Serum Metabolic biomarkers, a study of Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma in China, includes analysis of 349 serum samples which have been collected from Chinese patients. The US National Cancer Institute has been collecting biological material from patients of the Chinese Cancer Hospital in Beijing. Chinese biological material has been collected under a series of federal projects including saliva and cancer tissue (details and sources, Gaytandzhieva 2018).
3. From Fort Detrick to Wuhan: Fatal Trail or Coincidence?
We have seen that Fort Detrick since 1942 has been at the centre of US bio-warfare research. In late July, the home base of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID, referred to already) was found by the CDC to be in breach of biosafety rules. In July 2019 this required it to be closed, although an USAMRIID spokesperson told a local newspaper that ‘no disease-causing materials have been found outside authorized areas at the site’ (cited in Williams 2019).
19
Since 1969 (when as will be remembered, President Nixon ordered this research to be discontinued, Fort Detrick had been working on pathogens such as Ebola, plague, and tularaemia in level 3 and level 4 biosafety laboratories (Williams 2019). This was not the first time the lab was closed: Fort Detrick’s germ warfare research had also been suspended in 2009, the same year as the last pandemic of the H1N1 swine flu outbreak, after the Pentagon found discrepancies in the inventory of its infectious agents (Parry 2020). The most recent closure came after Fort Detrick’s sterilisation system had broken down a year earlier.
The New York Times, quoting a statement from USAMRIID, reports that the lab received the cease and desist order in part because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found it did not have "sufficient systems in place to decontaminate wastewater" from its highest-security labs. The USAMRIID spokesperson tells the Times that the facility’s steam sterilization plant was damaged in a flood in May 2018, and that it has since been using a chemical decontamination method (Williams 2019).
Failure to follow local procedures and a lack of periodic recertification training for workers in the bio-containment laboratories, were also cited as cause for closure (Leng Shumei 2020). Perhaps most importantly the wastewater decontamination system of the lab also failed to meet standards set by the Federal Select Agent Program. The USAMRIID spokesperson, Caree Vander Linden, told the local paper that many projects were on hold because of the CDC’s order. (Williams 2019).
After the Covid-19 outbreak, the July 2019 closure was bound to become the focus of attention in discussions of where the virus had actually originated. We saw above that in August 2019 the first death with characteristic symptoms of Covid-19 had been recorded in the United States, then still attributed to ‘vaping’ (Roberts 2020). The 2019-’20 flu season in the United States was an unusually severe one: more than 26 million Americans fell ill, 250,000 were hospitalised, and at least 14,000 people died according to CDC estimates. However, the ‘deadly respiratory virus ... circulating throughout the United States, ... was not [the] novel coronavirus’ (Thompson 2020).
The ‘mysterious and life-threatening’ vaping affliction on the other hand was spreading fast during the summer, ‘becoming an epidemic’ according to one physician
The New York Times, quoting a statement from USAMRIID, reports that the lab received the cease and desist order in part because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found it did not have "sufficient systems in place to decontaminate wastewater" from its highest-security labs. The USAMRIID spokesperson tells the Times that the facility’s steam sterilization plant was damaged in a flood in May 2018, and that it has since been using a chemical decontamination method (Williams 2019).
Failure to follow local procedures and a lack of periodic recertification training for workers in the bio-containment laboratories, were also cited as cause for closure (Leng Shumei 2020). Perhaps most importantly the wastewater decontamination system of the lab also failed to meet standards set by the Federal Select Agent Program. The USAMRIID spokesperson, Caree Vander Linden, told the local paper that many projects were on hold because of the CDC’s order. (Williams 2019).
After the Covid-19 outbreak, the July 2019 closure was bound to become the focus of attention in discussions of where the virus had actually originated. We saw above that in August 2019 the first death with characteristic symptoms of Covid-19 had been recorded in the United States, then still attributed to ‘vaping’ (Roberts 2020). The 2019-’20 flu season in the United States was an unusually severe one: more than 26 million Americans fell ill, 250,000 were hospitalised, and at least 14,000 people died according to CDC estimates. However, the ‘deadly respiratory virus ... circulating throughout the United States, ... was not [the] novel coronavirus’ (Thompson 2020).
The ‘mysterious and life-threatening’ vaping affliction on the other hand was spreading fast during the summer, ‘becoming an epidemic’ according to one physician
20
cited in the New York Times. ‘Something is very wrong’ (Kaplan and Richtel 2019). A Chinese newspaper in March 2020 also noted the high incidence of flu patients in the US and reported that a petition submitted to the White House website on March 10 demanded of the US government clarity whether the closure of the Fort Detrick facility had anything to do with the virus outbreak (Leng Shumei 2020).
The petition also noted that many English-language news reports about the closure of Fort Detrick were deleted amid the worsening Covid-19 pandemic, raising suspicions over the lab’s relationship with the novel coronavirus. Petitioners urged the US government to publish the real reason for the lab’s closure and to clarify whether the lab was related to the novel coronavirus and whether there was a virus leak (Leng Shumei 2020).
By then, thowever, he US and China were in a war of words over the issue. The World Military Games in Wuhan
The World Military Games were held in Wuhan from 18 to 27 October 2019. Whilst US officials accused China of being slow to react to the virus and of not being sufficiently transparent, China reacted by raising the possibility that American participation in these games might have something to do with the outbreak. When US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said the tardy reaction of China to the emergence of the coronavirus ‘had probably cost the world two months when it could have been preparing for the outbreak’ (Straits Times 2020), China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, distributed an article from GlobalResearch, the Center for Research on Globalization website in Canada, which claimed that the US team had brought the virus to China. ‘When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals?’ Zhao Lijian asked in his Twitter message.
Of course the New York Times was quick to comment that the October visit to Wuhan of the US team had nothing to do with the outbreak.
There is not a shred of evidence to support that, but the notion received an official endorsement from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs... The intentional spreading
The petition also noted that many English-language news reports about the closure of Fort Detrick were deleted amid the worsening Covid-19 pandemic, raising suspicions over the lab’s relationship with the novel coronavirus. Petitioners urged the US government to publish the real reason for the lab’s closure and to clarify whether the lab was related to the novel coronavirus and whether there was a virus leak (Leng Shumei 2020).
By then, thowever, he US and China were in a war of words over the issue. The World Military Games in Wuhan
The World Military Games were held in Wuhan from 18 to 27 October 2019. Whilst US officials accused China of being slow to react to the virus and of not being sufficiently transparent, China reacted by raising the possibility that American participation in these games might have something to do with the outbreak. When US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said the tardy reaction of China to the emergence of the coronavirus ‘had probably cost the world two months when it could have been preparing for the outbreak’ (Straits Times 2020), China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, distributed an article from GlobalResearch, the Center for Research on Globalization website in Canada, which claimed that the US team had brought the virus to China. ‘When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals?’ Zhao Lijian asked in his Twitter message.
Of course the New York Times was quick to comment that the October visit to Wuhan of the US team had nothing to do with the outbreak.
There is not a shred of evidence to support that, but the notion received an official endorsement from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs... The intentional spreading
21
of an unfounded conspiracy theory—which recirculated on China’s tightly controlled internet on Friday—punctuated a downward spiral in relations between the two countries that has been fueled by the basest instincts of officials on both sides (Myers 2020).
However, it is not the Chinese state’s, and certainly not its Foreign Ministry’s habit to speculate. Diplomacy is a conservative branch of government generally, and contender states consider state sovereignty (and non-interference with domestic matters) the cornerstone of foreign policy. This implies extreme caution in breaking diplomatic conventions and certainly, avoiding unfounded accusations potentially causing serious damage in the relations with China’s main rival in world affairs, the United States.
Since the Twitter message has not been withdrawn, we must assume the authorities in Beijing know what they are talking about. Summing up the available evidence, Godfree Roberts reports that
the American Military Games team trained in Maryland at a location near Fort Detrick before leaving for Wuhan (see also McClanaghan 2019);
The 300-strong US contingent stayed at the Wuhan Oriental Hotel, 300 meters from the Huanan Seafood Market where China’s outbreak began (encircled area);
Source: Roberts 2020 Five of the US troops developed a fever on 25 October and were taken to an
However, it is not the Chinese state’s, and certainly not its Foreign Ministry’s habit to speculate. Diplomacy is a conservative branch of government generally, and contender states consider state sovereignty (and non-interference with domestic matters) the cornerstone of foreign policy. This implies extreme caution in breaking diplomatic conventions and certainly, avoiding unfounded accusations potentially causing serious damage in the relations with China’s main rival in world affairs, the United States.
Since the Twitter message has not been withdrawn, we must assume the authorities in Beijing know what they are talking about. Summing up the available evidence, Godfree Roberts reports that
the American Military Games team trained in Maryland at a location near Fort Detrick before leaving for Wuhan (see also McClanaghan 2019);
The 300-strong US contingent stayed at the Wuhan Oriental Hotel, 300 meters from the Huanan Seafood Market where China’s outbreak began (encircled area);
Source: Roberts 2020 Five of the US troops developed a fever on 25 October and were taken to an
22
infectious-diseases hospital for treatment; 42 employees of the Oriental Hotel were diagnosed with what later turned out to
be Covid-19, becoming the first cluster in Wuhan. At the time only seven people from the market had been thus diagnosed (and treated before the hotel staff). All seven had contact with the 42 from the hotel. From this source, the virus spread (Roberts 2020).
The fact that the United States ended 35th in the Games, according to Veterans Today a dismal result for the finest army in the world (not everyone would agree), may be related to the illness or not. At any rate it is not likely that the virus infection was intentionally carried to China and Beijing has not made that accusation either. It did request an explanation from Washington and significantly, still according to Roberts, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in mid-March phoned Yang Jiechi, Chinese State Councillor for Foreign Affairs, asking the Chinese not to publicize what they had found. Normally Pompeo would be dealing with Foreign Minister Wang Yi; Yang is Wang’s boss, indicating this was a priority issue for the United States government. Yang’s reply: ‘We await your solemn explanation, especially about Patient Zero’ (cited in Roberts 2020).
The Propaganda War
Whenever the interpretation of a major event or incident has reached the stage where an official narrative is available, departing from it will be labelled a ‘conspiracy theory’. This dates from the CIA warning to US media to use this phrase to dismiss criticism of the ‘lone gunman’ thesis in relation to the assassination of President J.F. Kennedy. For academia, the availability of historian Richard Hofstadter’s article, ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’, made academics extra wary of investigations of conspiracies for fear of being dubbed paranoiac. Hofstadter based his lecture on the powerful Far Right conspiracy tradition in the US, which had peaked in 1950s McCarthyism, but the thesis owed its resonance to the Kennedy murder (an abridged version appeared in Harper’s Magazine in 1964) (Hofstadter 2008). Since the 2016 election in the United States, the term ‘fake news’, allegedly peddled by Russia, has been added to the accusation of conspiracy theory and paranoia. So whom to believe?
There was no immediate official narrative concerning the Covid-19 outbreak other
23
be Covid-19, becoming the first cluster in Wuhan. At the time only seven people from the market had been thus diagnosed (and treated before the hotel staff). All seven had contact with the 42 from the hotel. From this source, the virus spread (Roberts 2020).
The fact that the United States ended 35th in the Games, according to Veterans Today a dismal result for the finest army in the world (not everyone would agree), may be related to the illness or not. At any rate it is not likely that the virus infection was intentionally carried to China and Beijing has not made that accusation either. It did request an explanation from Washington and significantly, still according to Roberts, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in mid-March phoned Yang Jiechi, Chinese State Councillor for Foreign Affairs, asking the Chinese not to publicize what they had found. Normally Pompeo would be dealing with Foreign Minister Wang Yi; Yang is Wang’s boss, indicating this was a priority issue for the United States government. Yang’s reply: ‘We await your solemn explanation, especially about Patient Zero’ (cited in Roberts 2020).
The Propaganda War
Whenever the interpretation of a major event or incident has reached the stage where an official narrative is available, departing from it will be labelled a ‘conspiracy theory’. This dates from the CIA warning to US media to use this phrase to dismiss criticism of the ‘lone gunman’ thesis in relation to the assassination of President J.F. Kennedy. For academia, the availability of historian Richard Hofstadter’s article, ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’, made academics extra wary of investigations of conspiracies for fear of being dubbed paranoiac. Hofstadter based his lecture on the powerful Far Right conspiracy tradition in the US, which had peaked in 1950s McCarthyism, but the thesis owed its resonance to the Kennedy murder (an abridged version appeared in Harper’s Magazine in 1964) (Hofstadter 2008). Since the 2016 election in the United States, the term ‘fake news’, allegedly peddled by Russia, has been added to the accusation of conspiracy theory and paranoia. So whom to believe?
There was no immediate official narrative concerning the Covid-19 outbreak other
23
than that it began in China, but the claim made by the Chinese of a possible involvement of the US team’s participation in the Wuhan games worked to close the ranks of the mainstream media and academia in the West. As reported by the New York Times, Julian B. Gewirtz, a scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard, did not fail to label the Zhao Lijian tweet a conspiracy theory. ‘The conspiracy theories are a new, low front in what they clearly perceive as a global competition over the narrative of this crisis,’ Gewirtz said, adding that ‘There are a few Chinese officials who appear to have gone to the Donald J. Trump School of Diplomacy’ (cited in Myers 2020).
An example of a more sophisticated line of countering the Chinese claim is to emphasise the habitat compression aspect (cf. above) and even concede that laboratory accidents happen frequently. Thus Future Tense, a website in which Slate.com, the New America Foundation and Arizona State University collaborate, gives both the bat story as a source and concedes leakages from a laboratory happen. It does not even exempt US laboratories in general, but stops there (Evans 2020).
On the other hand, there were also US news media that simply turned around the Chinese claim, viz., that China’s own bio-warfare facilities were at the source of the outbreak (as we saw, one virology institute that could be designated as such is in Wuhan). Whitney Webb tracked claims back to dubious sources: the first was Radio Free Asia, the US government funded media outlet targeting Asian audiences that used to be run covertly by the CIA and was named by the New York Times as a key part in the agency’s ‘worldwide propaganda network'. Today it is managed by the government-funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which answers directly to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Radio Free Asia had one source, a former Chinese Red Cross functionary who claimed that genetic experiments at the Wuhan facility may have resulted in the creation of this new ‘mutant coronavirus’. This was picked up by the ultra-conservativeWashington Times, which invented a military aspect by its headline, ‘Virus-hit Wuhan has two laboratories linked to Chinese bio-warfare program’. The one source for this claim was the aforementioned Israeli biowarfare specialist, Dany Shoham (of ‘Iraqi anthrax’ fame), who actually was very careful not to make pertinent statements on this issue (Webb 2020).
Meanwhile the prize for the most primitive propaganda should go to EU vs. Disinfo, a special bureau of the EU tasked with tracking down ‘fake news’. Obviously this institution is under-funded and has to work with less gifted ideologues. Here everything is
An example of a more sophisticated line of countering the Chinese claim is to emphasise the habitat compression aspect (cf. above) and even concede that laboratory accidents happen frequently. Thus Future Tense, a website in which Slate.com, the New America Foundation and Arizona State University collaborate, gives both the bat story as a source and concedes leakages from a laboratory happen. It does not even exempt US laboratories in general, but stops there (Evans 2020).
On the other hand, there were also US news media that simply turned around the Chinese claim, viz., that China’s own bio-warfare facilities were at the source of the outbreak (as we saw, one virology institute that could be designated as such is in Wuhan). Whitney Webb tracked claims back to dubious sources: the first was Radio Free Asia, the US government funded media outlet targeting Asian audiences that used to be run covertly by the CIA and was named by the New York Times as a key part in the agency’s ‘worldwide propaganda network'. Today it is managed by the government-funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which answers directly to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Radio Free Asia had one source, a former Chinese Red Cross functionary who claimed that genetic experiments at the Wuhan facility may have resulted in the creation of this new ‘mutant coronavirus’. This was picked up by the ultra-conservativeWashington Times, which invented a military aspect by its headline, ‘Virus-hit Wuhan has two laboratories linked to Chinese bio-warfare program’. The one source for this claim was the aforementioned Israeli biowarfare specialist, Dany Shoham (of ‘Iraqi anthrax’ fame), who actually was very careful not to make pertinent statements on this issue (Webb 2020).
Meanwhile the prize for the most primitive propaganda should go to EU vs. Disinfo, a special bureau of the EU tasked with tracking down ‘fake news’. Obviously this institution is under-funded and has to work with less gifted ideologues. Here everything is
24
simple: Russia! Russian ‘state-funded Sputnik News' began its malicious work on 22 January:’The narrative was in place from the beginning: the virus is man-made; a weapon created by NATO. With minor variations, we see the same claim repeated ad nauseamthis week’ (EU vs. Disinfo. 2020).
Meanwhile the world is in lock-down over what might well be a virus outbreak of limited impact. Yet the opportunity to trigger an overdue economic crisis, has apparently not been overlooked in the West, and neither have chances to switch to authoritarian, surveillance state methods of rule. To this I turn next.
4. The Authoritarian Turn in Response to a Depression Foretold
The standard reflex to major disasters since at least 9/11 has been to reinforce state emergency powers. It is not different in the current Covid-19 pandemic. As ZeroHedgereported, ‘In a sweeping power grab, the Department of Justice has asked Congress for the ability to go directly to chief judges in order to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies’. It cites the Politico website which reviewed documents detailing the DoJ’s requests to lawmakers on this and a host of related topics (Durden 2020).
Other countries have adopted broadly identical measures. The question that arises is
whether this is really still a response to a virus outbreak, or whether the outbreak is an occasion for governments to push through these measures. Many are just looking to what others do, as solid virological information is contradictory or lacking and the US so far has not acknowledged the possibility of being at the origin of the virus outbreak from its Fort Detrick facility. Irrespective of that, there is no doubt the US is at the centre of the political response, which includes the consolidation of an authoritarian state and the anticipatory liquidation by leading financiers of their stocks.
As to the first aspect, the Fukuyama myth of an End of History following the triumph of liberal capitalism in the Cold War, has largely evaporated. Of course a key aspect of that narrative was that along with the challengers to liberal capitalism, or what I call contender states, the authoritarian state had disappeared as well. Now the state role in controlling society is fundamentally different in the liberal West and in contender states. The latter are social formations which historically have been strong enough to resist formal or informal colonisation by the West. To do so, they have had to rely more structurally on state direction, including limits on social self-regulation and individual
Meanwhile the world is in lock-down over what might well be a virus outbreak of limited impact. Yet the opportunity to trigger an overdue economic crisis, has apparently not been overlooked in the West, and neither have chances to switch to authoritarian, surveillance state methods of rule. To this I turn next.
4. The Authoritarian Turn in Response to a Depression Foretold
The standard reflex to major disasters since at least 9/11 has been to reinforce state emergency powers. It is not different in the current Covid-19 pandemic. As ZeroHedgereported, ‘In a sweeping power grab, the Department of Justice has asked Congress for the ability to go directly to chief judges in order to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies’. It cites the Politico website which reviewed documents detailing the DoJ’s requests to lawmakers on this and a host of related topics (Durden 2020).
Other countries have adopted broadly identical measures. The question that arises is
whether this is really still a response to a virus outbreak, or whether the outbreak is an occasion for governments to push through these measures. Many are just looking to what others do, as solid virological information is contradictory or lacking and the US so far has not acknowledged the possibility of being at the origin of the virus outbreak from its Fort Detrick facility. Irrespective of that, there is no doubt the US is at the centre of the political response, which includes the consolidation of an authoritarian state and the anticipatory liquidation by leading financiers of their stocks.
As to the first aspect, the Fukuyama myth of an End of History following the triumph of liberal capitalism in the Cold War, has largely evaporated. Of course a key aspect of that narrative was that along with the challengers to liberal capitalism, or what I call contender states, the authoritarian state had disappeared as well. Now the state role in controlling society is fundamentally different in the liberal West and in contender states. The latter are social formations which historically have been strong enough to resist formal or informal colonisation by the West. To do so, they have had to rely more structurally on state direction, including limits on social self-regulation and individual
25
freedom, including intellectual and artistic expression. Yet in the current Covid-19 crisis, states with a strong contender legacy have done much better than the liberal West because the state is already in command even though they have mutated to capitalism again. Their success cannot be simply dismissed as authoritarianism either, because the element of social protection too has been prominent in their history. The images of Chinese, Russian, and Cuban teams arriving to help hard-hit Italy deal with the epidemic whilst the neoliberal EU has nothing to offer except having ordained the systematic slashing of health expenditure (and a demonstration how to wash your hands), illustrate the point.
In the English-speaking, Atlantic heartland of liberal capitalism, the ruling classes control states rather than the other way around and the law ideally protects the freedom of all (except in the confines of a workplace). However, the founder of liberal state theory, John Locke, at the end of the English civil war allowed for the possibility of suspending the law in his Two Treatises of Government of 1689, to deal with situations in which private property rights are threatened by social upheaval. Hence, whilst contender states historically held their societies captive as a point of departure, in the liberal West society is free except when freedom threatens the privileges of the ruling class and a state of exception, or emergency, is proclaimed. In the current epoch, the United States has led the way in making this state of exception permanent, especially after 9/11: ‘Even without policy changes, Trump has vast emergency powers that he could legally deploy right now to try and slow the coronavirus outbreak’, ZeroHedge notes (Durden 2020).
Now if Locke still proceeded from liberal normalcy, the type of powers that a modern liberal state relies on to an ever-greater degree (helped by the permanent surveillance first revealed by Edward Snowden, Greenwald 2014; Zuboff 2019) has an additional pedigree in Germany after World War I. At the time it seemed as if defeated Germany (and Austria-Hungary too) would succumb to socialist revolution. In the circumstances, Carl Schmitt, the conservative, anti-Semitic legal scholar wary of the liberalism of the Weimar republic, made the state of exception not the exception, but the (hidden) point of departure. The definition of sovereignty in his Political Theology of 1922 was that sovereignty is vested in ‘he who decides on the [state of] exception’ (Schmitt 2005: 5).
After the emergency clause of the Weimar constitution had been activated in 1930 to deal with the economic crisis, Schmitt asked whether a constitutionally grounded emergency would not in the end fall short of breaking the deadlock between the classes. In The Guardian of the Constitution he asks how the integrity of society will be
In the English-speaking, Atlantic heartland of liberal capitalism, the ruling classes control states rather than the other way around and the law ideally protects the freedom of all (except in the confines of a workplace). However, the founder of liberal state theory, John Locke, at the end of the English civil war allowed for the possibility of suspending the law in his Two Treatises of Government of 1689, to deal with situations in which private property rights are threatened by social upheaval. Hence, whilst contender states historically held their societies captive as a point of departure, in the liberal West society is free except when freedom threatens the privileges of the ruling class and a state of exception, or emergency, is proclaimed. In the current epoch, the United States has led the way in making this state of exception permanent, especially after 9/11: ‘Even without policy changes, Trump has vast emergency powers that he could legally deploy right now to try and slow the coronavirus outbreak’, ZeroHedge notes (Durden 2020).
Now if Locke still proceeded from liberal normalcy, the type of powers that a modern liberal state relies on to an ever-greater degree (helped by the permanent surveillance first revealed by Edward Snowden, Greenwald 2014; Zuboff 2019) has an additional pedigree in Germany after World War I. At the time it seemed as if defeated Germany (and Austria-Hungary too) would succumb to socialist revolution. In the circumstances, Carl Schmitt, the conservative, anti-Semitic legal scholar wary of the liberalism of the Weimar republic, made the state of exception not the exception, but the (hidden) point of departure. The definition of sovereignty in his Political Theology of 1922 was that sovereignty is vested in ‘he who decides on the [state of] exception’ (Schmitt 2005: 5).
After the emergency clause of the Weimar constitution had been activated in 1930 to deal with the economic crisis, Schmitt asked whether a constitutionally grounded emergency would not in the end fall short of breaking the deadlock between the classes. In The Guardian of the Constitution he asks how the integrity of society will be
26
maintained in a situation in which none of the classes can prevail, and in which not just legality, but the constitution itself becomes unstable. In such an existential crisis, the president of the republic, on account of his popular mandate, must ‘assert the unity of the people as a political totality against the plurality of social and economic power groups and articulate [its] political will directly’ (Schmitt 1996: 159). When the SS in the ‘night of the long knives’ in 1934, a year after Hitler’s investiture as Chancellor by President Hindenburg, massacred the leadership of the SA brown-shirts to neutralise the working class wing of the Nazi movement, Schmitt produced a hasty endorsement of the new terror regime in the spirit of The Guardian of the Constitution: ‘Justice flows from the institution of the Führer’, he claimed. ‘In the supreme emergency, the supreme law is vindicated and manifests itself as the highest degree of judicially vengeful realisation of this law. All law originates in the right to life of a people’ (Schmitt 1989: 329).
With 9/11 and NSA-GCHQ mass surveillance, Schmitt’s thinking has acquired new relevance. Both rest on transmuting ‘the politics of the exception ... into the politics of fear as a socially integrative device’ (Teschke, 2011:72-3). The German magazine, Der Spiegel, in its coverage of the Snowden revelations already raised the question whether the United States should not be characterised as a ‘soft totalitarianism’ (still under Obama).
Whilst 9/11 was the moment in which a seizure of power resulted in establishing the permanent state of emergency, the origins of this provision in the United States go further back, to the juncture of intense anti-war and civil rights campaigning. Control measures in response to the J.F. Kennedy assassination and the murders of his brother Robert and the black leader, Martin Luther King, in 1968, were crucial in this respect (some might say that these murders perhaps were themselves part of the ‘response’ already). Here I can only give a few details with the response fo Covid-19 in mind.
In 1975, one of the most significant ideologues of US imperialism, Samuel Huntington, made the case for restricting democracy in a joint report to the Trilateral Commission, a tricontental planning body of North American, European and Japanese business and political leaders established to work out a joint approach to the social turmoil. It concluded that ‘In recent years, the operations of the democratic process do ... appear to have generated a breakdown of traditional means of social control, a de- legitimation of political and other forms of authority, and an overload of demands on government, exceeding its capacity to respond’ (Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki 1975:
With 9/11 and NSA-GCHQ mass surveillance, Schmitt’s thinking has acquired new relevance. Both rest on transmuting ‘the politics of the exception ... into the politics of fear as a socially integrative device’ (Teschke, 2011:72-3). The German magazine, Der Spiegel, in its coverage of the Snowden revelations already raised the question whether the United States should not be characterised as a ‘soft totalitarianism’ (still under Obama).
Whilst 9/11 was the moment in which a seizure of power resulted in establishing the permanent state of emergency, the origins of this provision in the United States go further back, to the juncture of intense anti-war and civil rights campaigning. Control measures in response to the J.F. Kennedy assassination and the murders of his brother Robert and the black leader, Martin Luther King, in 1968, were crucial in this respect (some might say that these murders perhaps were themselves part of the ‘response’ already). Here I can only give a few details with the response fo Covid-19 in mind.
In 1975, one of the most significant ideologues of US imperialism, Samuel Huntington, made the case for restricting democracy in a joint report to the Trilateral Commission, a tricontental planning body of North American, European and Japanese business and political leaders established to work out a joint approach to the social turmoil. It concluded that ‘In recent years, the operations of the democratic process do ... appear to have generated a breakdown of traditional means of social control, a de- legitimation of political and other forms of authority, and an overload of demands on government, exceeding its capacity to respond’ (Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki 1975:
27
9). In 1978, Huntington was made Coordinator for Security for the Carter administration. With his ally, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, he set about redesigning the emergency planning system, notably by creating the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, which was to provide the infrastructure for emergencies including natural disasters (Scott 2015: 149). Originally, in the Eisenhower years, emergency planning in the US had been focused how to survive a nuclear war, under the heading ‘Continuity in Government’ (COG). In the 1970s it was reoriented to cover domestic unrest as well, something Huntington was particularly concerned about.
In his book American Politics. The Promise of Disharmony of 1981, the first year of the Reagan administration, Huntington elaborated on the dangers the United States was exposed to in this respect. The US in his view lacked the European tradition of institutionalised class conflict which allowed governments to recognize dangerous upheaval early on. The US on the other hand, ‘Lacking any concept of the state, lacking for most of its history both the centralized authority and the bureaucratic apparatus of the European state’ has ‘historically been a weak polity’ (Huntington 1981: 232). This highlights that by now, the main thrust of COG thinking was to be prepared for social protest and the Covid-19 emergency should perhaps also be considered in this light.
When Reagan took over, a committee was formed under Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. They had first emerged as key players following the removal of Nixon, forcing president Ford to switch to a tougher stance against the USSR; now, with no official status, they were secretly entrusted with activating the COG planning system for an emergency, basically the blueprint for a shadow government. With an $8 billion communications and logistics headquarters in Arizona and a series of ground command centres, some mobile, connected to four Boeing E-4 flying command posts (so-called Doomsday planes) at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska (Scott 2015: 39), this was the machinery that swung into action on 9/11. The Patriot Act, rushed through Congress with the help of the anthrax letters to the two US Senators who might hold up its immediate passing, effectively made the state of emergency proclaimed after the attacks (in conjunction with the declaration of the War on Terror) permanent.
In the current lock-down, nominally to deal with the Covid-19 epidemic, the elements of the emergency powers granted to the executive in the United States are being replicated across the wider West, covered also by increasingly provocative military manoeuvres on the Russian border—partly disrupted by the Covid-19 outbreak. The lock-
In his book American Politics. The Promise of Disharmony of 1981, the first year of the Reagan administration, Huntington elaborated on the dangers the United States was exposed to in this respect. The US in his view lacked the European tradition of institutionalised class conflict which allowed governments to recognize dangerous upheaval early on. The US on the other hand, ‘Lacking any concept of the state, lacking for most of its history both the centralized authority and the bureaucratic apparatus of the European state’ has ‘historically been a weak polity’ (Huntington 1981: 232). This highlights that by now, the main thrust of COG thinking was to be prepared for social protest and the Covid-19 emergency should perhaps also be considered in this light.
When Reagan took over, a committee was formed under Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. They had first emerged as key players following the removal of Nixon, forcing president Ford to switch to a tougher stance against the USSR; now, with no official status, they were secretly entrusted with activating the COG planning system for an emergency, basically the blueprint for a shadow government. With an $8 billion communications and logistics headquarters in Arizona and a series of ground command centres, some mobile, connected to four Boeing E-4 flying command posts (so-called Doomsday planes) at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska (Scott 2015: 39), this was the machinery that swung into action on 9/11. The Patriot Act, rushed through Congress with the help of the anthrax letters to the two US Senators who might hold up its immediate passing, effectively made the state of emergency proclaimed after the attacks (in conjunction with the declaration of the War on Terror) permanent.
In the current lock-down, nominally to deal with the Covid-19 epidemic, the elements of the emergency powers granted to the executive in the United States are being replicated across the wider West, covered also by increasingly provocative military manoeuvres on the Russian border—partly disrupted by the Covid-19 outbreak. The lock-
28
down measures are nominally against the epidemic but extend mass surveillance, e.g. by tracking people’s movements via their mobile phones, by drones flying over public spaces filming passers-by, and other steps often completely out of proportion to the actual numbers and dangers of the virus, but in reality against social unrest.
That countries like Hungary, Poland, or the Philippines reinforce the authoritarian tendencies already evident, should not surprise. But as the New York Times reports, in Britain, too, ‘a coronavirus bill that was rushed through Parliament at a breakneck pace affords government ministries the power to detain and isolate people indefinitely, ban public gatherings including protests, and shut down ports and airports, all with little oversight.’
Some of the provisions ... will give the government unchecked control. The legislation gives sweeping powers to border agents and the police, which could lead to indefinite detention and reinforce “hostile environment” policies against immigrants, critics said. “Each clause could have had months of debate, and instead it’s all being debated in a few days,” said Adam Wagner, a lawyer who advises a parliamentary committee on human rights. “Everybody’s been trying just to read it, let alone properly critique it,” he said of the legislation, which runs to 340 pages (Gebrekidan 2020).
Another critic expressed her fear that Britain henceforth will ‘swing from crisis to crisis, health panic to health panic, and then find what we’ve lost’. In France, which for more than a year has seen an unprecedented social movement, the Yellow Vest demonstrations, as well as mass protests against the pension law (which was then rushed through parliament without a vote, using the constitutional provision in article 49 that only a successful motion of censure can force a vote), the lock-down is particularly severe.
Taken together, the authoritarian reflex in the West with reference to Covid-19 is in full development, with the US, Britain and France leading the pack. The lock-down has become an exercise in bolstering the strong state against democracy and individual freedom, after the matrix of the Continuity of Government plans in the United States, inspired by the thinking of the Nazi lawyer, Carl Schmitt. The result, not of the virus but
That countries like Hungary, Poland, or the Philippines reinforce the authoritarian tendencies already evident, should not surprise. But as the New York Times reports, in Britain, too, ‘a coronavirus bill that was rushed through Parliament at a breakneck pace affords government ministries the power to detain and isolate people indefinitely, ban public gatherings including protests, and shut down ports and airports, all with little oversight.’
Some of the provisions ... will give the government unchecked control. The legislation gives sweeping powers to border agents and the police, which could lead to indefinite detention and reinforce “hostile environment” policies against immigrants, critics said. “Each clause could have had months of debate, and instead it’s all being debated in a few days,” said Adam Wagner, a lawyer who advises a parliamentary committee on human rights. “Everybody’s been trying just to read it, let alone properly critique it,” he said of the legislation, which runs to 340 pages (Gebrekidan 2020).
Another critic expressed her fear that Britain henceforth will ‘swing from crisis to crisis, health panic to health panic, and then find what we’ve lost’. In France, which for more than a year has seen an unprecedented social movement, the Yellow Vest demonstrations, as well as mass protests against the pension law (which was then rushed through parliament without a vote, using the constitutional provision in article 49 that only a successful motion of censure can force a vote), the lock-down is particularly severe.
Taken together, the authoritarian reflex in the West with reference to Covid-19 is in full development, with the US, Britain and France leading the pack. The lock-down has become an exercise in bolstering the strong state against democracy and individual freedom, after the matrix of the Continuity of Government plans in the United States, inspired by the thinking of the Nazi lawyer, Carl Schmitt. The result, not of the virus but
29
of the government clamp-down, is to transform a potentially resisting population into what has been called, ‘a malleable mass, a docile subject, and a yielding terrain of domination’ (cited in Halper 2015: 180). However, neither the prospect of popular resistance nor the deep fear on the part of governments and ruling classes would be as acute if it were not for the real possibility of an economic crisis of unprecedented dimensions.
Neutralising the Political Effects of a New Financial Collapse
A key contemporary concern of those in positions of power is that public dissatisfaction will no longer be deflected by populist nationalism, xenophobia or racism. It may well turn against the capitalist organisation of the economy which is destroying ordinary people’s lives. This concern is not new either. It goes back to the fear among mid- and late 19th-century ruling classes and their organic intellectuals that the rising working class might be swayed by radical leaders.
At the time, it was proposed to strip Political Economy, ‘public householding’, originally developed in Britain with Adam Smith and David Ricardo as its main exponents, of the adjective ‘political’ to make it sound more neutral and remove the idea it can be changed. Especially after Karl Marx had taken the classical labour theory of value to its logical conclusion (that all profit is traceable to unpaid ‘surplus value’), a rupture with value theory itself was mandatory. Marginalism, extrapolated from the idea that marginal land produces lower yields, offered an alternative concept of value: the last unit of product that still brings profit to the person investing in it (or the last hour worked for a worker) is the value measure for the entire output or effort. What it yields above that (the preceding units) is profit.
One key adherent of marginalism, W. Stanley Jevons (1835-’82; he actually was the one proposing to drop ‘political’ from political economy) in 1879 argued that business cycles were not governed by overproduction or underconsumption, inherent in capitalist exploitation, but by sun spots. As he put it in 1879, ‘I am perfectly convinced that these decennial crises do depend upon meteorological variations of like period, which again depend, in all probability, upon cosmical variations of which we have evidence in the frequency of sun-spots, auroras, and magnetic perturbations’ (Jevons 1879, abstract). So nothing to be done about!
Neutralising the Political Effects of a New Financial Collapse
A key contemporary concern of those in positions of power is that public dissatisfaction will no longer be deflected by populist nationalism, xenophobia or racism. It may well turn against the capitalist organisation of the economy which is destroying ordinary people’s lives. This concern is not new either. It goes back to the fear among mid- and late 19th-century ruling classes and their organic intellectuals that the rising working class might be swayed by radical leaders.
At the time, it was proposed to strip Political Economy, ‘public householding’, originally developed in Britain with Adam Smith and David Ricardo as its main exponents, of the adjective ‘political’ to make it sound more neutral and remove the idea it can be changed. Especially after Karl Marx had taken the classical labour theory of value to its logical conclusion (that all profit is traceable to unpaid ‘surplus value’), a rupture with value theory itself was mandatory. Marginalism, extrapolated from the idea that marginal land produces lower yields, offered an alternative concept of value: the last unit of product that still brings profit to the person investing in it (or the last hour worked for a worker) is the value measure for the entire output or effort. What it yields above that (the preceding units) is profit.
One key adherent of marginalism, W. Stanley Jevons (1835-’82; he actually was the one proposing to drop ‘political’ from political economy) in 1879 argued that business cycles were not governed by overproduction or underconsumption, inherent in capitalist exploitation, but by sun spots. As he put it in 1879, ‘I am perfectly convinced that these decennial crises do depend upon meteorological variations of like period, which again depend, in all probability, upon cosmical variations of which we have evidence in the frequency of sun-spots, auroras, and magnetic perturbations’ (Jevons 1879, abstract). So nothing to be done about!
30
The abandoning of the labour theory of value for the notion of marginal, subjective value was not just a ploy of class-conscious ideologues. It was also a reflection of the ascendancy of a class of investors who no longer had anything to do with actual production, the rentier class. They looked at the return on investment in an objectively marginalist fashion, withholding further investment when the rate of return diminished.
During the interval from the interwar years to the 1970s, capital-labour compromise, a social contract centred on mass production industry, marginalised the financiers. However, they were given free rein again under Reagan and Thatcher. Hence the characteristics of rentier dominance returned (Burn 2006). As a result,
During the interval from the interwar years to the 1970s, capital-labour compromise, a social contract centred on mass production industry, marginalised the financiers. However, they were given free rein again under Reagan and Thatcher. Hence the characteristics of rentier dominance returned (Burn 2006). As a result,
- fear of the lower classes;
- the primacy of the financial asset investment element in actual capitalism, and
- the need for a natural, politically neutral explanation of economic downturn,
are all at play in the current collapse again. As one Dutch newspaper headlined, ‘Corona crisis pushes economy into the abyss’—not capitalism, but a fact of nature.
This was different when the 2008 financial collapse put an end to the successive attempts by Western governments to maintain a (narrowing) social contract and class peace by inflation and/or debt accumulation (Streeck 2013). The irresponsible business practices of speculative capital were in full views as the immediate cause of this collapse; it began when the sub-prime mortgage crisis exploded the derivatives markets, in which irredeemable debt was packaged into triple-A-rated ‘financial products’. Yet the political and ideological power of the financial asset investors was not broken and they succeeded in making their respective governments, first of all the US and UK’s, bail them out at public expense. Thus the sector that had precipitated the descent into crisis was put on its feet again. ‘The success of the rescue operations’, François Chesnais writes, ‘has allowed them to preserve their domination’ (Chesnais 2011: 66). In fact, after the banks had been saved for the benefit of their owners and shareholders, the provision of free liquidity through Quantitative Easing and near zero interest rates continued, with the same groups the main beneficiaries. This had little or nothing to do with stimulating real investment, production, and jobs. ‘It was about restoring the [financial elite’s] wealth and assets, not just rescuing their banks’ (Rasmus 2016: 264).
With business-as-usual officially sanctioned, it was therefore no secret that a
31
new financial collapse was only a matter of time. Towards the end of 2019, some of the main beneficiaries were evidently voting with their feet, signalling the bull market was about to end. As NBC reported in November,
Chief executives are leaving in record numbers this year, with more than 1,332 stepping aside in the period from January through the end of October, according to new data released on Wednesday. While it’s not unusual to see CEOs fleeing in the middle of a recession, it is noteworthy to see such a rash of executive exits amid robust corporate earnings and record stock market highs (Snyder 2020).
Now they may well have drawn their conclusions from data like the graph below showing the overheated US stock market, something that could not be expected to hold out much longer.
Source: Bourbon Financial Management, July 30th, 2019
The trend of CEOs stepping down continued in January 2020 and now the corona virus epidemic may have played a role too. Top executives, leaving to the tune of more than two hundred that month, must have considered their personal finances were more important than their responsibility for the companies entrusted to them on behalf of the stakeholders (Snyder 2020). This is a reminder that CEOs in contemporary capitalism are financial asset investors first, buying up their own stock to push up its price and raise
Chief executives are leaving in record numbers this year, with more than 1,332 stepping aside in the period from January through the end of October, according to new data released on Wednesday. While it’s not unusual to see CEOs fleeing in the middle of a recession, it is noteworthy to see such a rash of executive exits amid robust corporate earnings and record stock market highs (Snyder 2020).
Now they may well have drawn their conclusions from data like the graph below showing the overheated US stock market, something that could not be expected to hold out much longer.
Source: Bourbon Financial Management, July 30th, 2019
The trend of CEOs stepping down continued in January 2020 and now the corona virus epidemic may have played a role too. Top executives, leaving to the tune of more than two hundred that month, must have considered their personal finances were more important than their responsibility for the companies entrusted to them on behalf of the stakeholders (Snyder 2020). This is a reminder that CEOs in contemporary capitalism are financial asset investors first, buying up their own stock to push up its price and raise
32
their company’s market value, which usually also is part of their own compensation package (cash plus shares). That the globalised, fragile capitalist world economy subject to volatile finance would also disintegrate, was not their prime concern (Desai 2020).
Yet unless the ideological ‘corona virus’ spell that has been cast, is broken, a revolt against the banks, which seemed imminent in 2008, until 2010 when the crisis was successfully redefined as a Greek debt crisis (Lynteris 2011), will not be repeated this time. After the 2008 collapse, a brief period of anger against the banks ensued (until people were sold on the ‘lazy Greek’ parable just enough to begin the long climb down the austerity ladder). Then, the financial asset investors could still be bailed out at the expense of society at large. This time, ‘nature’ has struck in the form of the corona virus and no questions will be asked, or at least they will not be answered otherwise than by reference to ‘conspiracy theories’, ‘fake news’ etc. Indeed the financiers are bailing themselves out before the event, whereas workers and pensioners must fear the worst.
Now the idea of an authoritarian turn should not be confined to the national level, the Weimar/COG scenario. It also includes the level of global governance, the political regime projected to cover the world-wide spread of product chains centred on the US.
5. Battling the Pandemic or Consolidating Global Governance?
The first company in the news for developing a medication for Covid-19 was the multi- billion, California-based biotech firm Gilead Sciences. Its prototype drug (not a vaccine)remdesivir is already being administered on a ‘compassionate’ basis, which means that those whose lives are at stake, are given the drug as a last resort (and of course, test for others). Should Covid-19 become a seasonal illness similar to influenza, then a vaccine would probably be ready for the winter of 2020-’21. Other companies too are rushing to develop a drug against the virus, but Gilead is obviously ahead (Baumann 2020). After the World Health Organization commended the company’s experimental drug as the best bet for a treatment, its stock surged. with financial analysts expecting it to bring in a one- time revenue of about $2.5 billion whilst adding already $12 billion to the company’s market value (BloombergLaw 2020).
Gilead is a biotech success story operating at the highest levels of science after it was founded in 1987 by Michael L. Riordan, a young medical doctor and Harvard Business School alumnus at the time. He recruited several Nobel Prize winners as advisers and also
Yet unless the ideological ‘corona virus’ spell that has been cast, is broken, a revolt against the banks, which seemed imminent in 2008, until 2010 when the crisis was successfully redefined as a Greek debt crisis (Lynteris 2011), will not be repeated this time. After the 2008 collapse, a brief period of anger against the banks ensued (until people were sold on the ‘lazy Greek’ parable just enough to begin the long climb down the austerity ladder). Then, the financial asset investors could still be bailed out at the expense of society at large. This time, ‘nature’ has struck in the form of the corona virus and no questions will be asked, or at least they will not be answered otherwise than by reference to ‘conspiracy theories’, ‘fake news’ etc. Indeed the financiers are bailing themselves out before the event, whereas workers and pensioners must fear the worst.
Now the idea of an authoritarian turn should not be confined to the national level, the Weimar/COG scenario. It also includes the level of global governance, the political regime projected to cover the world-wide spread of product chains centred on the US.
5. Battling the Pandemic or Consolidating Global Governance?
The first company in the news for developing a medication for Covid-19 was the multi- billion, California-based biotech firm Gilead Sciences. Its prototype drug (not a vaccine)remdesivir is already being administered on a ‘compassionate’ basis, which means that those whose lives are at stake, are given the drug as a last resort (and of course, test for others). Should Covid-19 become a seasonal illness similar to influenza, then a vaccine would probably be ready for the winter of 2020-’21. Other companies too are rushing to develop a drug against the virus, but Gilead is obviously ahead (Baumann 2020). After the World Health Organization commended the company’s experimental drug as the best bet for a treatment, its stock surged. with financial analysts expecting it to bring in a one- time revenue of about $2.5 billion whilst adding already $12 billion to the company’s market value (BloombergLaw 2020).
Gilead is a biotech success story operating at the highest levels of science after it was founded in 1987 by Michael L. Riordan, a young medical doctor and Harvard Business School alumnus at the time. He recruited several Nobel Prize winners as advisers and also
33
brought in key politicians such as Donald Rumsfeld and George P. Shultz, as directors. The company had to deal with several lawsuits on account of alleged delaying the introduction of new antiretroviral drugs to maximise profit on older medication. It has also been criticised for legal practices impeding attempts by countries such as India to develop generic alternatives. At the time of this writing, the company was also in a legal battle with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to secure its exclusive patent on remdesivir (Wikipedia, ‘Gilead Sciences’).
Now whilst Gilead and other biotech companies in the billion dollar asset bracket are racing to consolidate their position in the market for a Covid-19 drug, in France and in China a cheap alternative was identified, hydroxychloroquine (Chloroquine or Plaquenil). Chloroquine is a simple, inexpensive malaria treatment with a good track record in reducing the viral load of corona infections such as SARS, and looks promising as a treatment for Covid-19 too. ‘Chinese scientists published their first trials on more than 100 patients and [in mid-February] announced that the Chinese National Health Commission would recommend Chloroquine in their new guidelines to treat Covid-19’ (Depuydt 2020; Wikipedia, “Chloroquine').
Clearly this is bad news for the biotech giants and it would seem, they have the silent support of the WHO and several governments. As I suggested above, the world-wide lock-downs at least partly serve the interests of ruling classes faced with growing public dissatisfaction, which will only be compounded by the economic depression that is now imminent. Therefore they will not easily give up the hold on public life obtained by reference to the pandemic, just as business will not let go of the opportunity for its commercial exploitation. As one financial analyst said about Chloroquine, ‘If a Covid-19 Therapy Doesn’t Benefit A Stock, Does It Even Exist?’ (cited in Depuydt 2020).
The WHO originally had Chloroquine in second place on its list of drugs to be evaluated for corona virus treatment, but has so far not reacted to the four clinical trials that have been undertaken and received EU approval. In its praise of China’s and South Korea’s handling of the epidemic, the WHO emphasises their draconian quarantine measures, but no mention is made of the fact that those countries have been using Chloroquine as an efficient Covid-19 treatment (Depuydt 2020).
In France, Professor Didier Raoult, at IHU—Mediterranée Marseille, one of the world’s top five scientists on communicable diseases, has argued against mass quarantine, advocating large-scale testing and treatment instead. However, his recommendation to
Now whilst Gilead and other biotech companies in the billion dollar asset bracket are racing to consolidate their position in the market for a Covid-19 drug, in France and in China a cheap alternative was identified, hydroxychloroquine (Chloroquine or Plaquenil). Chloroquine is a simple, inexpensive malaria treatment with a good track record in reducing the viral load of corona infections such as SARS, and looks promising as a treatment for Covid-19 too. ‘Chinese scientists published their first trials on more than 100 patients and [in mid-February] announced that the Chinese National Health Commission would recommend Chloroquine in their new guidelines to treat Covid-19’ (Depuydt 2020; Wikipedia, “Chloroquine').
Clearly this is bad news for the biotech giants and it would seem, they have the silent support of the WHO and several governments. As I suggested above, the world-wide lock-downs at least partly serve the interests of ruling classes faced with growing public dissatisfaction, which will only be compounded by the economic depression that is now imminent. Therefore they will not easily give up the hold on public life obtained by reference to the pandemic, just as business will not let go of the opportunity for its commercial exploitation. As one financial analyst said about Chloroquine, ‘If a Covid-19 Therapy Doesn’t Benefit A Stock, Does It Even Exist?’ (cited in Depuydt 2020).
The WHO originally had Chloroquine in second place on its list of drugs to be evaluated for corona virus treatment, but has so far not reacted to the four clinical trials that have been undertaken and received EU approval. In its praise of China’s and South Korea’s handling of the epidemic, the WHO emphasises their draconian quarantine measures, but no mention is made of the fact that those countries have been using Chloroquine as an efficient Covid-19 treatment (Depuydt 2020).
In France, Professor Didier Raoult, at IHU—Mediterranée Marseille, one of the world’s top five scientists on communicable diseases, has argued against mass quarantine, advocating large-scale testing and treatment instead. However, his recommendation to
34
use Chloroquine was initially rejected by the government in Paris and by Sanofi-Pasteur, the French company in the race for a Covid-19 treatment and vaccine. In October 2019, the French minister of health in fact decided, without explanation, to put Chloroquine on the list of ‘controlled substances’, making the common over-the counter drug into a prescription medication. Only after Raoult’s views received widespread acclaim in France did the government accede to new trials whilst Sanofi-Pasteur announced it would begin producing enough Chloroquine to treat 300,000 patients. Britain too has shown it wants to have Chloroquine as a fall-back option and in the last week of February put it on the list of drugs that can no longer be exported from the UK (Depuydt 2020).
However, the interests behind commercial exploitation of the corona virus outbreak are enormous. Medicine generally is taking great strides, including a new super-drug for genetic diseases into which biotech firms like Allergan, Cellgene, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and others have already invested more than $1 billion (Sullivan 2020). It is clear that the large pharmaceutical interests are not in the mood to be out-competed by a $5 drug like Chloroquine when it comes to battling the Covid-19 pandemic. Here the role of Bill Gates (who along with Google Ventures was among the first investors in the new super-drug) deserves our attention.
Global Governance and Biopolitics
In October 2019 Johns Hopkins University, the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum held a symposium in New York, Event 201—A Global Pandemic Exercise. The threat of epidemics had been raised at several G7 summits, the Davos World Economic Forum and comparable forums in which transnational interests with a stake in health policy assemble. A returning name in these events has been Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Ever since the founder of the Rockefeller dynasty in the late 19th century followed the advice of his vicar to move a large part of his wealth out of reach from the taxman and into a charitable foundation, corporate dynasties have exercised their power by having these charities pursue their visions of society. Unhindered by democratic deliberation or state control, this has allowed the capitalist dynasts to exercise real class power. Health has been a key concern of the $50 billion Gates Foundation (and of the Rockefeller Foundation for that matter) and Bill Gates has pursued his private views on a grand scale
However, the interests behind commercial exploitation of the corona virus outbreak are enormous. Medicine generally is taking great strides, including a new super-drug for genetic diseases into which biotech firms like Allergan, Cellgene, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and others have already invested more than $1 billion (Sullivan 2020). It is clear that the large pharmaceutical interests are not in the mood to be out-competed by a $5 drug like Chloroquine when it comes to battling the Covid-19 pandemic. Here the role of Bill Gates (who along with Google Ventures was among the first investors in the new super-drug) deserves our attention.
Global Governance and Biopolitics
In October 2019 Johns Hopkins University, the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum held a symposium in New York, Event 201—A Global Pandemic Exercise. The threat of epidemics had been raised at several G7 summits, the Davos World Economic Forum and comparable forums in which transnational interests with a stake in health policy assemble. A returning name in these events has been Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Ever since the founder of the Rockefeller dynasty in the late 19th century followed the advice of his vicar to move a large part of his wealth out of reach from the taxman and into a charitable foundation, corporate dynasties have exercised their power by having these charities pursue their visions of society. Unhindered by democratic deliberation or state control, this has allowed the capitalist dynasts to exercise real class power. Health has been a key concern of the $50 billion Gates Foundation (and of the Rockefeller Foundation for that matter) and Bill Gates has pursued his private views on a grand scale
35
as a result. One of his preoccupations is to raise sanitary and health conditions world- wide to try and stem the growth of the Earth’s population by 10 to 15 percent from the expected maximum; another was the propagation of GM seeds in countries like the DR Congo (Parry 2020).
The Gates Foundation is one of the largest benefactors of the World Health Organization, allowing these views to gain even more global traction. The WHO was among the functional bodies of the UN system that in the 1980s and 90s came under attack from the neoliberal US and UK governments; as a result the UN ended up being placed under the tutelage of transnational capital through the so-called Global Compact. The large US tobacco companies in particular targeted the WHO. With the help of nominally independent academics and journalists publishing ‘expert’ articles, the tobacco interests were able to discredit the WHO as a ‘socialist’ bulwark (Paul 2001: 107-8). Starved of contributions, the WHO was brought into a position of financial dependence on corporate interests and the Gates Foundation was among the sources of funding making up for the shortfall.
Gates views his and the Gates Foundation’s mandate as ‘creative capitalism’ or ‘catalytic philanthropy’. The Foundation must leverage ‘all the tools of capitalism’ to ‘connect the promise of philanthropy with the power of private enterprise’ (cited in Schwab 2020). This might well have been the motto of the UN Global Compact and it also extends to the WHO. Among the $2 billion in tax-deductible charitable donations by the Gates Foundation to private companies are drug giant GlaxoSmithKline and others tasked with developing new drugs, improving sanitation in the developing world, and the like. Besides Glaxo, the Gates Foundation also donates to, and owns stocks and bonds of other major pharmaceutical companies such as Merck (the monopoly producer of measles vaccine), as well as aforementioned Sanofi and Novartis. In public speeches in 2013 and ‘14, Gates boasted of the lives his foundation was saving—in one speech he said 10 million, in another 6 million—through ‘partnerships with pharmaceutical companies’ (cited in Schwab 2020).
In addition, the foundation has given money to pressure groups such as the Drug Information Association (directed by Big Pharma) and the International Life Sciences Institute (funded by Big Agriculture). Because of his close affinity with big pharmaceutical companies, both as a donor and an investor, Gates has effectively stood in the way of making drugs affordable for poor people and supported the company’s
The Gates Foundation is one of the largest benefactors of the World Health Organization, allowing these views to gain even more global traction. The WHO was among the functional bodies of the UN system that in the 1980s and 90s came under attack from the neoliberal US and UK governments; as a result the UN ended up being placed under the tutelage of transnational capital through the so-called Global Compact. The large US tobacco companies in particular targeted the WHO. With the help of nominally independent academics and journalists publishing ‘expert’ articles, the tobacco interests were able to discredit the WHO as a ‘socialist’ bulwark (Paul 2001: 107-8). Starved of contributions, the WHO was brought into a position of financial dependence on corporate interests and the Gates Foundation was among the sources of funding making up for the shortfall.
Gates views his and the Gates Foundation’s mandate as ‘creative capitalism’ or ‘catalytic philanthropy’. The Foundation must leverage ‘all the tools of capitalism’ to ‘connect the promise of philanthropy with the power of private enterprise’ (cited in Schwab 2020). This might well have been the motto of the UN Global Compact and it also extends to the WHO. Among the $2 billion in tax-deductible charitable donations by the Gates Foundation to private companies are drug giant GlaxoSmithKline and others tasked with developing new drugs, improving sanitation in the developing world, and the like. Besides Glaxo, the Gates Foundation also donates to, and owns stocks and bonds of other major pharmaceutical companies such as Merck (the monopoly producer of measles vaccine), as well as aforementioned Sanofi and Novartis. In public speeches in 2013 and ‘14, Gates boasted of the lives his foundation was saving—in one speech he said 10 million, in another 6 million—through ‘partnerships with pharmaceutical companies’ (cited in Schwab 2020).
In addition, the foundation has given money to pressure groups such as the Drug Information Association (directed by Big Pharma) and the International Life Sciences Institute (funded by Big Agriculture). Because of his close affinity with big pharmaceutical companies, both as a donor and an investor, Gates has effectively stood in the way of making drugs affordable for poor people and supported the company’s
36
intellectual property rights (Schwab 2020). This is not unexpected given his professed concern to let private business handle any medical emergency.
Pandemic preparation is key in Gates’ thinking. At the 2015 Vancouver TED conference, he spoke about the Ebola crisis in West Africa, noting the world had not been prepared and neither are we for the next epidemic. ‘If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war—not missiles, but microbes’, he warned (cited in Sault 2020) What was needed according to Gates, is a system to mobilise hundreds of thousands of health workers at short notice. This then was what the aforementioned Event 201 in October 2019 was about: a large-scale simulation, or ‘germ-game’ (like a war game). For Gates, a large epidemic should be prepared for as a preparation for war; rapid advances in biotechnology that ‘should dramatically change the turnaround time’ for vaccines and therapeutics (Sault 2020)
The ‘germ game’ of Event 201 was based on a fictional scenario in which a corona virus called CAPS, emanating from Brazilian pigs, infected people globally and after a year and half the exercise estimated the number of deaths caused by the pandemic into the tens of millions (Parry 2020). It is hard to avoid the feeling that the current Covid-19 response is more based on these ‘germ game’ simulation outcomes than on the real threat, but that is for virologists to establish—if it ever can be established because once we are in the post-lock-down condition, it can always be claimed that thanks to government intervention the world over, the impact was kept at a minimum.
Now the participants at Event 201 (organised. as noted, by the World Economic Forum, in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Gates Foundation) subscribe to the perspective of global governance, the project of the West to make the world ‘safe for capital’. Schmitt’s notion that he is sovereign who can impose the state of emergency, referred to above, was primarily focused on the national state. Of course the War on Terror after 9/11 was also an attempt by the United States to impose the state of emergency on the world at large, but this remained incomplete after a number of countries reversed to a contender position again following the invasion of Iraq.
At the level of global governance, besides the monopoly of violence of each separate state (and with the state of emergency as the key internal expression of this monopoly), there exists another hallmark of sovereignty: what the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, calls biopolitics. Foucault distinguishes between a natural environment, the
Pandemic preparation is key in Gates’ thinking. At the 2015 Vancouver TED conference, he spoke about the Ebola crisis in West Africa, noting the world had not been prepared and neither are we for the next epidemic. ‘If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war—not missiles, but microbes’, he warned (cited in Sault 2020) What was needed according to Gates, is a system to mobilise hundreds of thousands of health workers at short notice. This then was what the aforementioned Event 201 in October 2019 was about: a large-scale simulation, or ‘germ-game’ (like a war game). For Gates, a large epidemic should be prepared for as a preparation for war; rapid advances in biotechnology that ‘should dramatically change the turnaround time’ for vaccines and therapeutics (Sault 2020)
The ‘germ game’ of Event 201 was based on a fictional scenario in which a corona virus called CAPS, emanating from Brazilian pigs, infected people globally and after a year and half the exercise estimated the number of deaths caused by the pandemic into the tens of millions (Parry 2020). It is hard to avoid the feeling that the current Covid-19 response is more based on these ‘germ game’ simulation outcomes than on the real threat, but that is for virologists to establish—if it ever can be established because once we are in the post-lock-down condition, it can always be claimed that thanks to government intervention the world over, the impact was kept at a minimum.
Now the participants at Event 201 (organised. as noted, by the World Economic Forum, in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Gates Foundation) subscribe to the perspective of global governance, the project of the West to make the world ‘safe for capital’. Schmitt’s notion that he is sovereign who can impose the state of emergency, referred to above, was primarily focused on the national state. Of course the War on Terror after 9/11 was also an attempt by the United States to impose the state of emergency on the world at large, but this remained incomplete after a number of countries reversed to a contender position again following the invasion of Iraq.
At the level of global governance, besides the monopoly of violence of each separate state (and with the state of emergency as the key internal expression of this monopoly), there exists another hallmark of sovereignty: what the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, calls biopolitics. Foucault distinguishes between a natural environment, the
37
environment of the life of the species, and an artificial environment (cities, politics, etc.). How the natural environment impacts on the artificial environment by imposing constraints, and vice versa, is a matter of power. Yet the subject of this interaction, says Foucault, is not the sovereign who wields political power in a definite geographical space. Here,
[Sovereignty] is something which relates to... the perpetual geographical, climatic, physical entanglement of the human species, to the degree it has a body and a spirit, a physical and moral life; and the sovereign will be the one who will have to exercise his power at this point of articulation, where nature in the sense of the physical elements, interferes with nature in the sense of the nature of the human species... Here the sovereign will intervene and if he wants to change the human species... it will be through acting on this environment (Foucault 2004: 24).
As so often with Foucault, who wields power remains unclear and also whether he is critical of this development (towards biopolitical sovereignty) or merely observes it as a fact of life. Here it is enough to establish that state sovereignty (anchored in the monopoly of violence and the ability to impose the state of emergency) and the sovereignty that is established at the interfaces between humanity and nature (geography, climate, health), are jointly mobilised in the context of the Western project of global governance.
The imposition of a global lock-down over Covid-19 is an example. Under the circumstances of a pandemic, ‘political rule is practised through a complex triangle of “sovereignty, discipline and governmental management, which has [the] population as its main target and [uses] apparatuses of security as its essential mechanism”’ (Elbe 2007: 59, citing Foucault). In the case of pandemics, power rises above the level of the single state, but also reaches deeper, ‘taking charge of life itself’ (Elbe 207: 79, citing Foucault). This I would argue is happening before our eyes in the case of the response to the Covid- 19 pandemic.
The Military-Pharmaceutical Complex
As noted, ‘power’ has to be analysed in terms of who wields it. In the current
[Sovereignty] is something which relates to... the perpetual geographical, climatic, physical entanglement of the human species, to the degree it has a body and a spirit, a physical and moral life; and the sovereign will be the one who will have to exercise his power at this point of articulation, where nature in the sense of the physical elements, interferes with nature in the sense of the nature of the human species... Here the sovereign will intervene and if he wants to change the human species... it will be through acting on this environment (Foucault 2004: 24).
As so often with Foucault, who wields power remains unclear and also whether he is critical of this development (towards biopolitical sovereignty) or merely observes it as a fact of life. Here it is enough to establish that state sovereignty (anchored in the monopoly of violence and the ability to impose the state of emergency) and the sovereignty that is established at the interfaces between humanity and nature (geography, climate, health), are jointly mobilised in the context of the Western project of global governance.
The imposition of a global lock-down over Covid-19 is an example. Under the circumstances of a pandemic, ‘political rule is practised through a complex triangle of “sovereignty, discipline and governmental management, which has [the] population as its main target and [uses] apparatuses of security as its essential mechanism”’ (Elbe 2007: 59, citing Foucault). In the case of pandemics, power rises above the level of the single state, but also reaches deeper, ‘taking charge of life itself’ (Elbe 207: 79, citing Foucault). This I would argue is happening before our eyes in the case of the response to the Covid- 19 pandemic.
The Military-Pharmaceutical Complex
As noted, ‘power’ has to be analysed in terms of who wields it. In the current
38
circumstances, states are vastly enlarging the control of their populations but they do that on behalf of interests that can be defined fairly clearly in each case. In the case of contender states such as China and Russia, already enjoying a much more established directive role relative to society, it may well be that they will also reinforce their authority relative to private interests (like the oligarchs in both countries, from Jack Ma to Oleg Deripaska and their friends). In the liberal West, on the other hand, it is the capitalist class that will accelerate the process of concentration and centralisation of capital, large business devouring smaller enterprises.
Paramount among the big businesses bound to become even more powerful in the post-lock-down economic arena are the pharmaceutical companies and their owners and shareholders. In the circumstances of the global emergency, their relation with ‘the apparatuses of security’ deserves special attention. Of course those directly involved in the global governance of the pandemic (Bill Gates actually stepped down from Microsoft to concentrate entirely on his foundation’s work after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO largely under his spell, Parry 2020) will also benefit.
I conclude with a number of examples of what I call the military-pharmaceutical complex at the centre of the development of the pandemic. Above I referred to the fact that the US military worked on a variety of anthrax resistant to vaccine in the 1990s and 2000s (Elbe 2010: 73-4). This highlights the offensive nature of the military biological research, and this one publicised instance will probably not have been the only one. However, it would be more logical that new pathogens developed by bio-warfare laboratories would be accompanied by dedicated vaccines to prepare for inadvertent spread to one’s own population. The same goes for treatments other than vaccines.
In the case of Covid-19, the US Army Medical Research and Development Command has signed an arrangement with aforementioned Gilead Sciences. Gilead’s remdesivir was originally developed to treat Ebola and by chance had some demonstrated success in treating coronavirus infections, including MERS and SARS. It was approved for clinical research into its effectiveness on Covid-19 by the Food and Drug Administration last February and the US Army plans to have it available for its troops once authorised.
Under the agreement between Gilead and US Army Medical Materiel Development Activity, remdesivir will be provided to the Defense Department at no cost. "Together with our government and industry partners, we are progressing at almost
Paramount among the big businesses bound to become even more powerful in the post-lock-down economic arena are the pharmaceutical companies and their owners and shareholders. In the circumstances of the global emergency, their relation with ‘the apparatuses of security’ deserves special attention. Of course those directly involved in the global governance of the pandemic (Bill Gates actually stepped down from Microsoft to concentrate entirely on his foundation’s work after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO largely under his spell, Parry 2020) will also benefit.
I conclude with a number of examples of what I call the military-pharmaceutical complex at the centre of the development of the pandemic. Above I referred to the fact that the US military worked on a variety of anthrax resistant to vaccine in the 1990s and 2000s (Elbe 2010: 73-4). This highlights the offensive nature of the military biological research, and this one publicised instance will probably not have been the only one. However, it would be more logical that new pathogens developed by bio-warfare laboratories would be accompanied by dedicated vaccines to prepare for inadvertent spread to one’s own population. The same goes for treatments other than vaccines.
In the case of Covid-19, the US Army Medical Research and Development Command has signed an arrangement with aforementioned Gilead Sciences. Gilead’s remdesivir was originally developed to treat Ebola and by chance had some demonstrated success in treating coronavirus infections, including MERS and SARS. It was approved for clinical research into its effectiveness on Covid-19 by the Food and Drug Administration last February and the US Army plans to have it available for its troops once authorised.
Under the agreement between Gilead and US Army Medical Materiel Development Activity, remdesivir will be provided to the Defense Department at no cost. "Together with our government and industry partners, we are progressing at almost
39
revolutionary rates to deliver effective treatment and prevention products that will protect the citizens of the world and preserve the readiness and lethality of our service members,” Army Brig. Gen. Michael Talley, commanding general of USAMRDC and Fort Detrick, Maryland, said in a statement (cited in Kime 2020).
Clinical trials in China and in the United States were undertaken to bring the medicine, so far supplied to the US Army for free, to the market as fast as possible, although a legal battle has erupted with China over intellectual property rights.
The Pentagon meanwhile has also responded to other industries, not strictly speaking pharmaceuticals, to work on medication for epidemics. Thus DARPA, the Pentagon’s research branch, has invested a large sum in research into vaccines from tobacco plants. Not unexpectedly, the companies involved are subsidiaries of the large tobacco firms— Mediacago Inc. is co-owned by Philip Morris, Kentucky Bio-processing is part of Reynolds, itself owned by British American Tobacco. As Dilyana Gaytandzhieva has found, these firms are producing Flu and Ebola vaccines extracted from tobacco plants. The $100 million project, ‘Blue Angel’, was launched in response to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. By manipulating the tobacco, an antigen is obtained that will activate the human immune system against a virus. That the Pentagon would choose the tobacco giants is partly in response to strenuous lobbying: Medicago spent half a million dollars on lobby efforts targeting the Department of Defense and Congress and this will pay off (for the companies) once successful vaccines have been developed (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
In another project, DARPA’s ‘Pandemic Prevention Platform’ is attempting to cut short research for a treatment for the current Covid-19 virus. A vaccine may take years to produce and then again a certain period to take effect in the body; instead the search is to identify specific monoclonal antibodies that the human body naturally produces against a virus. This might produce a temporary protection, even against Covid-19 if the antibodies are found soon enough (Tucker 2020). Meanwhile the connection between the US military and the forces behind global governance also transpires in the search for vaccines, merging the two forms of sovereignty referred to above into a single complex, with the US at the centre.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) founded in 2017 by the governments of Norway and India, the World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation, is funding two pharmaceutical companies, Inovio Pharmaceuticals and
Clinical trials in China and in the United States were undertaken to bring the medicine, so far supplied to the US Army for free, to the market as fast as possible, although a legal battle has erupted with China over intellectual property rights.
The Pentagon meanwhile has also responded to other industries, not strictly speaking pharmaceuticals, to work on medication for epidemics. Thus DARPA, the Pentagon’s research branch, has invested a large sum in research into vaccines from tobacco plants. Not unexpectedly, the companies involved are subsidiaries of the large tobacco firms— Mediacago Inc. is co-owned by Philip Morris, Kentucky Bio-processing is part of Reynolds, itself owned by British American Tobacco. As Dilyana Gaytandzhieva has found, these firms are producing Flu and Ebola vaccines extracted from tobacco plants. The $100 million project, ‘Blue Angel’, was launched in response to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. By manipulating the tobacco, an antigen is obtained that will activate the human immune system against a virus. That the Pentagon would choose the tobacco giants is partly in response to strenuous lobbying: Medicago spent half a million dollars on lobby efforts targeting the Department of Defense and Congress and this will pay off (for the companies) once successful vaccines have been developed (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
In another project, DARPA’s ‘Pandemic Prevention Platform’ is attempting to cut short research for a treatment for the current Covid-19 virus. A vaccine may take years to produce and then again a certain period to take effect in the body; instead the search is to identify specific monoclonal antibodies that the human body naturally produces against a virus. This might produce a temporary protection, even against Covid-19 if the antibodies are found soon enough (Tucker 2020). Meanwhile the connection between the US military and the forces behind global governance also transpires in the search for vaccines, merging the two forms of sovereignty referred to above into a single complex, with the US at the centre.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) founded in 2017 by the governments of Norway and India, the World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation, is funding two pharmaceutical companies, Inovio Pharmaceuticals and
40
Moderna Inc. and the University of Queensland in Australia to develop a vaccine for Covid-19.As Whitney Webh has reported, Inovio and Moderna have close ties to and/or strategic partnerships with DARPA. They have been developing vaccines involving genetic material and/or gene editing, an area overlapping with bio-warfare research (the University of Queensland also has ties to DARPA, but then in actual armaments hardware —Webb 2020).
DARPA and the aforementioned Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) have been funding Inovio, which specializes in DNA immuno-therapies and DNA vaccines, to develop a vaccine for Ebola. The company also has a DNA vaccine for the Zika virus, but it has not yet been approved for use on humans in the United States. USAMRIID at Fort Detrick is another sponsor of Inovio’s work, among others to develop a small portable device for delivering DNA vaccines. With its experience in DNA vaccines for corona virus infection such as MERS, plus the CEPI grant, Inovio may well break through to producing a Covid-19 vaccine although the viruses are possibly too different. The MERS DNA vaccine is currently undergoing testing in the Middle East. Moderna, the other company at the CEPI-DARPA interface, is developing not DNA, but a 'messenger RNA', mRNA, vaccine. However, DNA and mRNA vaccines would involve bringing foreign elements into a human body and will have potentially unexpected effects (Webb 2020).
Both Inovio and Moderna, although funded by the ‘globalist’ CEPI, are primarily part of the Military-Pharmaceutical Complex.
Inovio’s collaboration with the US military in regards to DNA vaccines is nothing new, as their past efforts to develop a DNA vaccine for both Ebola and Marburg virus were also part of ... its “active biodefense program” that has “garnered multiple grants from the Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and other government agencies (Webb 2020).
That the US military is promoting permanent gene modifications as a means of protecting its troops from biological weapons and infectious disease, highlights that research is never defensive or offensive, it is a battlefield provision that allows US military to prevail in a situation where chemical and biological weapons would be introduced. The US bio-warfare research centres abroad also take part in the effort to
DARPA and the aforementioned Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) have been funding Inovio, which specializes in DNA immuno-therapies and DNA vaccines, to develop a vaccine for Ebola. The company also has a DNA vaccine for the Zika virus, but it has not yet been approved for use on humans in the United States. USAMRIID at Fort Detrick is another sponsor of Inovio’s work, among others to develop a small portable device for delivering DNA vaccines. With its experience in DNA vaccines for corona virus infection such as MERS, plus the CEPI grant, Inovio may well break through to producing a Covid-19 vaccine although the viruses are possibly too different. The MERS DNA vaccine is currently undergoing testing in the Middle East. Moderna, the other company at the CEPI-DARPA interface, is developing not DNA, but a 'messenger RNA', mRNA, vaccine. However, DNA and mRNA vaccines would involve bringing foreign elements into a human body and will have potentially unexpected effects (Webb 2020).
Both Inovio and Moderna, although funded by the ‘globalist’ CEPI, are primarily part of the Military-Pharmaceutical Complex.
Inovio’s collaboration with the US military in regards to DNA vaccines is nothing new, as their past efforts to develop a DNA vaccine for both Ebola and Marburg virus were also part of ... its “active biodefense program” that has “garnered multiple grants from the Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and other government agencies (Webb 2020).
That the US military is promoting permanent gene modifications as a means of protecting its troops from biological weapons and infectious disease, highlights that research is never defensive or offensive, it is a battlefield provision that allows US military to prevail in a situation where chemical and biological weapons would be introduced. The US bio-warfare research centres abroad also take part in the effort to
41
develop vaccines for the military. As Dilyana Gaytandzhieva reports, this concerns notably the Lugar Centre in Tbilisi. In 2007, Georgia terminated its compulsory anthrax vaccination programme for livestock; as a result morbidity caused by anthrax increased, peaking in 2013. In the same year, two major US defence research projects started in Georgia. One involved human-based anthrax vaccine tests, begun under NATO auspices; the other a DTRA project titled ‘Epidemiology and Ecology of Tularemia in Georgia’, that lasted until 2016 (Gaytandzhieva 2018).
**
The above was researched and written in record time to clarify and provide background to some aspects of the current Covid-19 epidemic. Apart from an occasional side-remark and some undisputed facts taken from authoritative sources, I have not expressed myself on the seriousness of the epidemic as such and whether the measures taken are warranted or not, as I am not qualified on these matters.
The issues that I do raise are intended to stimulate discussion on certain questions that demand to be addressed, such as the programmes of bio-warfare preparation that risk causing disasters on a planetary scale far beyond what we are currently experiencing. Why are the US bio-warfare laboratories there and why do so few people know about them? Quite irrespective of whether the closure of Fort Detrick, the ‘vaping’ epidemic in the US, the trip of a US team to the World Military Games in Wuhan and the subsequent breakout of the epidemic there, are causally related or a series of unrelated events, people need to know that such events can happen.
Also the imbrication of the US military apparatus with a series of biotech pharmaceutical companies, and via some of them, the connection with the World Health Organization which in turn is under the influence of the Gates foundation with its links to several large pharmaceutical companies, as a donor and investor or both, must be debated. For as it turns out, hardly any government in the world is able to assert its autonomy against the combined force of the Western security infrastructure and the ‘biopolitical’ programmes of global governance supported by the WHO, Gates, and Big Pharma.
It all comes together in the authoritarian assault on democracy under the pretext of the pandemic. With a mainstream media and academia serving primarily as mouthpieces of
**
The above was researched and written in record time to clarify and provide background to some aspects of the current Covid-19 epidemic. Apart from an occasional side-remark and some undisputed facts taken from authoritative sources, I have not expressed myself on the seriousness of the epidemic as such and whether the measures taken are warranted or not, as I am not qualified on these matters.
The issues that I do raise are intended to stimulate discussion on certain questions that demand to be addressed, such as the programmes of bio-warfare preparation that risk causing disasters on a planetary scale far beyond what we are currently experiencing. Why are the US bio-warfare laboratories there and why do so few people know about them? Quite irrespective of whether the closure of Fort Detrick, the ‘vaping’ epidemic in the US, the trip of a US team to the World Military Games in Wuhan and the subsequent breakout of the epidemic there, are causally related or a series of unrelated events, people need to know that such events can happen.
Also the imbrication of the US military apparatus with a series of biotech pharmaceutical companies, and via some of them, the connection with the World Health Organization which in turn is under the influence of the Gates foundation with its links to several large pharmaceutical companies, as a donor and investor or both, must be debated. For as it turns out, hardly any government in the world is able to assert its autonomy against the combined force of the Western security infrastructure and the ‘biopolitical’ programmes of global governance supported by the WHO, Gates, and Big Pharma.
It all comes together in the authoritarian assault on democracy under the pretext of the pandemic. With a mainstream media and academia serving primarily as mouthpieces of
42
the powers that be, we should not shrink from looking at all these issues with an open mind and in a critical spirit.
References
Almosara, Joel O. 2010. Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens. Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University.
Baumann, Jeannie. 2020. ‘Hundreds of Corona Patients Allowed to Try Gilead’s Ebola Drug’. BloombergLaw 10 March. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life- sciences/hundreds-of-corona-patients-allowed-to-try-gileads-ebola-drug (last accessed 22 March 2020)
Bloomberg 2020. ‘99% of those who died from virus had other illnesses, Italy says’ (18 March) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died- from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says (last accessed 29 March 2020).
Bloomberg Law. 2020. ‘Gilead Surges After WHO Comments on Coronavirus Drug Testing’ (24 February). https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life- sciences/gilead-surges-after-who-comments-on-coronavirus-drug-testing? context=article-related (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Burn, Gary. 2006. The Re-emergence of Global Finance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chesnais, François. 2011. Les dettes illégitimes. Quand les banques font main basse sur les politiques publiques. Paris: Raisons d’agir.
Crozier, Michel; Huntington, Samuel P., and Watanuki, Joji. 1975. The Crisis of Democracy. Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission. New York: New York University Press.
Depuydt, Senta. 2020. ‘Does the coronavirus pandemic serve a global agenda?’ [originally on Children’s Health Defense.org]. 20 March https://www.sott.net/article/431435-Does-the-coronavirus-pandemic-serve-a-global- agenda (last accessed 27 March 2020).
Desai, Radhika. 2020. ‘The Unexpected Reckoning. Coronavirus and Capitalism.Canadian Dimension, 17 March. https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the- unexpected-reckoning-coronavirus-and-capitalism (last accessed 25 March 2020).
Durden, Tyler. 2020. ‘Sweeping Power Grab, DOJ Seeks Ability To Detain People
43
References
Almosara, Joel O. 2010. Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered Pathogens. Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University.
Baumann, Jeannie. 2020. ‘Hundreds of Corona Patients Allowed to Try Gilead’s Ebola Drug’. BloombergLaw 10 March. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life- sciences/hundreds-of-corona-patients-allowed-to-try-gileads-ebola-drug (last accessed 22 March 2020)
Bloomberg 2020. ‘99% of those who died from virus had other illnesses, Italy says’ (18 March) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died- from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says (last accessed 29 March 2020).
Bloomberg Law. 2020. ‘Gilead Surges After WHO Comments on Coronavirus Drug Testing’ (24 February). https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life- sciences/gilead-surges-after-who-comments-on-coronavirus-drug-testing? context=article-related (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Burn, Gary. 2006. The Re-emergence of Global Finance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chesnais, François. 2011. Les dettes illégitimes. Quand les banques font main basse sur les politiques publiques. Paris: Raisons d’agir.
Crozier, Michel; Huntington, Samuel P., and Watanuki, Joji. 1975. The Crisis of Democracy. Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission. New York: New York University Press.
Depuydt, Senta. 2020. ‘Does the coronavirus pandemic serve a global agenda?’ [originally on Children’s Health Defense.org]. 20 March https://www.sott.net/article/431435-Does-the-coronavirus-pandemic-serve-a-global- agenda (last accessed 27 March 2020).
Desai, Radhika. 2020. ‘The Unexpected Reckoning. Coronavirus and Capitalism.Canadian Dimension, 17 March. https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the- unexpected-reckoning-coronavirus-and-capitalism (last accessed 25 March 2020).
Durden, Tyler. 2020. ‘Sweeping Power Grab, DOJ Seeks Ability To Detain People
43
Indefinitely Without Trial’. ZeroHedge, 21 March. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sweeping-power-grab-doj-seeks-ability-detain- people-indefinitely-without-trial (last accessed 22 March 2020)
Elbe, Stefan. 2009. Virus Alert. Security, Governmentality, and the AIDS Pandemic. New York: Columbia University Press.
Elbe, Stefan. 2010. Security and Global Health. Towards the Medicalization of Insecurity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Evans, Nicholas G. 2020. ‘Where the Coronavirus Bioweapon Conspiracy Theories Really Come From. Whenever a disease emerges, claims that it has spread too quickly to be natural soon follow.’ Future Tense, 27 February. https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/coronavirus-bioweapon-conspiracy-theories.html (last accessed 22 March 2020)
EU vs. Disinfo. 2020. ‘Disinformation Can Kill’ (26 March). https://euvsdisinfo.eu/disinformation-can-kill/ (last accessed 27 March 2020)
Fan Wu et al. 2020. ‘A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China’. Nature, vol. 579 (3 February), 265-269.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2008-3 (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Foucault, Michel. 2004. Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France (1977-1978) [ed. M. Senellart]. Paris : Gallimard-Seuil.
Gaytandzhieva, Dilyana. 2018. ‘The Pentagon Bio-weapons’. Dilyana.Bg, 29 April. http://dilyana.bg/the-pentagon-bio-weapons/ (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Gebrekidan, Selam. 2020. ‘For Autocrats, Coronavirus is a Chance to Grab Even More Power.’ The New York Times, 30 March. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/for- autocrats-coronavirus-is-a-chance-to-grab-even-more-power/ar-BB11V0cS (last accessed 31 March 2020).
Greenwald, Glenn. 2014. No Place to Hide. Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State . London: Hamish Hamilton.
Halper, Jeff. 2015. War Against the People. Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacifica- tion. London: Pluto Press.
Hofstadter, Richard. 2008 [1952-1965]. The Paranoid Style in American Politics[foreword, S. Wilentz]. New York: Vintage.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1981. American Politics. The Promise of Disharmony. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Elbe, Stefan. 2009. Virus Alert. Security, Governmentality, and the AIDS Pandemic. New York: Columbia University Press.
Elbe, Stefan. 2010. Security and Global Health. Towards the Medicalization of Insecurity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Evans, Nicholas G. 2020. ‘Where the Coronavirus Bioweapon Conspiracy Theories Really Come From. Whenever a disease emerges, claims that it has spread too quickly to be natural soon follow.’ Future Tense, 27 February. https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/coronavirus-bioweapon-conspiracy-theories.html (last accessed 22 March 2020)
EU vs. Disinfo. 2020. ‘Disinformation Can Kill’ (26 March). https://euvsdisinfo.eu/disinformation-can-kill/ (last accessed 27 March 2020)
Fan Wu et al. 2020. ‘A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China’. Nature, vol. 579 (3 February), 265-269.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2008-3 (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Foucault, Michel. 2004. Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France (1977-1978) [ed. M. Senellart]. Paris : Gallimard-Seuil.
Gaytandzhieva, Dilyana. 2018. ‘The Pentagon Bio-weapons’. Dilyana.Bg, 29 April. http://dilyana.bg/the-pentagon-bio-weapons/ (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Gebrekidan, Selam. 2020. ‘For Autocrats, Coronavirus is a Chance to Grab Even More Power.’ The New York Times, 30 March. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/for- autocrats-coronavirus-is-a-chance-to-grab-even-more-power/ar-BB11V0cS (last accessed 31 March 2020).
Greenwald, Glenn. 2014. No Place to Hide. Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State . London: Hamish Hamilton.
Halper, Jeff. 2015. War Against the People. Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacifica- tion. London: Pluto Press.
Hofstadter, Richard. 2008 [1952-1965]. The Paranoid Style in American Politics[foreword, S. Wilentz]. New York: Vintage.
Huntington, Samuel P. 1981. American Politics. The Promise of Disharmony. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
44
Jevons, W. Stanley. 1879. ‘Sun-Spots and Commercial Crises’. Nature vol. 19, 588–590 https://doi.org/10.1038/019588a0 (last accessed 27 March 2020).
Kaplan, Sheila, and Richtel, Matt. 2019. ‘The Mysterious Vaping Illness That’s ‘Becoming an Epidemic’. A surge of severe lung ailments has baffled doctors and public health experts’. The New York Times, 31 August. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/health/vaping-marijuana-ecigarettes- sickness.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share (last accessed 29 March 2020).
Kime, Patricia. 2020. ‘Army signs agreement with drug giant Gilead on experimental COVID-19 treatment.’ Military Times, 10 March https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/03/10/army-signs-agreement- with-drug-giant-gilead-on-experimental-covid-19-treatment/? fbclid=IwAR1pMtbNi9UhsXi8gpkAcLmApkojpcIJZmH5HTvwtpffOCr4OpAkz4Mk hYE#.Xm6PzsUfY-c.facebook (Last accessed 22 March 2020)
Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Leng Shumei, 2020. ‘Why was a US military lab handling high-level disease shut down in July 2019?’. Global Times, 15 March. https://www.sott.net/article/431119-Why- was-a-US-military-lab-handling-high-level-disease-shut-down-in-July-2019 (last accessed 22 March 2020)
Lynteris, Christos. 2011. ‘The Greek Economic Crisis as Evental Substitution’. In A. Vradis and D. Dalakoglou, eds. Revolt and Crisis in Greece. Between a Present Yet to Pass and a Future Still to Come. Oakland, CA: AK Press & London: Occupied London.
Madsen, Wayne. 2016. ‘U.S. conducted biological weapons research at least until 2003 despite 1969 presidential order, 1972 treaty.’ Strategic Culture Foundation, 23 August. https://www.sott.net/article/326915-US-conducted-biological-weapons-research-at- least-until-2003-despite-1969-presidential-order-1972-treaty (last accessed 22 Martch 2020)
Makowski, Emily. 2020 ‘Theory that Coronavirus Escaped from a Lab Lacks Evidence. The pathogen appears to have come from wild animals, virologists say, and there are no signs of genetic manipulation in the SARS-CoV-2 genome.’ The Scientist, 5 March. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/theory-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-a- lab-lacks-evidence-67229 (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Kaplan, Sheila, and Richtel, Matt. 2019. ‘The Mysterious Vaping Illness That’s ‘Becoming an Epidemic’. A surge of severe lung ailments has baffled doctors and public health experts’. The New York Times, 31 August. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/31/health/vaping-marijuana-ecigarettes- sickness.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share (last accessed 29 March 2020).
Kime, Patricia. 2020. ‘Army signs agreement with drug giant Gilead on experimental COVID-19 treatment.’ Military Times, 10 March https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/03/10/army-signs-agreement- with-drug-giant-gilead-on-experimental-covid-19-treatment/? fbclid=IwAR1pMtbNi9UhsXi8gpkAcLmApkojpcIJZmH5HTvwtpffOCr4OpAkz4Mk hYE#.Xm6PzsUfY-c.facebook (Last accessed 22 March 2020)
Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Leng Shumei, 2020. ‘Why was a US military lab handling high-level disease shut down in July 2019?’. Global Times, 15 March. https://www.sott.net/article/431119-Why- was-a-US-military-lab-handling-high-level-disease-shut-down-in-July-2019 (last accessed 22 March 2020)
Lynteris, Christos. 2011. ‘The Greek Economic Crisis as Evental Substitution’. In A. Vradis and D. Dalakoglou, eds. Revolt and Crisis in Greece. Between a Present Yet to Pass and a Future Still to Come. Oakland, CA: AK Press & London: Occupied London.
Madsen, Wayne. 2016. ‘U.S. conducted biological weapons research at least until 2003 despite 1969 presidential order, 1972 treaty.’ Strategic Culture Foundation, 23 August. https://www.sott.net/article/326915-US-conducted-biological-weapons-research-at- least-until-2003-despite-1969-presidential-order-1972-treaty (last accessed 22 Martch 2020)
Makowski, Emily. 2020 ‘Theory that Coronavirus Escaped from a Lab Lacks Evidence. The pathogen appears to have come from wild animals, virologists say, and there are no signs of genetic manipulation in the SARS-CoV-2 genome.’ The Scientist, 5 March. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/theory-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-a- lab-lacks-evidence-67229 (last accessed 22 March 2020).
45
McClanahan, Sarah M. 2019. ‘Innovation Fitness – Soldiers Push Their Limits’.Maryland National Guard News, 3 August. https://news.maryland.gov/ng/2019/08/03/innovation-fitness-soldiers-push-their-limits/ (last accessed 29 March 2020).
Myers, Steven Lee. 2020. ‘China Spins Tale That the U.S. Army Started the Coronavirus Epidemic’ New York Times, 13 March. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/world/asia/coronavirus-china-conspiracy- theory.html (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Neslen, Arthur. 2017. ‘US military agency invests $100m in genetic extinction technologies’. The Guardian, 4 December. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/04/us-military-agency-invests-100m- in-genetic-extinction-technologies (last accessed 24 March 2020).
Parry, Max. 2020. ‘Is the Global Pandemic a Product of the Elite’s Malthusian Agenda and U.S. Biowarfare?’ Unz Review, 16 March 16. https://www.unz.com/article/is-the- global-pandemic-a-product-of-the-elites-malthusian-agenda-and-u-s-biowarfare/ (last accssed 22 March 2020).
Paul, James A. 2001. ‘Der Weg zum Global Compact: Zur Annäherung von UNO und multinationalen Unternehmen’, in Tanja Brühl, Tobias Debiel, Brigitte Hamm, Hartwig Hummel and Jens Martens, eds., Die Privatisierung der Weltpolitik: Entstaatlichung und Kommerzialisierung im Globalisierungsprozess. Bonn: Dietz.
Rasmus, Jack. 2016. Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy. Atlanta, Georgia: Clarity Press.
Roberts, Godfree. 2020. ‘Last Man Standing. China Wins Big With Covid-19. What Were We Thinking?’ Unz Review, 22 March. https://www.unz.com/article/last-man-standing/ (last accessed 24 March 2020).
Sault, Samantha. 2020. ‘This is what Bill Gates had to say about epidemics, back in 2015’. World Economic Forum, 19 March. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/bill-gates-epidemic-pandemic- preparedness-ebola-covid-19/ (last accessed 24 March 2020).
Schmitt, Carl. 1989 [1940]. ‘Zum 30. Juni 1934’ in Léon Poliakov and Joseph Wulf, eds., 1989 [1959]. Das Dritte Reich und seine Denker. Wiesbaden: Fourier.
Schmitt, Carl. 1996 [1931]. Der Hüter der Verfassung, 4th ed. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Myers, Steven Lee. 2020. ‘China Spins Tale That the U.S. Army Started the Coronavirus Epidemic’ New York Times, 13 March. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/world/asia/coronavirus-china-conspiracy- theory.html (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Neslen, Arthur. 2017. ‘US military agency invests $100m in genetic extinction technologies’. The Guardian, 4 December. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/04/us-military-agency-invests-100m- in-genetic-extinction-technologies (last accessed 24 March 2020).
Parry, Max. 2020. ‘Is the Global Pandemic a Product of the Elite’s Malthusian Agenda and U.S. Biowarfare?’ Unz Review, 16 March 16. https://www.unz.com/article/is-the- global-pandemic-a-product-of-the-elites-malthusian-agenda-and-u-s-biowarfare/ (last accssed 22 March 2020).
Paul, James A. 2001. ‘Der Weg zum Global Compact: Zur Annäherung von UNO und multinationalen Unternehmen’, in Tanja Brühl, Tobias Debiel, Brigitte Hamm, Hartwig Hummel and Jens Martens, eds., Die Privatisierung der Weltpolitik: Entstaatlichung und Kommerzialisierung im Globalisierungsprozess. Bonn: Dietz.
Rasmus, Jack. 2016. Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy. Atlanta, Georgia: Clarity Press.
Roberts, Godfree. 2020. ‘Last Man Standing. China Wins Big With Covid-19. What Were We Thinking?’ Unz Review, 22 March. https://www.unz.com/article/last-man-standing/ (last accessed 24 March 2020).
Sault, Samantha. 2020. ‘This is what Bill Gates had to say about epidemics, back in 2015’. World Economic Forum, 19 March. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/bill-gates-epidemic-pandemic- preparedness-ebola-covid-19/ (last accessed 24 March 2020).
Schmitt, Carl. 1989 [1940]. ‘Zum 30. Juni 1934’ in Léon Poliakov and Joseph Wulf, eds., 1989 [1959]. Das Dritte Reich und seine Denker. Wiesbaden: Fourier.
Schmitt, Carl. 1996 [1931]. Der Hüter der Verfassung, 4th ed. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
46
Schmitt, Carl. 2005 [1934, 1922]. Political Theology. Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, 2nd ed. [trans. and intro G. Schwab, foreword T.B. Strong]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Schwab, Tim. 2020. ‘Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox.’ The Nation, 20 March. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/ (last accessed 23 March 2020)
Scott, Peter Dale. 2015. The American Deep State. Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
Shah, Sonia. 2020. ‘D’oú viennent les coronavirus? Contre les pandémies, l’écologie’. Le Monde Diplomatique, March. [orig. in The Nation].
Snyder, Michael. 2020. ‘Why Did Hundreds Of CEOs Resign Just Before The World Started Going Absolutely Crazy?’ End of the American Dream, 24 March. http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/why-did-hundreds-of-ceos-resign-just- before-the-world-started-going-absolutely-crazy (last accessed 27 March 2020).
Straits Times, The. 2020. ‘US military may have brought coronavirus to Wuhan, says China in war of words with US’ (13 March) https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east- asia/us-military-may-have-brought-coronavirus-to-wuhan-says-china-in-war-of- words-with-us (last accessed 22 March 2020)
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2013. Gekaufte Zeit. Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus [Frankfurter Adorno-Vorlesungen 2012]. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Sullivan, Brad. 2020ZeroHedge Newsletter. 22 March. https://go.behindthemarkets.com/limited-time-offer-4/? ojid=9fe4507c5f2949deb5b34123f28828c6&utm_source=6&utm_campaign=17&utm _medium=email&id=1496&sub2= (last accessed 23 March 2020)
Tarpley, Webster G. 2008 [2005]. 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, 4th ed. Joshua Tree, Cal.: Progressive Press.
Teschke, Benno. 2011. ‘Decisions and Indecisions. Political and Intellectual Receptions of Carl Schmitt’. New Left Review, Second Series (67) 61-95.
Thompson, Dennis. 2020. ‘Flu Season That’s Sickened 26 Million May Be at Its Peak’.US News, 21 February. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-02- 21/flu-season-thats-sickened-26-million-may-be-at-its-peak (last accessed 29 March 2020).
Tucker, Patrick. 2020. ‘US Military Scientists Hope To Have Coronavirus Therapeutic By 47
Schwab, Tim. 2020. ‘Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox.’ The Nation, 20 March. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundation-philanthropy/ (last accessed 23 March 2020)
Scott, Peter Dale. 2015. The American Deep State. Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
Shah, Sonia. 2020. ‘D’oú viennent les coronavirus? Contre les pandémies, l’écologie’. Le Monde Diplomatique, March. [orig. in The Nation].
Snyder, Michael. 2020. ‘Why Did Hundreds Of CEOs Resign Just Before The World Started Going Absolutely Crazy?’ End of the American Dream, 24 March. http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/why-did-hundreds-of-ceos-resign-just- before-the-world-started-going-absolutely-crazy (last accessed 27 March 2020).
Straits Times, The. 2020. ‘US military may have brought coronavirus to Wuhan, says China in war of words with US’ (13 March) https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east- asia/us-military-may-have-brought-coronavirus-to-wuhan-says-china-in-war-of- words-with-us (last accessed 22 March 2020)
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2013. Gekaufte Zeit. Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus [Frankfurter Adorno-Vorlesungen 2012]. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Sullivan, Brad. 2020ZeroHedge Newsletter. 22 March. https://go.behindthemarkets.com/limited-time-offer-4/? ojid=9fe4507c5f2949deb5b34123f28828c6&utm_source=6&utm_campaign=17&utm _medium=email&id=1496&sub2= (last accessed 23 March 2020)
Tarpley, Webster G. 2008 [2005]. 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, 4th ed. Joshua Tree, Cal.: Progressive Press.
Teschke, Benno. 2011. ‘Decisions and Indecisions. Political and Intellectual Receptions of Carl Schmitt’. New Left Review, Second Series (67) 61-95.
Thompson, Dennis. 2020. ‘Flu Season That’s Sickened 26 Million May Be at Its Peak’.US News, 21 February. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2020-02- 21/flu-season-thats-sickened-26-million-may-be-at-its-peak (last accessed 29 March 2020).
Tucker, Patrick. 2020. ‘US Military Scientists Hope To Have Coronavirus Therapeutic By 47
Summer’. DefenseOne, 10 March. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/03/us-military-scientists-hope-have- coronavirus-therapeutic-summer/163659/ (last accessed 26 March 2020)
Van der Pijl, Kees. 2007. Nomads, Empires, States. Vol. I of Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy. London: Pluto Press.
Van der Pijl, Kees. 2018. Flight MH17, Ukraine and the new Cold War. Prism of Disaster. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Webb, Whitney. 2020. ‘Bats, Gene Editing and Bioweapons: Recent Darpa Experiments Raise Concerns Amid Coronavirus Outbreak’. Unz Review, January 30. https://www.unz.com/wwebb/bats-gene-editing-and-bioweapons-recent-darpa- experiments-raise-concerns-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/ (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Williams, Shawna. 2019. ‘CDC suddenly shuts down US Army’s Fort Detrick bioweapons lab due to “lapses in safety”.’ The Scientist, 7 August. https://www.sott.net/article/418158-CDC-suddenly-shuts-down-US-Armys-Fort- Detrick-bioweapons-lab-due-to-lapses-in-safety (last accessed 22 March 2020)
Wired. 1999. ‘Israel’ Ethnic Weapon?’ 15 November. https://www.wired.com/1998/11/israels-ethnic-weapon/ (last accessed 24 March 2020).
Zuboff, Shoshana. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books.
Van der Pijl, Kees. 2007. Nomads, Empires, States. Vol. I of Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy. London: Pluto Press.
Van der Pijl, Kees. 2018. Flight MH17, Ukraine and the new Cold War. Prism of Disaster. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Webb, Whitney. 2020. ‘Bats, Gene Editing and Bioweapons: Recent Darpa Experiments Raise Concerns Amid Coronavirus Outbreak’. Unz Review, January 30. https://www.unz.com/wwebb/bats-gene-editing-and-bioweapons-recent-darpa- experiments-raise-concerns-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/ (last accessed 22 March 2020).
Williams, Shawna. 2019. ‘CDC suddenly shuts down US Army’s Fort Detrick bioweapons lab due to “lapses in safety”.’ The Scientist, 7 August. https://www.sott.net/article/418158-CDC-suddenly-shuts-down-US-Armys-Fort- Detrick-bioweapons-lab-due-to-lapses-in-safety (last accessed 22 March 2020)
Wired. 1999. ‘Israel’ Ethnic Weapon?’ 15 November. https://www.wired.com/1998/11/israels-ethnic-weapon/ (last accessed 24 March 2020).
Zuboff, Shoshana. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten