thewakingtimes--2020-04-21--Rapid deforestation of Brazilian Amazon could bring next pandemic: Experts

Rapid deforestation of Brazilian Amazon could bring next pandemic : Experts Since it arrived in Brazil , COVID-19 has divided the nation .
One side calls for strict social isolation measures to contain the virus , while the other says that everyone should get back to work now , except for the elderly and most vulnerable .
These conflicting views are evident even in the heart of the government .
President Jair Bolsonaro in a recent television broadcast declared that hysteria has gripped the country over a disease that he calls “ no worse than a mild flu.
” His @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disputes that , telling Brazilians to stay home .
Misinformation is rife .
Rumors proliferate on social media , particularly regarding the number of deaths , while the government discredits the mainstream press , as it tries to report the rapidly developing pandemic and inform the public .
This scenario is not new .
Since taking office in January 2019 , Bolsonaro and his administration have smeared scientists trying to alert the population over the risks of global warming , or critical of the undermining of federal environmental regulations and agencies .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were conflicting reports within the government itself and among scientists and NGOs about the scale and seriousness of deforestation and , later in the year , regarding the extent of Amazon fires and their close link to major forest clearing .
However , behind all this raucous debate , it is becoming clear to experts that COVID-19 and deforestation in the Amazon could be linked — both being products of the natural and human devastation brought by an invasion of the world ’ s remaining forests through the rapid expansion of timber harvesting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transportation infrastructure .
Even as the outbreak of COVID-19 is being possibly linked to the wildlife trade and humanity ’ s destruction of biodiversity , researchers say that the growing momentum of Amazon deforestation is creating conditions for the eruption of future pandemics .
Indeed , there are signs that this may already be happening .
In 2019 , deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached its highest level in ten years ( 9,762 square kilometers , or 3,769 square miles ) .
Importantly , in protected indigenous reserves , it increased even faster @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under Bolsonaro as compared to 2018 .
Amazon deforestation rates continue escalating in 2020 , doubling from August 2019 to March 2020 , compared with the same period in 2018-19 .
That ’ s not only bad news for wildlife and indigenous peoples .
It is well understood among scientists that major deforestation can lead to the emergence of dangerous new viruses and bacteria against which humanity has little defense , leading to epidemics and pandemics .
Kate Jones , chair of ecology and biodiversity at University College London ( UCL ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ researchers have long known that animal-borne infectious diseases are an “ increasing and very significant threat to global health , security and economies.
” In 2008 , she was part of a research team that determined that at least 60 % of the 335 new diseases that emerged between 1960 and 2004 originated with non-human animals .
One of the principal drivers of this transfer of diseases from wild animals to humans occurs as the result of habitat disturbance — especially the disruption of tropical forests .
One way deforestation leads to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In mid-August 2019 , a group of international experts on zoonotic diseases ( that is , illnesses transmitted from animals to humans ) , met in Colombia to analyze the impact of the wildfires then underway in the Amazon .
In their statement , they warned : “ The Amazon region of Brazil , endemic for many communicable or zoonotic diseases can , after a wildfire , trigger a selection for survival , and with it change the habitat and behaviors of some animal species .
These can be reservoirs of zoonotic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This wildfire scenario has already played out elsewhere .
In 1988 , huge fires in Indonesia created conditions allowing the emergence of the Nipah virus , which has a morbidity rate of between 40 % and 70 % .
Researchers believe that the outbreak of fires there caused fruit bats to flee their forest homes , seeking food in orchards .
Then pigs ate the fruit that the bats had nibbled , becoming infected with the virus , ultimately infecting local people , who began to die from brain hemorrhages .
Amazon fires @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as agribusiness uses it as a tool to clear rainforest , and as climate change intensifies drought there .
Fever follows in wake of environmental ruin In fact , there are already Brazilian examples of a major environmental disruption provoking disease .
One such incident concerns the bursting of the Mariana iron mining tailings dam on the Doce River in Minas Gerais state in 2015 , which killed 19 people and was regarded at the time as the most serious environmental disaster in Brazil ’ s history .
Biologist Márcia Chame , from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ science and technology of health , believes that a major surge in yellow fever cases in Minas Gerais in 2016-17 , leading to the state government decreeing a state of emergency , was partly the result of the disaster which polluted 500 miles of river all the way to the Atlantic Ocean .
Chame argues that the bursting of the dam , which led to “ an avalanche of 2.2 billion cubic feet of mud and mine waste , ” pouring into the Doce River , severely affected animals in the surrounding watershed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ An abrupt change in the environment will have an impact on animals , including monkeys .
With the stress of the disaster and the lack of food , they become more susceptible to illnesses , including yellow fever.
” Chame says that many monkeys in the Doce watershed fell ill with yellow fever .
Those monkeys were then bitten by mosquitoes , who in turn bit humans , bringing the disease to the region ’ s towns .
According to her , mosquitoes — particularly Haemagogus leucocelaenus and H. janthinomys — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with forest fragments running in peri-urban areas , allowing enough interaction [ between monkeys , mosquitos and people ] to produce such an epidemic.
” Similar processes may well be underway in the Amazon , though going mostly unexamined and undetected .
A study published last year , entitled “ Development , environmental degradation and disease spread in the Brazilian Amazon ” concluded that “ too little attention has focused on the emergence and reemergence of vector-borne diseases that directly impact the local population , with spillover effects on other neighboring areas.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contribute to the expansion of known diseases like malaria , says MacDonald .
“ The primary mosquito vector in Latin America does really well in recently cleared patches of forest , on the margins of the remaining forest ( where there is more standing water for breeding , higher temperatures which can facilitate faster development of the mosquito and malaria parasite , as well as increase human biting rates ) .
With people settled in these cleared patches… it can increase malaria transmission.
” Comparing satellite images and health data , MacDonald , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , determined that deforestation in the whole of the Amazon Basin has helped lead to a significant increase in malaria .
MacDonald told Mongabay that the research team calculated that in 2008 a 10 % rise in deforestation , that is , about 1,600 square kilometers ( 618 square miles ) of additional forest cut , led to a 3.3 % increase in malaria transmission .
That amounted to an additional 9,980 cases across the region .
Bolsonaro paves the way for more deforestation In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , turning a temporary 120-day Provisional Measure decreed by Bolsonaro in December 2019 , into permanent law .
Provisional Measure ( MP ) 910 , instead of curbing illegal land invasions , rewards land grabbers who illegally felled forest on public lands in Amazonia before December 2018 — regularizing their illegal occupation by allowing the purchase of the property at greatly reduced prices , turning it from public to private .
Essentially , the measure allows land grabbers to break the law and get away with it .
According to a technical note @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the MP could lead to the deforestation of up to 16,000 square kilometers ( 6,178 square miles ) by 2027 , an area ten times larger than the area that led to an increase of nearly ten thousand new cases of malaria in the MacDonald study .
Under the present terms of MP 910 , authorities are not required to check the validity of any claim made by a potential landowner for properties under 2,500 hectares ( 6,166 acres ) in size — a stipulation that supposedly benefits small-scale farmers .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bypassing such regulatory limits .
One very common practice is to utilize laranjas ( literally oranges , but more accurately , stooges ) .
The big landowners get relatives , friends or employees to register a small plot in their names , avoiding federal oversight .
Later , the laranjas hand the property over to the land grabber , sometimes in exchange for a small payment .
If a landowner employs 20 laranjas , each registering a plot of 2,500 hectares ( 6,166 acres ) , he ends up with a property of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Another worrying consequence is that land grabbers can seize land occupied by indigenous communities who lack deeds , as is happening with the Sateré-Mawe indigenous group in Amazonas state .
MP 910 also allows those who have already benefited from the regularization of invaded public lands , but who have sold that property , to join the queue again requesting a new plot .
Although she recognizes the need to sort out the current anarchy over landownership in the Amazon , Suely Araujo , former president of IBAMA , the government ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ MP .
“ With this flexibility , and without separating big landowners from small ones , this law legalizes those who live from land invasion , deforestation and the sale of public land , ” she told Mongabay .
On March 27 , Minister Alexandre Moraes , a member of the Federal Supreme Court , Brazil ’ s court of last resort , issued a preliminary ruling for facilitating the approval of Provisional Measures .
Even though the intention is to fast-track urgent measures during the COVID-19 crisis , environmentalists fear that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new procedure to push ahead more energetically with their agenda .
“ If there isn ’ t a political decision to withdraw MP 910 from the measures to be voted through , we run the risk of a serious environmental reverse during this [ health ] crisis , ” warned Araújo .
Even as Brazilian deforestation rates soar , and land use laws in the Amazon basin are undermined , indigenous peoples across Latin America are trying to draw attention to the gravity of the global environmental crisis , which they believe caused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at that meeting , Dinamam Tuxá , coordinator of APIB ( the Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil ) , was just as vehement : “ The cure for the next pandemic , and even for this one , can be found in the biodiversity in our indigenous lands , ” he argued .
“ This is why we need to protect our lands and rights , because the future of life depends on it.
” In contrast , Bolsonaro is pushing legislation through Congress that would allow large-scale mining , oil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within Brazil ’ s indigenous reserves , largely without input from the people living there .
Scientists were not startled by the COVID-19 pandemic ; they ’ d been warning the world about such an event for decades .
Similarly , many won ’ t be surprised if the much neglected climate crisis reaches a point of no return , with far more serious impacts for the world — including massive Amazon tree die off and huge atmosphere-destabilizing carbon releases , driven not only by policies favorable to land grabbers , but due @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and an increase in fires .
Indeed , many say that these multiple crises are intertwined .
One great challenge of the post-COVID-19 world will require that civilization somehow recover from the global economic recession ( or depression ) it causes without further aggravating the climate crisis via the mass conversion of forests to gold , zinc and bauxite mines , or to cattle ranches and soy plantations .
The danger : if tropical deforestation continues out of control , we may barely recover from one pandemic before being faced by another .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ : in the increasingly disrupted Amazon , the Congo , Indonesia , or even far beyond the tropical zone , in the Arctic , where permafrost is melting rapidly , possibly thawing out unknown and dormant viruses that could unleash the next planetwide health crisis .
In this sense , COVID-19 — horrific as its outcomes could be — may only be a harbinger of far worse pandemics to come .
Banner image caption : IBAMA environmental agency officials examine an Amazon rainforest devastated by illegal loggers and land grabbers inside Jamanxim National @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This sort of large-scale habitat destruction drastically alters animal behavior , bringing rainforest wildlife into closer contact with humans , potentially leading to the transfer of zoonotic diseases .
Image courtesy of IBAMA .
**This article was originally posted at Mongabay.com and is re-posted here with permission .
**

Rapid deforestation of Brazilian Amazon could bring next pandemic: Experts
Thais Borges and Sue Branford, Mongabay
Waking Times
Since it arrived in Brazil, COVID-19 has divided the nation. One side calls for strict social isolation measures to contain the virus, while the other says that everyone should get back to work now, except for the elderly and most vulnerable.
These conflicting views are evident even in the heart of the government. President Jair Bolsonaro in a recent television broadcast declared that hysteria has gripped the country over a disease that he calls “no worse than a mild flu.” His Health Minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, disputes that, telling Brazilians to stay home.
Misinformation is rife. Rumors proliferate on social media, particularly regarding the number of deaths, while the government discredits the mainstream press, as it tries to report the rapidly developing pandemic and inform the public.
This scenario is not new. Since taking office in January 2019, Bolsonaro and his administration have smeared scientists trying to alert the population over the risks of global warming, or critical of the undermining of federal environmental regulations and agencies. In the first half of 2019, there were conflicting reports within the government itself and among scientists and NGOs about the scale and seriousness of deforestation and, later in the year, regarding the extent of Amazon fires and their close link to major forest clearing.
However, behind all this raucous debate, it is becoming clear to experts that COVID-19 and deforestation in the Amazon could be linked — both being products of the natural and human devastation brought by an invasion of the world’s remaining forests through the rapid expansion of timber harvesting, mineral extraction, industrial agribusiness and transportation infrastructure.
Even as the outbreak of COVID-19 is being possibly linked to the wildlife trade and humanity’s destruction of biodiversity, researchers say that the growing momentum of Amazon deforestation is creating conditions for the eruption of future pandemics.
Indeed, there are signs that this may already be happening.
Deforestation roars ahead, risking rise of new diseases
In 2019, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached its highest level in ten years (9,762 square kilometers, or 3,769 square miles). Importantly, in protected indigenous reserves, it increased even faster, expanding by 74 percent in 2019 under Bolsonaro as compared to 2018. Amazon deforestation rates continue escalating in 2020, doubling from August 2019 to March 2020, compared with the same period in 2018-19.
That’s not only bad news for wildlife and indigenous peoples. It is well understood among scientists that major deforestation can lead to the emergence of dangerous new viruses and bacteria against which humanity has little defense, leading to epidemics and pandemics.
“Wild vertebrates, particularly rodents, bats and primates, harbor pathogens that are novel to the human immune system and, if we clear their habitat and put ourselves in closer contact with them, we can increase the risk that a spillover event occurs, introducing a novel pathogen,” Andy MacDonald, an ecologist specializing in disease at the Institute of Geosciences at the University of California, told Mongabay.
Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at University College London (UCL), part of London University, says that researchers have long known that animal-borne infectious diseases are an “increasing and very significant threat to global health, security and economies.” In 2008, she was part of a research team that determined that at least 60% of the 335 new diseases that emerged between 1960 and 2004 originated with non-human animals.
One of the principal drivers of this transfer of diseases from wild animals to humans occurs as the result of habitat disturbance — especially the disruption of tropical forests.
“Approximately one in three outbreaks of new and emerging illnesses is linked to changes in land use, like deforestation,” explained Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a not-for-profit organization based in New York. Daszak was lead author in a study entitled “Infectious disease emergence and economics of altered landscapes” published last year. That paper notes that “diseases causally linked to land change use include deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and Zika Virus.” Preliminary research indicates we can now likely add COVID-19 to that list — the most devastating pandemic to strike humanity since the 1918-19 flu which killed upwards of 50 million people.
One way deforestation leads to the emergence of new diseases is through fire. In mid-August 2019, a group of international experts on zoonotic diseases (that is, illnesses transmitted from animals to humans), met in Colombia to analyze the impact of the wildfires then underway in the Amazon. In their statement, they warned: “The Amazon region of Brazil, endemic for many communicable or zoonotic diseases can, after a wildfire, trigger a selection for survival, and with it change the habitat and behaviors of some animal species. These can be reservoirs of zoonotic bacteria, viruses, and parasites.”
This wildfire scenario has already played out elsewhere. In 1988, huge fires in Indonesia created conditions allowing the emergence of the Nipah virus, which has a morbidity rate of between 40% and 70%. Researchers believe that the outbreak of fires there caused fruit bats to flee their forest homes, seeking food in orchards. Then pigs ate the fruit that the bats had nibbled, becoming infected with the virus, ultimately infecting local people, who began to die from brain hemorrhages. Amazon fires are expected to grow far worse, as agribusiness uses it as a tool to clear rainforest, and as climate change intensifies drought there.
Fever follows in wake of environmental ruin
In fact, there are already Brazilian examples of a major environmental disruption provoking disease. One such incident concerns the bursting of the Mariana iron mining tailings dam on the Doce River in Minas Gerais state in 2015, which killed 19 people and was regarded at the time as the most serious environmental disaster in Brazil’s history.
Biologist Márcia Chame, from Fiocruz, a foundation specializing in the science and technology of health, believes that a major surge in yellow fever cases in Minas Gerais in 2016-17, leading to the state government decreeing a state of emergency, was partly the result of the disaster which polluted 500 miles of river all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.
Chame argues that the bursting of the dam, which led to “an avalanche of 2.2 billion cubic feet of mud and mine waste,” pouring into the Doce River, severely affected animals in the surrounding watershed, making them less resistant to disease.
“An abrupt change in the environment will have an impact on animals, including monkeys. With the stress of the disaster and the lack of food, they become more susceptible to illnesses, including yellow fever.” Chame says that many monkeys in the Doce watershed fell ill with yellow fever. Those monkeys were then bitten by mosquitoes, who in turn bit humans, bringing the disease to the region’s towns. According to her, mosquitoes — particularly Haemagogus leucocelaenus and H. janthinomys — were “driven by landscape modifications, with forest fragments running in peri-urban areas, allowing enough interaction [between monkeys, mosquitos and people] to produce such an epidemic.” Similar processes may well be underway in the Amazon, though going mostly unexamined and undetected. A study published last year, entitled “Development, environmental degradation and disease spread in the Brazilian Amazon” concluded that “too little attention has focused on the emergence and reemergence of vector-borne diseases that directly impact the local population, with spillover effects on other neighboring areas.” Severe forest disturbance is already known to contribute to the expansion of known diseases like malaria, says MacDonald. “The primary mosquito vector in Latin America does really well in recently cleared patches of forest, on the margins of the remaining forest (where there is more standing water for breeding, higher temperatures which can facilitate faster development of the mosquito and malaria parasite, as well as increase human biting rates). With people settled in these cleared patches… it can increase malaria transmission.”
Comparing satellite images and health data, MacDonald, together with Erin Mordecai from Stanford University, determined that deforestation in the whole of the Amazon Basin has helped lead to a significant increase in malaria. MacDonald told Mongabay that the research team calculated that in 2008 a 10% rise in deforestation, that is, about 1,600 square kilometers (618 square miles) of additional forest cut, led to a 3.3% increase in malaria transmission. That amounted to an additional 9,980 cases across the region.
Bolsonaro paves the way for more deforestation
In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, the Brazilian Congress now stands ready to vote, turning a temporary 120-day Provisional Measure decreed by Bolsonaro in December 2019, into permanent law. Provisional Measure (MP) 910, instead of curbing illegal land invasions, rewards land grabbers who illegally felled forest on public lands in Amazonia before December 2018 — regularizing their illegal occupation by allowing the purchase of the property at greatly reduced prices, turning it from public to private. Essentially, the measure allows land grabbers to break the law and get away with it.
According to a technical note issued by the not-for-profit organization, IMAZON, the MP could lead to the deforestation of up to 16,000 square kilometers (6,178 square miles) by 2027, an area ten times larger than the area that led to an increase of nearly ten thousand new cases of malaria in the MacDonald study.
Under the present terms of MP 910, authorities are not required to check the validity of any claim made by a potential landowner for properties under 2,500 hectares (6,166 acres) in size — a stipulation that supposedly benefits small-scale farmers.
But Amazon land grabbers are extremely skilled at bypassing such regulatory limits. One very common practice is to utilize laranjas (literally oranges, but more accurately, stooges). The big landowners get relatives, friends or employees to register a small plot in their names, avoiding federal oversight. Later, the laranjas hand the property over to the land grabber, sometimes in exchange for a small payment.
If a landowner employs 20 laranjas, each registering a plot of 2,500 hectares (6,166 acres), he ends up with a property of 50,000 hectares (111,000 acres). Another worrying consequence is that land grabbers can seize land occupied by indigenous communities who lack deeds, as is happening with the Sateré-Mawe indigenous group in Amazonas state.
MP 910 also allows those who have already benefited from the regularization of invaded public lands, but who have sold that property, to join the queue again requesting a new plot. Although she recognizes the need to sort out the current anarchy over landownership in the Amazon, Suely Araujo, former president of IBAMA, the government’s environmental agency, is critical of the MP. “With this flexibility, and without separating big landowners from small ones, this law legalizes those who live from land invasion, deforestation and the sale of public land,” she told Mongabay.
On March 27, Minister Alexandre Moraes, a member of the Federal Supreme Court, Brazil’s court of last resort, issued a preliminary ruling for facilitating the approval of Provisional Measures. Even though the intention is to fast-track urgent measures during the COVID-19 crisis, environmentalists fear that the ruralist lobby will take advantage of this new procedure to push ahead more energetically with their agenda. “If there isn’t a political decision to withdraw MP 910 from the measures to be voted through, we run the risk of a serious environmental reverse during this [health] crisis,” warned Araújo.
Greater risks ahead
Even as Brazilian deforestation rates soar, and land use laws in the Amazon basin are undermined, indigenous peoples across Latin America are trying to draw attention to the gravity of the global environmental crisis, which they believe caused the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Coronavirus is telling the world what indigenous peoples have been saying for thousands of years — if we do not help protect biodiversity and nature, we will face this, and even worse threats,” said Levi Sucre Romero, an indigenous man from Costa Rica at a press conference organized by Covering Climate Now in New York City in mid-March.
Another indigenous leader at that meeting, Dinamam Tuxá, coordinator of APIB (the Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil), was just as vehement: “The cure for the next pandemic, and even for this one, can be found in the biodiversity in our indigenous lands,” he argued. “This is why we need to protect our lands and rights, because the future of life depends on it.” In contrast, Bolsonaro is pushing legislation through Congress that would allow large-scale mining, oil and gas drilling, and industrial agribusiness within Brazil’s indigenous reserves, largely without input from the people living there.
Experts continue warning urgently that more pandemics lie ahead. “I am not at all surprised about the coronavirus outbreak,” disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie, an associate professor in Emory University’s Department of Environmental Sciences, told Scientific American. “The majority of pathogens are still to be discovered. We are at the very tip of the iceberg.” John Scott, head of Sustainability Risk with the Zurich Insurance Group, referring to the Ebola, SARS, MERS, and other recent epidemics, offers a similar message: “The past 20 years of disease outbreaks could be viewed as a series of near-miss catastrophes, which have led to complacency rather than the increased vigilance necessary to control outbreaks.”
Climate change, deforestation, successive pandemics
Scientists were not startled by the COVID-19 pandemic; they’d been warning the world about such an event for decades. Similarly, many won’t be surprised if the much neglected climate crisis reaches a point of no return, with far more serious impacts for the world — including massive Amazon tree die off and huge atmosphere-destabilizing carbon releases, driven not only by policies favorable to land grabbers, but due to a drastic decline in Amazon rainfall and an increase in fires. Indeed, many say that these multiple crises are intertwined.
One great challenge of the post-COVID-19 world will require that civilization somehow recover from the global economic recession (or depression) it causes without further aggravating the climate crisis via the mass conversion of forests to gold, zinc and bauxite mines, or to cattle ranches and soy plantations. The danger: if tropical deforestation continues out of control, we may barely recover from one pandemic before being faced by another.
The next plague could arise nearly anywhere: in the increasingly disrupted Amazon, the Congo, Indonesia, or even far beyond the tropical zone, in the Arctic, where permafrost is melting rapidly, possibly thawing out unknown and dormant viruses that could unleash the next planetwide health crisis. In this sense, COVID-19 — horrific as its outcomes could be — may only be a harbinger of far worse pandemics to come.
Banner image caption: IBAMA environmental agency officials examine an Amazon rainforest devastated by illegal loggers and land grabbers inside Jamanxim National Forest, Pará state, Brazil. This sort of large-scale habitat destruction drastically alters animal behavior, bringing rainforest wildlife into closer contact with humans, potentially leading to the transfer of zoonotic diseases. Image courtesy of IBAMA.
**This article was originally posted at Mongabay.com and is re-posted here with permission.**


thewakingtimes--2020-04-21--Locust Plague Up to 20 Times Worse Than Last Wave Could Devastate Parts of Africa and Middle East

Locust Plague Up to 20 Times Worse Than Last Wave Could Devastate Parts of Africa and Middle East East Africa is currently bracing itself for a plague of locusts that could be up to 20 times larger than the already historic swarms that blighted regional crops and spilled over into neighboring countries earlier this year .
The billions of insects comprised one of the worst locust outbreaks in roughly 70 years , darkening skies , ravaging key food sources , and consuming farmland in a region that is also facing the dire threat of the coronavirus pandemic .
The voracious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries including South Sudan , Uganda , Tanzania , Ethiopia , Kenya , and Somalia , causing fears that a long vulnerable region could be plunged into a new era of extreme food insecurity .
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization ( FAO ) has described the problem in stark terms , calling the infestation “ an extremely alarming and unprecedented threat ” to food security and livelihoods across the region .
According to the UN , a swarm of locusts covering a third of a square mile is capable of eating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day as 35,000 people .
The massive locust swarms began to appear in Ethiopia and Somalia earlier this year and have since spread to at least eight countries .
Climate change is the main cause of the unprecedented growth of the insect infestation , which entailed conditions ranging from 2018 ’ s Cyclone Mekunu to unseasonal rainfall and local locust response systems shattered by armed conflict .
Experts from the FAO fear that a new generation of locusts is emerging in war-ravaged Yemen as well as Iran , whose own economy has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic .
The response to the coronavirus has also complicated and slowed efforts to fight the locust plagues , with border closures and lockdowns creating new challenges to regional cooperation .
Meanwhile , the disruptions caused by the pandemic have also impacted the supply of chemical pesticides , biopesticides , and motorized sprayers to the region , said FAO Resilience Team Leader for East Africa Cyril Ferrand .
A failure to urgently fund and step up the campaign to suppress the desert locust infestations could see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by 20 times in the upcoming rainy season , posing a risk to about 20 million people who are already in the grips of food insecurity as well as 15 million people in Yemen—which has for years experienced the world ’ s worst humanitarian crisis along with a crippling dependency on outside food aid due to the Saudi-led war on the Arab country .
The last locust outbreak occurring on a comparable scale took place in the mid-20th century , when monitoring and reporting was a much slower manual process .
However , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t as much an issue then as now , allowing for relatively efficient control operations .
The rapid heating of the globe over the past decades has also brought the region to the current disaster .
Warming waters in the Indian Ocean—known as the Indian Ocean Dipole or “ Indian Niño ” due to its similarity to El Niño in the Pacific—have been linked to the uptick in cyclones across the Persian Gulf , dry weather in the east , flooding in the region , and even the raging bushfires across Australia .

Locust Plague Up to 20 Times Worse Than Last Wave Could Devastate Parts of Africa and Middle East
Elias Marat, The Mind Unleashed
Waking Times
East Africa is currently bracing itself for a plague of locusts that could be up to 20 times larger than the already historic swarms that blighted regional crops and spilled over into neighboring countries earlier this year.
The billions of insects comprised one of the worst locust outbreaks in roughly 70 years, darkening skies, ravaging key food sources, and consuming farmland in a region that is also facing the dire threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
The voracious swarms of young desert locusts have ravaged countries including South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, causing fears that a long vulnerable region could be plunged into a new era of extreme food insecurity.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has described the problem in stark terms, calling the infestation “an extremely alarming and unprecedented threat” to food security and livelihoods across the region.
🔵 @FAO continues to fight #DesertLocust upsurge in #EastAfrica and #Yemen despite #COVID19 constraints. Affected countries consider locusts a national priority, but supply of pesticides & equipment is becoming a challenge. 👉 https://t.co/D0AIQyWgfd pic.twitter.com/TgO1uiUvpK — FAO Newsroom (@FAOnews) April 9, 2020
According to the UN, a swarm of locusts covering a third of a square mile is capable of eating the same amount of food in one day as 35,000 people.
The massive locust swarms began to appear in Ethiopia and Somalia earlier this year and have since spread to at least eight countries.
Climate change is the main cause of the unprecedented growth of the insect infestation, which entailed conditions ranging from 2018’s Cyclone Mekunu to unseasonal rainfall and local locust response systems shattered by armed conflict.
Experts from the FAO fear that a new generation of locusts is emerging in war-ravaged Yemen as well as Iran, whose own economy has been ravaged by sanctions, collapsing oil prices, and the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
The response to the coronavirus has also complicated and slowed efforts to fight the locust plagues, with border closures and lockdowns creating new challenges to regional cooperation. Meanwhile, the disruptions caused by the pandemic have also impacted the supply of chemical pesticides, biopesticides, and motorized sprayers to the region, said FAO Resilience Team Leader for East Africa Cyril Ferrand.
Received video of what I’m told are locusts in Amudat, Northern Uganda.
UN say this is the worst locust invasion East Africa has seen in over 70 years with millions at risk due to food shortages. pic.twitter.com/w83p71DCHp — Samira Sawlani (@samirasawlani) April 8, 2020
A failure to urgently fund and step up the campaign to suppress the desert locust infestations could see the number of the insect exponentially grow by 20 times in the upcoming rainy season, posing a risk to about 20 million people who are already in the grips of food insecurity as well as 15 million people in Yemen—which has for years experienced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis along with a crippling dependency on outside food aid due to the Saudi-led war on the Arab country.
The last locust outbreak occurring on a comparable scale took place in the mid-20th century, when monitoring and reporting was a much slower manual process. However, the availability of chemical pesticides wasn’t as much an issue then as now, allowing for relatively efficient control operations.
The rapid heating of the globe over the past decades has also brought the region to the current disaster.
Warming waters in the Indian Ocean—known as the Indian Ocean Dipole or “Indian Niño” due to its similarity to El Niño in the Pacific—have been linked to the uptick in cyclones across the Persian Gulf, dry weather in the east, flooding in the region, and even the raging bushfires across Australia.
By Elias Marat | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com


thewakingtimes--2020-04-22--Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Explains Why He Says ‘the CDC is Actually a Vaccine Company’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr .
Explains Why He Says ‘ the CDC is Actually a Vaccine Company ’ As most federal agencies have been co-opted by the corporations they are supposed to regulate , the CDC has become little more than an arm of the vaccine industry , says Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , a leading voice in the vaccine safety movement .
To illustrate , Kennedy explains in an interview with RT America that Julie Gerberding , the former head of the CDC from 2002-2009 , was involved in a plethora of scandals including billion-dollar deals with leading vaccine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whistleblower William Thompson , and the approval of several vaccines which scientists within the CDC had spoken out against as unsafe for mass consumption .
After Julie Gerberding stepped down to became the head of the CDC ’ s vaccine department , Brenda Fitzgerald , the CDC director from 2017-2018 had to resign after being caught buying shares of Merck ’ s stock while holding her position .
In addition to profiting from vaccine sales , the CDC itself also owns the patents to many vaccines , collecting royalties of up to $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ study them .
Vaccine manufacturers also have legal indemnity , preventing them for being sued for harm .
The related 1988 law states , “ no vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death ” .
Kennedy also points out that the same companies which produce vaccines have been caught in numerous scandals with other products , such as opioid-based painkillers and many other drugs which were shown to cause harm after being approved by government agencies .
Robert F. Kennedy has become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ due to his history as an environmental health activist , chairmanship of the Children ’ s Health Defense initiative , and his notoriety as former president John .
F. Kennedy ’ s nephew .
Phillip Schneider is a student as well as a staff writer and assistant editor for Waking Times .
If you would like to see more of his work , you can visit his website , or follow him on the free speech social network Minds .
This article ( Robert F. Kennedy Jr .
Explains Why He Says ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ) as originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Phillip Schneider and WakingTimes.com .
It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution , author bio , and this copyright statement .

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Explains Why He Says ‘the CDC is Actually a Vaccine Company’
Phillip Schneider, Staff Writer
Waking Times
As most federal agencies have been co-opted by the corporations they are supposed to regulate, the CDC has become little more than an arm of the vaccine industry, says Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading voice in the vaccine safety movement.
“There’s a phenomena that is very well documented called agency capture which is a dynamic by which the agency that’s supposed to protect the American public from bad drugs or from pollution ultimately becomes a subsidiary or a sock puppet for the industry that it’s supposed to regulate.” – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [SOURCE]
To illustrate, Kennedy explains in an interview with RT America that Julie Gerberding, the former head of the CDC from 2002-2009, was involved in a plethora of scandals including billion-dollar deals with leading vaccine manufacturer Merck, the silencing of vaccine whistleblower William Thompson, and the approval of several vaccines which scientists within the CDC had spoken out against as unsafe for mass consumption.
After Julie Gerberding stepped down to became the head of the CDC’s vaccine department, Brenda Fitzgerald, the CDC director from 2017-2018 had to resign after being caught buying shares of Merck’s stock while holding her position.
“The CDC is actually a vaccine company. [It] has a total budget of about 11 billion dollars per year. It spends 5 billion of that buying vaccines from those four [Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Pfitzer] companies, making sweetheart deals which we pay more with our taxpayer money than they pay for the exact same vaccine in Europe.” ~Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
In addition to profiting from vaccine sales, the CDC itself also owns the patents to many vaccines, collecting royalties of up to $150 thousand per year while their scientists study them. Vaccine manufacturers also have legal indemnity, preventing them for being sued for harm. The related 1986 law states, “no vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death”.
“These are zero-liability products. No matter how toxic the ingredient, no matter how grievous your injury, no matter how negligent the company, you can’t sue them.” ~Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Kennedy also points out that the same companies which produce vaccines have been caught in numerous scandals with other products, such as opioid-based painkillers and many other drugs which were shown to cause harm after being approved by government agencies.
“To think that those same companies somehow are corrupt on every other product but somehow when it comes to vaccines, they found Jesus and they’re not going to do that when they know they can’t get caught.” ~Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy has become a leader in the vaccine safety movement due to his history as an environmental health activist, chairmanship of the Children’s Health Defense initiative, and his notoriety as former president John. F. Kennedy’s nephew.
About the Author
Phillip Schneider is a student as well as a staff writer and assistant editor for Waking Times. If you would like to see more of his work, you can visit his website, or follow him on the free speech social network Minds.
This article (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Explains Why He Says ‘the CDC is Actually a Vaccine Company’) as originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Phillip Schneider and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement.


thewakingtimes--2020-04-22--Human Lab Rats: The U.S. Government’s Secret History of Grisly Experiments

Human Lab Rats : The U.S. Government ’ s Secret History of Grisly Experiments I have never known any government to put the best interests of its people first , and this COVID-19 pandemic is no exception .
Now this isn ’ t intended to be a debate over whether COVID-19 is a legitimate health crisis or a manufactured threat .
Such crises can—and are—manipulated by governments in order to expand their powers .
As such , it is possible for the virus to be both a genuine menace to public health and a menace to freedom .
Yet we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact that governments the world over , including the U.S. government , have unleashed untold horrors upon the world in the name of global conquest , the acquisition of greater wealth , scientific experimentation , and technological advances , all packaged in the guise of the greater good .
While the U.S. government is currently looking into the possibility that the novel coronavirus spread from a Chinese laboratory rather than a market , the virus could just as easily have been created by the U.S. government or one of its allies .
After @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and inhumane conditions have become synonymous with the U.S. government , which has meted out untold horrors against humans and animals alike .
For instance , did you know that the U.S. government has been buying hundreds of dogs and cats from “ Asian meat markets ” as part of a gruesome experiment into food-borne illnesses ?
The cannibalistic experiments involve killing cats and dogs purchased from Colombia , Brazil , Vietnam , China and Ethiopia , and then feeding the dead remains to laboratory kittens , bred in government laboratories for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disease and then killed .
It gets more gruesome .
The Department of Veterans Affairs has been removing parts of dogs ’ brains to see how it affects their breathing ; applying electrodes to dogs ’ spinal cords ( before and after severing them ) to see how it impacts their cough reflexes ; and implanting pacemakers in dogs ’ hearts and then inducing them to have heart attacks ( before draining their blood ) .
All of the laboratory dogs are killed during the course of these experiments .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like lab rats by government agencies .
“ We the people ” have also become the police state ’ s guinea pigs : to be caged , branded , experimented upon without our knowledge or consent , and then conveniently discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects .
Back in 2017 , FEMA “ inadvertently ” exposed nearly 10,000 firefighters , paramedics and other responders to a deadly form of ricin during simulated bioterrorism response sessions .
In 2015 , it was discovered that an Army lab had been “ mistakenly ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contractors for a decade .
While these particular incidents have been dismissed as “ accidents , ” you don ’ t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation ’ s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals , injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins .
At the time , the government reasoned that it was legitimate to experiment on people who did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as prisoners , mental patients , and poor blacks .
In Alabama , for example , 600 black men with syphilis were allowed to suffer without proper medical treatment in order to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis .
In California , older prisoners had testicles from livestock and from recently executed convicts implanted in them to test their virility .
In Connecticut , mental patients were injected with hepatitis .
In Maryland , sleeping prisoners had a pandemic flu virus sprayed up their noses .
In Georgia , two dozen “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pumped directly into their urinary tracts through the penis .
In Michigan , male patients at an insane asylum were exposed to the flu after first being injected with an experimental flu vaccine .
In Minnesota , 11 public service employee “ volunteers ” were injected with malaria , then starved for five days .
In New York , dying patients had cancer cells introduced into their systems .
In Ohio , over 100 inmates were injected with live cancer cells .
Also in New York , prisoners at a reformatory prison were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how a deadly stomach virus was spread : the first group was made to swallow an unfiltered stool suspension , while the second group merely breathed in germs sprayed into the air .
And in Staten Island , children with mental retardation were given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured .
As the Associated Press reports , “ The late 1940s and 1950s saw huge growth in the U.S. pharmaceutical and health care industries , accompanied by a boom in prisoner experiments funded by both the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , at least half the states allowed prisoners to be used as medical guinea pigs … because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.
” How many government incursions into our freedoms have been blacked out , buried under “ entertainment ” news headlines , or spun in such a way as to suggest that anyone voicing a word of caution is paranoid or conspiratorial ?
Unfortunately , these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the atrocities the government has inflicted on an unsuspecting populace in the name of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CIA ’ s MKULTRA program in which hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel were dosed with LSD , some having the hallucinogenic drug slipped into their drinks at the beach , in city bars , at restaurants .
As Time reports , “ before the documentation and other facts of the program were made public , those who talked of it were frequently dismissed as being psychotic.
” Now one might argue that this is all ancient history and that the government today is different from the government of yesteryear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ changed ?
Has the government become any more humane , any more respectful of the rights of the citizenry ?
Has it become any more transparent or willing to abide by the rule of law ?
Has it become any more truthful about its activities ?
Has it become any more cognizant of its appointed role as a guardian of our rights ?
Or has the government simply hunkered down and hidden its nefarious acts and dastardly experiments under layers of secrecy , legalism and obfuscations ?
Has it not become wilier , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down ?
Having mastered the Orwellian art of Doublespeak and followed the Huxleyan blueprint for distraction and diversion , are we not dealing with a government that is simply craftier and more conniving that it used to be ?
Consider this : after revelations about the government ’ s experiments spanning the 20th century spawned outrage , the government began looking for human guinea pigs in other countries , where “ clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules.
” In Guatemala , prisoners and patients at a mental hospital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease.
” In Uganda , U.S.-funded doctors “ failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study… even though it would have protected their newborns.
” Meanwhile , in Nigeria , children with meningitis were used to test an antibiotic named Trovan .
Eleven children died and many others were left disabled .
The more things change , the more they stay the same .
Case in point : back in 2016 , it was announced that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Security would begin releasing various gases and particles on crowded subway platforms as part of an experiment aimed at testing bioterror airflow in New York subways .
The government insisted that the gases released into the subways by the DHS were nontoxic and did not pose a health risk .
It ’ s in our best interests , they said , to understand how quickly a chemical or biological terrorist attack might spread .
And look how cool the technology is—said the government cheerleaders—that scientists can use something called DNATrax to track the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ food .
( Imagine the kinds of surveillance that could be carried out by the government using trackable airborne microscopic substances you breathe in or ingest . )
Mind you , this is the same government that in 1949 sprayed bacteria into the Pentagon ’ s air handling system , then the world ’ s largest office building .
In 1950 , special ops forces sprayed bacteria from Navy ships off the coast of Norfolk and San Francisco , in the latter case exposing all of the city ’ s 800,000 residents .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ mock ” anthrax attacks on St. Louis , Minneapolis , and Winnipeg using generators placed on top of cars .
Local governments were reportedly told that “ ‘ invisible smokescreen [ s ] ’ were being deployed to mask the city on enemy radar.
” Later experiments covered territory as wide-ranging as Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas .
In 1965 , the government ’ s experiments in bioterror took aim at Washington ’ s National Airport , followed by a 1966 experiment in which army scientists exposed a million subway NYC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poisoning .
And this is the same government that has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices , surveillance , nonlethal weapons , etc.—and used it against us , to track , control and trap us .
So , no , I don ’ t think the government ’ s ethics have changed much over the years .
It ’ s just taken its nefarious programs undercover .
The question remains : why is the government doing this ?
The answer is always the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s the same answer no matter which totalitarian regime is in power .
The mindset driving these programs has , appropriately , been likened to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews .
As the Holocaust Museum recounts , Nazi physicians “ conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.
” The Nazi ’ s unethical experiments ran the gamut from freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia , tests to determine the maximum altitude for parachuting out of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , typhus , tuberculosis , typhoid fever , yellow fever , and infectious hepatitis , exposing prisoners to phosgene and mustard gas , and mass sterilization experiments .
The horrors being meted out against the American people can be traced back , in a direct line , to the horrors meted out in Nazi laboratories .
In fact , following the second World War , the U.S. government recruited many of Hitler ’ s employees , adopted his protocols , embraced his mindset about law and order and experimentation , and implemented his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you say ?
Read on .
It ’ s all documented .
As historian Robert Gellately recounts , the Nazi police state was initially so admired for its efficiency and order by the world powers of the day that J. Edgar Hoover , then-head of the FBI , actually sent one of his right-hand men , Edmund Patrick Coffey , to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany ’ s secret police , the Gestapo .
The FBI was so impressed with the Nazi regime that , according to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after World War II , the FBI , along with other government agencies , aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis , including some of Hitler ’ s highest henchmen .
All told , thousands of Nazi collaborators—including the head of a Nazi concentration camp , among others—were given secret visas and brought to America by way of Project Paperclip .
Subsequently , they were hired on as spies , informants and scientific advisers , and then camouflaged to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler ’ s holocaust machine would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousands of Jewish refugees were refused entry visas to the U.S. on the grounds that it could threaten national securi Adding further insult to injury , American taxpayers have been paying to keep these ex-Nazis on the U.S. government ’ s payroll ever since .
And in true Gestapo fashion , anyone who has dared to blow the whistle on the FBI ’ s illicit Nazi ties has found himself spied upon , intimidated , harassed and labeled a threat to national security .
As if the government ’ s covert , taxpayer-funded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wasn ’ t bad enough , U.S. government agencies—the FBI , CIA and the military—have since fully embraced many of the Nazi ’ s well-honed policing tactics , and have used them repeatedly against American citizens .
It ’ s certainly easy to denounce the full-frontal horrors carried out by the scientific and medical community within a despotic regime such as Nazi Germany , but what do you do when it ’ s your own government that claims to be a champion of human rights all the while allowing its agents to engage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ despicable acts of torture , abuse and experimentation ?
When all is said and done , this is not a government that has our best interests at heart .
This is not a government that values us .
Perhaps the answer lies in The Third Man , Carol Reed ’ s influential 1949 film starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles .
In the film , set in a post-WW II Vienna , rogue war profiteer Harry Lime has come to view human carnage with a callous indifference , unconcerned that the diluted penicillin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resulted in the tortured deaths of young children .
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America : The War on the American People , this is how the U.S. government sees us , too , when it looks down upon us from its lofty perch .
To the powers-that-be , the rest of us are insignificant specks , faceless dots on the ground .
To the architects of the American police state , we are not worthy or vested with inherent rights .
This is how the government can justify treating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and sold and traded , or caged rats to be experimented upon and discarded when we ’ ve outgrown our usefulness .
To those who call the shots in the halls of government , “ we the people ” are merely the means to an end .
In this sense , we are all Romney Wordsworth , the condemned man in Serling ’ s Twilight Zone episode “ The Obsolete Man.
” Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute , where this article ( Human @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s Secret History of Grisly Experiments ) was originally published .
He is the author of A Government of Wolves : The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto .

Human Lab Rats: The U.S. Government’s Secret History of Grisly Experiments
John W. Whitehead, Rutherford
Waking Times
“They were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.” — Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
I have never known any government to put the best interests of its people first, and this COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.
Now this isn’t intended to be a debate over whether COVID-19 is a legitimate health crisis or a manufactured threat. Such crises can—and are—manipulated by governments in order to expand their powers. As such, it is possible for the virus to be both a genuine menace to public health and a menace to freedom.
Yet we can’t afford to overlook the fact that governments the world over, including the U.S. government, have unleashed untold horrors upon the world in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.
While the U.S. government is currently looking into the possibility that the novel coronavirus spread from a Chinese laboratory rather than a market, the virus could just as easily have been created by the U.S. government or one of its allies.
After all, grisly experiments, barbaric behavior and inhumane conditions have become synonymous with the U.S. government, which has meted out untold horrors against humans and animals alike.
For instance, did you know that the U.S. government has been buying hundreds of dogs and cats from “Asian meat markets” as part of a gruesome experiment into food-borne illnesses?
The cannibalistic experiments involve killing cats and dogs purchased from Colombia, Brazil, Vietnam, China and Ethiopia, and then feeding the dead remains to laboratory kittens, bred in government laboratories for the express purpose of being infected with a disease and then killed.
It gets more gruesome.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has been removing parts of dogs’ brains to see how it affects their breathing; applying electrodes to dogs’ spinal cords (before and after severing them) to see how it impacts their cough reflexes; and implanting pacemakers in dogs’ hearts and then inducing them to have heart attacks (before draining their blood). All of the laboratory dogs are killed during the course of these experiments.
It’s not just animals that are being treated like lab rats by government agencies.
“We the people” have also become the police state’s guinea pigs: to be caged, branded, experimented upon without our knowledge or consent, and then conveniently discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.
Back in 2017, FEMA “inadvertently” exposed nearly 10,000 firefighters, paramedics and other responders to a deadly form of ricin during simulated bioterrorism response sessions. In 2015, it was discovered that an Army lab had been “mistakenly” shipping deadly anthrax to labs and defense contractors for a decade.
While these particular incidents have been dismissed as “accidents,” you don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins.
At the time, the government reasoned that it was legitimate to experiment on people who did not have full rights in society such as prisoners, mental patients, and poor blacks.
In Alabama, for example, 600 black men with syphilis were allowed to suffer without proper medical treatment in order to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis. In California, older prisoners had testicles from livestock and from recently executed convicts implanted in them to test their virility. In Connecticut, mental patients were injected with hepatitis.
In Maryland, sleeping prisoners had a pandemic flu virus sprayed up their noses. In Georgia, two dozen “volunteering” prison inmates had gonorrhea bacteria pumped directly into their urinary tracts through the penis. In Michigan, male patients at an insane asylum were exposed to the flu after first being injected with an experimental flu vaccine. In Minnesota, 11 public service employee “volunteers” were injected with malaria, then starved for five days.
In New York, dying patients had cancer cells introduced into their systems. In Ohio, over 100 inmates were injected with live cancer cells. Also in New York, prisoners at a reformatory prison were also split into two groups to determine how a deadly stomach virus was spread: the first group was made to swallow an unfiltered stool suspension, while the second group merely breathed in germs sprayed into the air. And in Staten Island, children with mental retardation were given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured.
As the Associated Press reports, “The late 1940s and 1950s saw huge growth in the U.S. pharmaceutical and health care industries, accompanied by a boom in prisoner experiments funded by both the government and corporations. By the 1960s, at least half the states allowed prisoners to be used as medical guinea pigs … because they were cheaper than chimpanzees.”
Moreover, “Some of these studies, mostly from the 1940s to the ’60s, apparently were never covered by news media. Others were reported at the time, but the focus was on the promise of enduring new cures, while glossing over how test subjects were treated.”
Media blackouts, propaganda, spin. Sound familiar?
How many government incursions into our freedoms have been blacked out, buried under “entertainment” news headlines, or spun in such a way as to suggest that anyone voicing a word of caution is paranoid or conspiratorial?
Unfortunately, these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the atrocities the government has inflicted on an unsuspecting populace in the name of secret experimentation.
For instance, there was the U.S. military’s secret race-based testing of mustard gas on more than 60,000 enlisted men. As NPR reports, “All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in secret and weren’t recorded on the subjects’ official military records. Most do not have proof of what they went through. They received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind. And they were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable discharge and military prison time, leaving some unable to receive adequate medical treatment for their injuries, because they couldn’t tell doctors what happened to them.”
And then there was the CIA’s MKULTRA program in which hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel were dosed with LSD, some having the hallucinogenic drug slipped into their drinks at the beach, in city bars, at restaurants. As Time reports, “before the documentation and other facts of the program were made public, those who talked of it were frequently dismissed as being psychotic.”
Now one might argue that this is all ancient history and that the government today is different from the government of yesteryear, but has the U.S. government really changed?
Has the government become any more humane, any more respectful of the rights of the citizenry?
Has it become any more transparent or willing to abide by the rule of law? Has it become any more truthful about its activities? Has it become any more cognizant of its appointed role as a guardian of our rights?
Or has the government simply hunkered down and hidden its nefarious acts and dastardly experiments under layers of secrecy, legalism and obfuscations? Has it not become wilier, more slippery, more difficult to pin down?
Having mastered the Orwellian art of Doublespeak and followed the Huxleyan blueprint for distraction and diversion, are we not dealing with a government that is simply craftier and more conniving that it used to be?
Consider this: after revelations about the government’s experiments spanning the 20th century spawned outrage, the government began looking for human guinea pigs in other countries, where “clinical trials could be done more cheaply and with fewer rules.”
In Guatemala, prisoners and patients at a mental hospital were infected with syphilis, “apparently to test whether penicillin could prevent some sexually transmitted disease.” In Uganda, U.S.-funded doctors “failed to give the AIDS drug AZT to all the HIV-infected pregnant women in a study… even though it would have protected their newborns.” Meanwhile, in Nigeria, children with meningitis were used to test an antibiotic named Trovan. Eleven children died and many others were left disabled.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Case in point: back in 2016, it was announced that scientists working for the Department of Homeland Security would begin releasing various gases and particles on crowded subway platforms as part of an experiment aimed at testing bioterror airflow in New York subways.
The government insisted that the gases released into the subways by the DHS were nontoxic and did not pose a health risk. It’s in our best interests, they said, to understand how quickly a chemical or biological terrorist attack might spread. And look how cool the technology is—said the government cheerleaders—that scientists can use something called DNATrax to track the movement of microscopic substances in air and food. (Imagine the kinds of surveillance that could be carried out by the government using trackable airborne microscopic substances you breathe in or ingest.)
Mind you, this is the same government that in 1949 sprayed bacteria into the Pentagon’s air handling system, then the world’s largest office building. In 1950, special ops forces sprayed bacteria from Navy ships off the coast of Norfolk and San Francisco, in the latter case exposing all of the city’s 800,000 residents.
In 1953, government operatives staged “mock” anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg using generators placed on top of cars. Local governments were reportedly told that “‘invisible smokescreen[s]’ were being deployed to mask the city on enemy radar.” Later experiments covered territory as wide-ranging as Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas.
In 1965, the government’s experiments in bioterror took aim at Washington’s National Airport, followed by a 1966 experiment in which army scientists exposed a million subway NYC passengers to airborne bacteria that causes food poisoning.
And this is the same government that has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.
So, no, I don’t think the government’s ethics have changed much over the years. It’s just taken its nefarious programs undercover.
The question remains: why is the government doing this? The answer is always the same: money, power and total domination.
It’s the same answer no matter which totalitarian regime is in power.
The mindset driving these programs has, appropriately, been likened to that of Nazi doctors experimenting on Jews. As the Holocaust Museum recounts, Nazi physicians “conducted painful and often deadly experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.”
The Nazi’s unethical experiments ran the gamut from freezing experiments using prisoners to find an effective treatment for hypothermia, tests to determine the maximum altitude for parachuting out of a plane, injecting prisoners with malaria, typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, yellow fever, and infectious hepatitis, exposing prisoners to phosgene and mustard gas, and mass sterilization experiments.
The horrors being meted out against the American people can be traced back, in a direct line, to the horrors meted out in Nazi laboratories. In fact, following the second World War, the U.S. government recruited many of Hitler’s employees, adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law and order and experimentation, and implemented his tactics in incremental steps.
Sounds far-fetched, you say? Read on. It’s all documented.
As historian Robert Gellately recounts, the Nazi police state was initially so admired for its efficiency and order by the world powers of the day that J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany’s secret police, the Gestapo.
The FBI was so impressed with the Nazi regime that, according to the New York Times, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler’s highest henchmen.
All told, thousands of Nazi collaborators—including the head of a Nazi concentration camp, among others—were given secret visas and brought to America by way of Project Paperclip. Subsequently, they were hired on as spies, informants and scientific advisers, and then camouflaged to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler’s holocaust machine would remain unknown. All the while, thousands of Jewish refugees were refused entry visas to the U.S. on the grounds that it could threaten national securi
Adding further insult to injury, American taxpayers have been paying to keep these ex-Nazis on the U.S. government’s payroll ever since. And in true Gestapo fashion, anyone who has dared to blow the whistle on the FBI’s illicit Nazi ties has found himself spied upon, intimidated, harassed and labeled a threat to national security.
As if the government’s covert, taxpayer-funded employment of Nazis after World War II wasn’t bad enough, U.S. government agencies—the FBI, CIA and the military—have since fully embraced many of the Nazi’s well-honed policing tactics, and have used them repeatedly against American citizens.
It’s certainly easy to denounce the full-frontal horrors carried out by the scientific and medical community within a despotic regime such as Nazi Germany, but what do you do when it’s your own government that claims to be a champion of human rights all the while allowing its agents to engage in the foulest, bases and most despicable acts of torture, abuse and experimentation?
When all is said and done, this is not a government that has our best interests at heart.
This is not a government that values us.
Perhaps the answer lies in The Third Man, Carol Reed’s influential 1949 film starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. In the film, set in a post-WW II Vienna, rogue war profiteer Harry Lime has come to view human carnage with a callous indifference, unconcerned that the diluted penicillin he’s been trafficking underground has resulted in the tortured deaths of young children.
Challenged by his old friend Holly Martins to consider the consequences of his actions, Lime responds, “In these days, old man, nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, so why should we?” “Have you ever seen any of your victims?” asks Martins. “Victims?” responds Limes, as he looks down from the top of a Ferris wheel onto a populace reduced to mere dots on the ground. “Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax — the only way you can save money nowadays.”
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is how the U.S. government sees us, too, when it looks down upon us from its lofty perch.
To the powers-that-be, the rest of us are insignificant specks, faceless dots on the ground.
To the architects of the American police state, we are not worthy or vested with inherent rights. This is how the government can justify treating us like economic units to be bought and sold and traded, or caged rats to be experimented upon and discarded when we’ve outgrown our usefulness.
To those who call the shots in the halls of government, “we the people” are merely the means to an end.
“We the people”—who think, who reason, who take a stand, who resist, who demand to be treated with dignity and care, who believe in freedom and justice for all—have become obsolete, undervalued citizens of a totalitarian state that, in the words of Rod Serling, “has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom.”
In this sense, we are all Romney Wordsworth, the condemned man in Serling’s Twilight Zone episode “The Obsolete Man.”
“The Obsolete Man” speaks to the dangers of a government that views people as expendable once they have outgrown their usefulness to the State. Yet—and here’s the kicker—this is where the government through its monstrous inhumanity also becomes obsolete. As Serling noted in his original script for “The Obsolete Man,” “Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man…that state is obsolete.”
About the Author
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute, where this article (Human Lab Rats: The U.S. Government’s Secret History of Grisly Experiments) was originally published. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto.


thewakingtimes--2020-04-22--What If the Lockdown Was All A Big Mistake?

What If the Lockdown Was All A Big Mistake ?
From California to New Jersey , Americans are protesting in the streets .
They are demanding an end to house arrest orders given by government officials over a virus outbreak that even according to the latest US government numbers will claim fewer lives than the seasonal flu outbreak of 2017-2018 .
Across the US , millions of businesses have been shut down by “ executive order ” and the unemployment rate has skyrocketed to levels not seen since the Great Depression .
Americans , who have seen their real wages @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , are finding themselves thrust into poverty and standing in breadlines .
It is like a horror movie , but it ’ s real .
Last week the UN Secretary General warned that a global recession resulting from the worldwide coronavirus lockdown could cause “ hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths per year.
” As of this writing , less than 170,000 have been reported to have died from the coronavirus worldwide .
Many Americans have also died this past month because they were not able to get the medical care they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ postponed .
Life-saving surgeries have been put off to make room for coronavirus cases .
Meanwhile hospitals are laying off thousands because the expected coronavirus cases have not come and the hospitals are partially empty .
What if the “ cure ” is worse than the disease ?
Countries like Sweden that did not lock down their economy and place the population under house arrest are faring no worse than countries that did .
Sweden ’ s deaths-per-million from coronavirus is lower than in many lockdown countries .
Likewise , US states that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the beach are not doing worse than those that did .
South Dakota governor Kristi Noem said last week , “ we ’ ve been able to keep our businesses open and allow people to take on some personal responsibility.
” South Dakota has recorded a total of seven coronavirus deaths .
Kentucky , a strict lockdown state , is five times more populated than South Dakota , yet it has some 20 times more coronavirus deaths .
If lockdown and house arrest are the answer , shouldn ’ t those numbers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mass death while Kentucky dodges the coronavirus bullet ?
When Anthony Fauci first warned that two million would die , there was a race among federal , state , and local officials to see who could rip up the Constitution fastest .
Then Fauci told us if we do what he says only a quarter of a million would die .
They locked America down even harder .
Then , with little more than a shrug of the shoulders , they announced that a maximum of 60,000 would die , but maybe less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s just a high-average flu season .
Imagine if we had used even a fraction of the resources spent to lock down the entire population and focused on providing assistance and protection to the most vulnerable – the elderly and those with serious medical conditions .
We could have protected these people and still had an economy to go back to when the virus had run its course .
And it wouldn ’ t have cost us six trillion dollars either .
Governments have no right or authority to tell us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essential.
” Only in totalitarian states does the government claim this authority .
We should encourage all those who are standing up peacefully and demanding an accounting from their elected leaders .
They should not be able to get away with this .

What If the Lockdown Was All A Big Mistake?
Ron Paul, Guest
Waking Times
From California to New Jersey, Americans are protesting in the streets. They are demanding an end to house arrest orders given by government officials over a virus outbreak that even according to the latest US government numbers will claim fewer lives than the seasonal flu outbreak of 2017-2018.
Across the US, millions of businesses have been shut down by “executive order” and the unemployment rate has skyrocketed to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Americans, who have seen their real wages decline thanks to Federal Reserve monetary malpractice, are finding themselves thrust into poverty and standing in breadlines. It is like a horror movie, but it’s real.
Last week the UN Secretary General warned that a global recession resulting from the worldwide coronavirus lockdown could cause “hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths per year.” As of this writing, less than 170,000 have been reported to have died from the coronavirus worldwide.
Many Americans have also died this past month because they were not able to get the medical care they needed. Cancer treatments have been indefinitely postponed. Life-saving surgeries have been put off to make room for coronavirus cases. Meanwhile hospitals are laying off thousands because the expected coronavirus cases have not come and the hospitals are partially empty.
What if the “cure” is worse than the disease?
Countries like Sweden that did not lock down their economy and place the population under house arrest are faring no worse than countries that did. Sweden’s deaths-per-million from coronavirus is lower than in many lockdown countries.
Likewise, US states that did not arrest citizens for merely walking on the beach are not doing worse than those that did. South Dakota governor Kristi Noem said last week, “we’ve been able to keep our businesses open and allow people to take on some personal responsibility.” South Dakota has recorded a total of seven coronavirus deaths.
Kentucky, a strict lockdown state, is five times more populated than South Dakota, yet it has some 20 times more coronavirus deaths. If lockdown and house arrest are the answer, shouldn’t those numbers be reversed, with South Dakota seeing mass death while Kentucky dodges the coronavirus bullet?
When Anthony Fauci first warned that two million would die, there was a race among federal, state, and local officials to see who could rip up the Constitution fastest. Then Fauci told us if we do what he says only a quarter of a million would die. They locked America down even harder. Then, with little more than a shrug of the shoulders, they announced that a maximum of 60,000 would die, but maybe less. That is certainly terrible, but it’s just a high-average flu season.
Imagine if we had used even a fraction of the resources spent to lock down the entire population and focused on providing assistance and protection to the most vulnerable – the elderly and those with serious medical conditions. We could have protected these people and still had an economy to go back to when the virus had run its course. And it wouldn’t have cost us six trillion dollars either.
Governments have no right or authority to tell us what business or other activity is “essential.” Only in totalitarian states does the government claim this authority. We should encourage all those who are standing up peacefully and demanding an accounting from their elected leaders. They should not be able to get away with this.
By Ron Paul | RonPaulInstitute.org | Republished with permission


thewakingtimes--2020-04-22--Google Scientists Are Creating an Artificial Intelligence That Evolves on Its Own

Google Scientists Are Creating an Artificial Intelligence That Evolves on Its Own One of the biggest global players in artificial intelligence ( AI ) is Google and their high-tech Brain division has been pushing the envelope for years .
Now scientists working for their AutoML project have a new paper in which they claim to be developing algorithms that can evolve on their own without human input .
Even more stunning is their claim that they can induce “ mutations ” into new generations of algorithms , which mimics principles of Darwinian evolution , namely “ survival of the fittest.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most basic ideas in modern AI : machine learning .
Machine learning tools allow us to use algorithms to search through massive troves of data and quickly identify patterns .
But the traditional problem with this method is the element of human bias .
To bypass this problem , the team wanted to develop a system by which AI can grow on its own .
The team used simple math equations to develop machine learning algorithms that author 100 “ candidate algorithms.
” These candidates compete using basic machine learning tools like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best-performing algorithms then mutated , or evolved , via random code alteration .
The system can cull through tens of thousands of algorithms each second in search of a solution while dismissing “ evolutionary dead-ends ” and duplicates .
Over multiple generations , the process grows a library of high-performance algorithms .
According to the Google team , these new algorithms have already reproduced decades worth of human-led AI discoveries in only days .
Perhaps most astonishingly , the new AI algorithmic evolution is able to eliminate the problem of human bias that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The AutoML-Zero can essentially “ automatically discover ” unknown algorithms and develop new previously undiscovered AI programs without any human intervention , using only basic mathematical concepts .
Haran Jackson , the chief technology officer ( CTO ) at Techspert , explains why the new paper is so interesting : “ As exciting as AutoML is , it is restricted to finding top-performing algorithms out of the , admittedly large , assortment of algorithms that we already know of .
There is a sense amongst many members of the community that the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be achieved with the invention of new algorithms that are fundamentally different to those that we as a species have so far devised .
“ This is what makes the aforementioned paper so interesting .
It presents a method by which we can automatically construct and test completely novel machine learning algorithms.
” As noted before , the scientists say the AI programs can improve upon each previous generation , producing a kind of “ survival of the fittest ” that resembles Darwin ’ s view of evolution in natural biological systems .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Google team , their new paper , titled “ Evolving Machine Learning Algorithms From Scratch , ” suggests the tantalizing , albeit unnerving likelihood that AI of the future will be designed by other AI machines .
One can only impishly guess at what self-replicating AI algorithms evolving on their own will mean for the future of life on Earth .

Google Scientists Are Creating an Artificial Intelligence That Evolves on Its Own
Jake Anderson, The Mind Unleashed
Waking Times
One of the biggest global players in artificial intelligence (AI) is Google and their high-tech Brain division has been pushing the envelope for years.
Now scientists working for their AutoML project have a new paper in which they claim to be developing algorithms that can evolve on their own without human input. Even more stunning is their claim that they can induce “mutations” into new generations of algorithms, which mimics principles of Darwinian evolution, namely “survival of the fittest.”
The team started with one of the most basic ideas in modern AI: machine learning. Machine learning tools allow us to use algorithms to search through massive troves of data and quickly identify patterns. But the traditional problem with this method is the element of human bias.
As the team paper states: “Human-designed components bias the search results in favor of human-designed algorithms, possibly reducing the innovation potential of AutoML. Innovation is also limited by having fewer options: you cannot discover what you cannot search for.”
To bypass this problem, the team wanted to develop a system by which AI can grow on its own.
The team used simple math equations to develop machine learning algorithms that author 100 “candidate algorithms.” These candidates compete using basic machine learning tools like neural network image differentiation tests and the best-performing algorithms then mutated, or evolved, via random code alteration.
The system can cull through tens of thousands of algorithms each second in search of a solution while dismissing “evolutionary dead-ends” and duplicates. Over multiple generations, the process grows a library of high-performance algorithms. According to the Google team, these new algorithms have already reproduced decades worth of human-led AI discoveries in only days.
Perhaps most astonishingly, the new AI algorithmic evolution is able to eliminate the problem of human bias that is often introduced during data input. The AutoML-Zero can essentially “automatically discover” unknown algorithms and develop new previously undiscovered AI programs without any human intervention, using only basic mathematical concepts.
Haran Jackson, the chief technology officer (CTO) at Techspert, explains why the new paper is so interesting:
“As exciting as AutoML is, it is restricted to finding top-performing algorithms out of the, admittedly large, assortment of algorithms that we already know of. There is a sense amongst many members of the community that the most impressive feats of artificial intelligence will only be achieved with the invention of new algorithms that are fundamentally different to those that we as a species have so far devised. “This is what makes the aforementioned paper so interesting. It presents a method by which we can automatically construct and test completely novel machine learning algorithms.”
As noted before, the scientists say the AI programs can improve upon each previous generation, producing a kind of “survival of the fittest” that resembles Darwin’s view of evolution in natural biological systems.
While much testing and review still await the Google team, their new paper, titled “Evolving Machine Learning Algorithms From Scratch,” suggests the tantalizing, albeit unnerving likelihood that AI of the future will be designed by other AI machines.
One can only impishly guess at what self-replicating AI algorithms evolving on their own will mean for the future of life on Earth.
By Jake Anderson | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com