offguardian--2020-06-27--COVID19 PCR Tests are Scientifically Meaningless

Though the whole world relies on RT-PCR to “ diagnose ” Sars-Cov-2 infection , the science is clear they are not fit for purpose Lockdowns and hygienic measures around the world are based on numbers of cases and mortality rates created by the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests used to identify “ positive ” patients , whereby “ positive ” is usually equated with “ infected.
” But looking closely at the facts , the conclusion is that these PCR tests are meaningless as a diagnostic tool to determine an alleged infection by a supposedly new virus called SARS-CoV-2 .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 16 , 2020 , the WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said : The message was spread through headlines around the world , for instance by Reuters and the BBC .
Still on the 3 of May , the moderator of the heute journal — one of the most important news magazines on German television— was passing the mantra of the corona dogma on to his audience with the admonishing words : This indicates that the belief in the validity of the PCR tests is so strong that it equals a religion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is well known that religions are about faith and not about scientific facts .
And as Walter Lippmann , the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and perhaps the most influential journalist of the 20th century said : “ Where all think alike , no one thinks very much.
” So to start , it is very remarkable that Kary Mullis himself , the inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reaction ( PCR ) technology , did not think alike .
His invention got him the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1993 .
Unfortunately , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ age of 74 , but there is no doubt that the biochemist regarded the PCR as inappropriate to detect a viral infection .
The reason is that the intended use of the PCR was , and still is , to apply it as a manufacturing technique , being able to replicate DNA sequences millions and billions of times , and not as a diagnostic tool to detect viruses .
How declaring virus pandemics based on PCR tests can end in disaster was described by Gina Kolata in her 2007 New York Times article @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That Wasn ’ t .
Moreover , it is worth mentioning that the PCR tests used to identify so-called COVID-19 patients presumably infected by what is called SARS-CoV-2 do not have a valid gold standard to compare them with .
This is a fundamental point .
Tests need to be evaluated to determine their preciseness — strictly speaking their “ sensitivity ” [ 1 ] and “ specificity ” — by comparison with a “ gold standard , ” meaning the most accurate method available .
As an example , for a pregnancy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pregnancy itself .
But as Australian infectious diseases specialist Sanjaya Senanayake , for example , stated in an ABC TV interview in an answer to the question “ How accurate is the [ COVID-19 ] testing ?
” : Jessica C. Watson from Bristol University confirms this .
In her paper “ Interpreting a COVID-19 test result ” , published recently in The British Medical Journal , she writes that there is a “ lack of such a clear-cut ‘ gold-standard ’ for COVID-19 testing.
” But instead of classifying the tests as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or instead of pointing out that only a virus , proven through isolation and purification , can be a solid gold standard , Watson claims in all seriousness that , “ pragmatically ” COVID-19 diagnosis itself , remarkably including PCR testing itself , “ may be the best available ‘ gold standard ’ .
” But this is not scientifically sound .
Apart from the fact that it is downright absurd to take the PCR test itself as part of the gold standard to evaluate the PCR test , there are no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even people such as Thomas Löscher , former head of the Department of Infection and Tropical Medicine at the University of Munich and member of the Federal Association of German Internists , conceded to us [ 2 ] .
And if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19 , COVID-19 diagnosis — contrary to Watson ’ s statement — can not be suitable for serving as a valid gold standard .
In addition , “ experts ” such as Watson overlook the fact that only virus isolation , i.e .
an unequivocal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ standard .
That is why I asked Watson how COVID-19 diagnosis “ may be the best available gold standard , ” if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19 , and also whether the virus itself , that is virus isolation , wouldn ’ t be the best available/possible gold standard .
But she hasn ’ t answered hese questions yet – despite multiple requests .
And she has not yet responded to our rapid response post on her article in which we address exactly the same points , either , though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I will try to post a reply later this week when I have a chance.
” No proof for the RNA being of viral origin Now the question is : What is required first for virus isolation/proof ?
We need to know where the RNA for which the PCR tests are calibrated comes from .
As textbooks ( e.g.
, White/Fenner .
Medical Virology , 1986 , p. 9 ) as well as leading virus researchers such as Luc Montagnier or Dominic Dwyer state , particle purification — i.e .
the separation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is not that object , as for instance Nobel laureate Marie Curie purified 100 mg of radium chloride in 1898 by extracting it from tons of pitchblende — is an essential pre-requisite for proving the existence of a virus , and thus to prove that the RNA from the particle in question comes from a new virus .
The reason for this is that PCR is extremely sensitive , which means it can detect even the smallest pieces of DNA or RNA — but it can not determine where these particles came from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And because the PCR tests are calibrated for gene sequences ( in this case RNA sequences because SARS-CoV-2 is believed to be a RNA virus ) , we have to know that these gene snippets are part of the looked-for virus .
And to know that , correct isolation and purification of the presumed virus has to be executed .
Hence , we have asked the science teams of the relevant papers which are referred to in the context of SARS-CoV-2 for proof whether the electron-microscopic shots depicted in their in vitro @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a single team could answer that question with “ yes ” — and NB.
, nobody said purification was not a necessary step .
We only got answers like “ No , we did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification ” ( see below ) .
We asked several study authors “ Do your electron micrographs show the purified virus ?
” , they gave the following responses : Regarding the mentioned papers it is clear that what is shown in the electron micrographs ( EMs ) is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is no other result that they could have made EMs from .
That is to say , if the authors of these studies concede that their published EMs do not show purified particles , then they definitely do not possess purified particles claimed to be viral .
( In this context , it has to be remarked that some researchers use the term “ isolation ” in their papers , but the procedures described therein do not represent a proper isolation ( purification ) process .
Consequently , in this context the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Thus , the authors of four of the principal , early 2020 papers claiming discovery of a new coronavirus concede they had no proof that the origin of the virus genome was viral-like particles or cellular debris , pure or impure , or particles of any kind .
In other words , the existence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA is based on faith , not fact .
We have also contacted Dr Charles Calisher , who is a seasoned virologist .
In 2001 , Science published an “ impassioned plea…to the younger generation ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Calisher , saying that : And that ’ s why we asked Dr Calisher whether he knows one single paper in which SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and finally really purified .
His answer : This actually means that one can not conclude that the RNA gene sequences , which the scientists took from the tissue samples prepared in the mentioned in vitro trials and for which the PCR tests are finally being “ calibrated , ” belong to a specific virus — in this case SARS-CoV-2 .
In addition , there is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the causative agent of what is called COVID-19 .
In order to establish a causal connection , one way or the other , i.e .
beyond virus isolation and purification , it would have been absolutely necessary to carry out an experiment that satisfies the four Koch ’ s postulates .
But there is no such experiment , as Amory Devereux and Rosemary Frei recently revealed for OffGuardian .
The necessity to fulfill these postulates regarding SARS-CoV-2 is demonstrated not least by the fact that attempts have been made to fulfill them .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it , in reality , did not succeed .
One example is a study published in Nature on May 7 .
This trial , besides other procedures which render the study invalid , did not meet any of the postulates .
For instance , the alleged “ infected ” laboratory mice did not show any relevant clinical symptoms clearly attributable to pneumonia , which according to the third postulate should actually occur if a dangerous and potentially deadly virus was really at work there .
And the slight bristles and weight loss , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are negligible , not only because they could have been caused by the procedure itself , but also because the weight went back to normal again .
Also , no animal died except those they killed to perform the autopsies .
And let ’ s not forget : These experiments should have been done before developing a test , which is not the case .
Revealingly , none of the leading German representatives of the official theory about SARS-Cov-2/COVID-19 — the Robert Koch-Institute ( RKI ) , Alexander S. Kekulé ( University of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bartenschlager ( German Society for Virology ) , the aforementioned Thomas Löscher , Ulrich Dirnagl ( Charité Berlin ) or Georg Bornkamm ( virologist and professor emeritus at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Munich ) — could answer the following question I have sent them : If the particles that are claimed to be to be SARS-CoV-2 have not been purified , how do you want to be sure that the RNA gene sequences of these particles belong to a specific new virus ?
Particularly , if there are studies showing that substances such as antibiotics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the in vitro experiments carried out for virus detection can “ stress ” the cell culture in a way that new gene sequences are being formed that were not previously detectable — an aspect that Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock already drew attention to in her Nobel Lecture back in 1983 .
It should not go unmentioned that we finally got the Charité – the employer of Christian Drosten , Germany ’ s most influential virologist in respect of COVID-19 , advisor to the German government and co-developer of the PCR test which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ( not validated ! )
by the WHO worldwide – to answer questions on the topic .
But we didn ’ t get answers until June 18 , 2020 , after months of non-response .
In the end , we achieved it only with the help of Berlin lawyer Viviane Fischer .
Regarding our question “ Has the Charité convinced itself that appropriate particle purification was carried out ?
, ” the Charité concedes that they didn ’ t use purified particles .
And although they claim “ virologists at the Charité @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus , ” in their paper ( Corman et al . )
they state : Which means they just assumed the RNA was viral .
Incidentally , the Corman et al .
paper , published on January 23 , 2020 didn ’ t even go through a proper peer review process , nor were the procedures outlined therein accompanied by controls — although it is only through these two things that scientific work becomes really solid .
It is also certain that we can not know the false positive rate of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who certainly do not have the virus , proven by a method which is independent of the test ( having a solid gold standard ) .
Therefore , it is hardly surprising that there are several papers illustrating irrational test results .
For example , already in February the health authority in China ’ s Guangdong province reported that people have fully recovered from illness blamed on COVID-19 , started to test “ negative , ” and then tested “ positive ” again .
A month later , a paper published in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of 610 patients at a hospital in Wuhan had 3 to 6 test results that flipped between “ negative ” , “ positive ” and “ dubious ” .
A third example is a study from Singapore in which tests were carried out almost daily on 18 patients and the majority went from “ positive ” to “ negative ” back to “ positive ” at least once , and up to five times in one patient .
Even Wang Chen , president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences , conceded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ only 30 to 50 per cent accurate ” ; while Sin Hang Lee from the Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory sent a letter to the WHO ’ s coronavirus response team and to Anthony S. Fauci on March 22 , 2020 , saying that : In other words , even if we theoretically assume that these PCR tests can really detect a viral infection , the tests would be practically worthless , and would only cause an unfounded scare among the “ positive ” people tested .
This becomes also evident considering the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The PPV indicates the probability that a person with a positive test result is truly “ positive ” ( ie .
has the supposed virus ) , and it depends on two factors : the prevalence of the virus in the general population and the specificity of the test , that is the percentage of people without disease in whom the test is correctly “ negative ” ( a test with a specificity of 95 % incorrectly gives a positive result in 5 out of 100 non-infected people ) .
With the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the higher the PPV .
In this context , on June 12 2020 , the journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt published an article in which the PPV has been calculated with three different prevalence scenarios .
The results must , of course , be viewed very critically , first because it is not possible to calculate the specificity without a solid gold standard , as outlined , and second because the calculations in the article are based on the specificity determined in the study by Jessica Watson , which is potentially worthless , as also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it , assuming that the underlying specificity of 95 % is correct and that we know the prevalence , even the mainstream medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt reports that the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests may have “ a shockingly low ” PPV .
In one of the three scenarios , figuring with an assumed prevalence of 3 % , the PPV was only 30 percent , which means that 70 percent of the people tested “ positive ” are not “ positive ” at all .
Yet “ they are prescribed quarantine , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In a second scenario of the journal ’ s article , a prevalence of rate of 20 percent is assumed .
In this case they generate a PPV of 78 percent , meaning that 22 percent of the “ positive ” tests are false “ positives.
” That would mean : If we take the around 9 million people who are currently considered “ positive ” worldwide — supposing that the true “ positives ” really have a viral infection — we would get almost 2 million false “ positives.
” All this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the FDA , for instance , concede in their files that the so-called “ SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests ” are not suitable for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis .
In the “ CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus ( 2019-nCoV ) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel “ file from March 30 , 2020 , for example , it says : And the FDA admits that : Remarkably , in the instruction manuals of PCR tests we can also read that they are not intended as a diagnostic test , as for instance in those by Altona Diagnostics and Creative Diagnostics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one , in the product announcement of the LightMix Modular Assays produced by TIB Molbiol — which were developed using the Corman et al .
protocol — and distributed by Roche we can read : Where is the evidence that the tests can measure the “ viral load ” ?
There is also reason to conclude that the PCR test from Roche and others can not even detect the targeted genes .
Moreover , in the product descriptions of the RT-qPCR tests for SARS-COV-2 it says they are “ qualitative ” tests , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ q ” in “ qPCR ” stands for “ quantitative.
” And if these tests are not “ quantitative ” tests , they don ’ t show how many viral particles are in the body .
That is crucial because , in order to even begin talking about actual illness in the real world not only in a laboratory , the patient would need to have millions and millions of viral particles actively replicating in their body .
That is to say , the CDC , the WHO , the FDA or the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ measure the so-called “ viral load , ” i.e .
how many viral particles are in the body .
“ But this has never been proven .
That is an enormous scandal , ” as the journalist Jon Rappoport points out .
This is not only because the term “ viral load ” is deception .
If you put the question “ what is viral load ?
” at a dinner party , people take it to mean viruses circulating in the bloodstream .
They ’ re surprised to learn it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prove beyond any doubt that the PCR can measure how much a person is “ burdened ” with a disease-causing virus , the following experiment would have had to be carried out ( which has not yet happened ) : You take , let ’ s say , a few hundred or even thousand people and remove tissue samples from them .
Make sure the people who take the samples do not perform the test.The testers will never know who the patients are and what condition they ’ re in .
The testers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In each case , they say which virus they found and how much of it they found .
Then , for example , in patients 29 , 86 , 199 , 272 , and 293 they found a great deal of what they claim is a virus .
Now we un-blind those patients .
They should all be sick , because they have so much virus replicating in their bodies .
But are they really sick — or are they fit as a fiddle ?
With the help of the aforementioned lawyer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Charité to also answer the question of whether the test developed by Corman et al .
— the so-called “ Drosten PCR test ” — is a quantitative test .
But the Charité was not willing to answer this question “ yes ” .
Instead , the Charité wrote : Furthermore , the “ Drosten PCR test ” uses the unspecific E-gene assay as preliminary assay , while the Institut Pasteur uses the same assay as confirmatory assay .
According to Corman et al.
, the E-gene assay is likely to detect all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in both tests are supposed to be more specific for sequences labelled “ SARS-CoV-2 ” .
Besides the questionable purpose of having either a preliminary or a confirmatory test that is likely to detect all Asian viruses , at the beginning of April the WHO changed the algorithm , recommending that from then on a test can be regarded as “ positive ” even if just the E-gene assay ( which is likely to detect all Asian viruses ! )
gives a “ positive ” result .
This means that a confirmed unspecific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That change of algorithm increased the “ case ” numbers .
Tests using the E-gene assay are produced for example by Roche , TIB Molbiol and R-Biopharm .
High Cq values make the test results even more meaningless Another essential problem is that many PCR tests have a “ cycle quantification ” ( Cq ) value of over 35 , and some , including the “ Drosten PCR test ” , even have a Cq of 45 .
The Cq value specifies how many cycles of DNA replication are required to detect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Cq values higher than 40 are suspect because of the implied low efficiency and generally should not be reported , ” as it says in the MIQE guidelines .
MIQE is stands for “ Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments ” , a set of guidelines that describe the minimum information necessary for evaluating publications on Real-Time PCR , also called quantitative PCR , or qPCR .
The inventor himself , Kary Mullis , agreed , when he stated : The MIQE guidelines have been developed under the aegis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Molecular Medicine , a world-renowned expert on quantitative PCR and author of the book A-Z of Quantitative PCR which has been called “ the bible of qPCR.
” In a recent podcast interview Bustin points out that “ the use of such arbitrary Cq cut-offs is not ideal , because they may be either too low ( eliminating valid results ) or too high ( increasing false “ positive ” results ) .
” And , according to him , a Cq of 20 to 30 should be aimed at , and there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ results for any Cq over 35 .
If the Cq value gets too high , it becomes difficult to distinguish real signal from background , for example due to reactions of primers and fluorescent probes , and hence there is a higher probability of false positives .
Moreover , among other factors that can alter the result , before starting with the actual PCR , in case you are looking for presumed RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 , the RNA must be converted to complementary DNA ( cDNA ) with the enzyme Reverse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beginning of “ PCR ” or “ qPCR.
” But this transformation process is “ widely recognized as inefficient and variable , ” as Jessica Schwaber from the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine in Toronto and two research colleagues pointed out in a 2019 paper .
Stephen A. Bustin acknowledges problems with PCR in a comparable way .
For example , he pointed to the problem that in the course of the conversion process ( RNA to cDNA ) the amount of DNA obtained with the same RNA base material can vary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 10 ( see above interview ) .
Considering that the DNA sequences get doubled at every cycle , even a slight variation becomes magnified and can thus alter the result , annihilating the test ’ s reliable informative value .
So how can it be that those who claim the PCR tests are highly meaningful for so-called COVID-19 diagnosis blind out the fundamental inadequacies of these tests—even if they are confronted with questions regarding their validity ?
Certainly , the apologists of the novel coronavirus hypothesis should have dealt with these questions before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ putting basically the whole world under lockdown , not least because these are questions that come to mind immediately for anyone with even a spark of scientific understanding .
Thus , the thought inevitably emerges that financial and political interests play a decisive role for this ignorance about scientific obligations .
NB , the WHO , for example has financial ties with drug companies , as the British Medical Journal showed in 2010 .
And experts criticize “ that the notorious corruption and conflicts of interest at WHO have continued , even grown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well , to take another big player , is obviously no better off .
Finally , the reasons and possible motives remain speculative , and many involved surely act in good faith ; but the science is clear : The numbers generated by these RT-PCR tests do not in the least justify frightening people who have been tested “ positive ” and imposing lockdown measures that plunge countless people into poverty and despair or even drive them to suicide .
And a “ positive ” result may have serious consequences for the patients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ factors are excluded from the diagnosis and the patients are treated with highly toxic drugs and invasive intubations .
Especially for elderly people and patients with pre-existing conditions such a treatment can be fatal , as we have outlined in the article “ Fatal Therapie.
” Without doubt eventual excess mortality rates are caused by the therapy and by the lockdown measures , while the “ COVID-19 ” death statistics comprise also patients who died of a variety of diseases , redefined as COVID-19 only because of a “ positive ” test result @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Torsten Engelbrecht is an award-winning journalist and author from Hamburg , Germany .
In 2006 he co-authored Virus-Mania with Dr Klaus Kohnlein , and in 2009 he won the German Alternate Media Award .
He has also written for Rubikon , Zeitung , Financial Times Deutschland and many others .
Konstantin Demeter is a freelance photographer and an independent researcher .
Together with the journalist Torsten Engelbrecht he has published articles on the “ COVID-19 ” crisis in the online magazine Rubikon , as well as contributions on the monetary system , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Italian newspapers .

Though the whole world relies on RT-PCR to “diagnose” Sars-Cov-2 infection, the science is clear: they are not fit for purpose
Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin Demeter
Lockdowns and hygienic measures around the world are based on numbers of cases and mortality rates created by the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests used to identify “positive” patients, whereby “positive” is usually equated with “infected.”
But looking closely at the facts, the conclusion is that these PCR tests are meaningless as a diagnostic tool to determine an alleged infection by a supposedly new virus called SARS-CoV-2.
Unfounded “Test, test, test,…” mantra
At the media briefing on COVID-19 on March 16, 2020, the WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said:
We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test.”
The message was spread through headlines around the world, for instance by Reuters and the BBC.
Still on the 3 of May, the moderator of the heute journal — one of the most important news magazines on German television— was passing the mantra of the corona dogma on to his audience with the admonishing words:
Test, test, test—that is the credo at the moment, and it is the only way to really understand how much the coronavirus is spreading.”
This indicates that the belief in the validity of the PCR tests is so strong that it equals a religion that tolerates virtually no contradiction.
But it is well known that religions are about faith and not about scientific facts. And as Walter Lippmann, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and perhaps the most influential journalist of the 20th century said: “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
So to start, it is very remarkable that Kary Mullis himself, the inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology, did not think alike. His invention got him the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1993.
Unfortunately, Mullis passed away last year at the age of 74, but there is no doubt that the biochemist regarded the PCR as inappropriate to detect a viral infection.
The reason is that the intended use of the PCR was, and still is, to apply it as a manufacturing technique, being able to replicate DNA sequences millions and billions of times, and not as a diagnostic tool to detect viruses.
How declaring virus pandemics based on PCR tests can end in disaster was described by Gina Kolata in her 2007 New York Times article Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t.
Lack of a valid gold standard
Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the PCR tests used to identify so-called COVID-19 patients presumably infected by what is called SARS-CoV-2 do not have a valid gold standard to compare them with.
This is a fundamental point. Tests need to be evaluated to determine their preciseness — strictly speaking their “sensitivity”[1] and “specificity” — by comparison with a “gold standard,” meaning the most accurate method available.
As an example, for a pregnancy test the gold standard would be the pregnancy itself. But as Australian infectious diseases specialist Sanjaya Senanayake, for example, stated in an ABC TV interview in an answer to the question “How accurate is the [COVID-19] testing?”:
If we had a new test for picking up [the bacterium] golden staph in blood, we’ve already got blood cultures, that’s our gold standard we’ve been using for decades, and we could match this new test against that. But for COVID-19 we don’t have a gold standard test.”
Jessica C. Watson from Bristol University confirms this. In her paper “Interpreting a COVID-19 test result”, published recently in The British Medical Journal, she writes that there is a “lack of such a clear-cut ‘gold-standard’ for COVID-19 testing.”
But instead of classifying the tests as unsuitable for SARS-CoV-2 detection and COVID-19 diagnosis, or instead of pointing out that only a virus, proven through isolation and purification, can be a solid gold standard, Watson claims in all seriousness that, “pragmatically” COVID-19 diagnosis itself, remarkably including PCR testing itself, “may be the best available ‘gold standard’.” But this is not scientifically sound.
Apart from the fact that it is downright absurd to take the PCR test itself as part of the gold standard to evaluate the PCR test, there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, as even people such as Thomas Löscher, former head of the Department of Infection and Tropical Medicine at the University of Munich and member of the Federal Association of German Internists, conceded to us[2].
And if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, COVID-19 diagnosis — contrary to Watson’s statement — cannot be suitable for serving as a valid gold standard.
In addition, “experts” such as Watson overlook the fact that only virus isolation, i.e. an unequivocal virus proof, can be the gold standard.
That is why I asked Watson how COVID-19 diagnosis “may be the best available gold standard,” if there are no distinctive specific symptoms for COVID-19, and also whether the virus itself, that is virus isolation, wouldn’t be the best available/possible gold standard. But she hasn’t answered these questions yet – despite multiple requests. And she has not yet responded to our rapid response post on her article in which we address exactly the same points, either, though she wrote us on June 2nd: “I will try to post a reply later this week when I have a chance.”
No proof for the RNA being of viral origin
Now the question is: What is required first for virus isolation/proof? We need to know where the RNA for which the PCR tests are calibrated comes from.
As textbooks (e.g., White/Fenner. Medical Virology, 1986, p. 9) as well as leading virus researchers such as Luc Montagnier or Dominic Dwyer state, particle purification — i.e. the separation of an object from everything else that is not that object, as for instance Nobel laureate Marie Curie purified 100 mg of radium chloride in 1898 by extracting it from tons of pitchblende — is an essential pre-requisite for proving the existence of a virus, and thus to prove that the RNA from the particle in question comes from a new virus.
The reason for this is that PCR is extremely sensitive, which means it can detect even the smallest pieces of DNA or RNA — but it cannot determine where these particles came from. That has to be determined beforehand.
And because the PCR tests are calibrated for gene sequences (in this case RNA sequences because SARS-CoV-2 is believed to be a RNA virus), we have to know that these gene snippets are part of the looked-for virus. And to know that, correct isolation and purification of the presumed virus has to be executed.
Hence, we have asked the science teams of the relevant papers which are referred to in the context of SARS-CoV-2 for proof whether the electron-microscopic shots depicted in their in vitro experiments show purified viruses.
But not a single team could answer that question with “yes” — and NB., nobody said purification was not a necessary step. We only got answers like “No, we did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification” (see below).
We asked several study authors “Do your electron micrographs show the purified virus?”, they gave the following responses:
Study 1: Leo L. M. Poon; Malik Peiris. “Emergence of a novel human coronavirus threatening human health” Nature Medicine, March 2020
Replying Author: Malik Peiris
Date: May 12, 2020
Answer: “The image is the virus budding from an infected cell. It is not purified virus.” Study 2: Myung-Guk Han et al. “Identification of Coronavirus Isolated from a Patient in Korea with COVID-19”, Osong Public Health and Research Perspectives, February 2020
Replying Author: Myung-Guk Han
Date: May 6, 2020
Answer: “We could not estimate the degree of purification because we do not purify and concentrate the virus cultured in cells.” Study 3: Wan Beom Park et al. “Virus Isolation from the First Patient with SARS-CoV-2 in Korea”, Journal of Korean Medical Science, February 24, 2020
Replying Author: Wan Beom Park
Date: March 19, 2020
Answer: “We did not obtain an electron micrograph showing the degree of purification.” Study 4: Na Zhu et al., “A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China”, 2019, New England Journal of Medicine, February 20, 2020
Replying Author: Wenjie Tan
Date: March 18, 2020
Answer: “[We show] an image of sedimented virus particles, not purified ones.”
Regarding the mentioned papers it is clear that what is shown in the electron micrographs (EMs) is the end result of the experiment, meaning there is no other result that they could have made EMs from.
That is to say, if the authors of these studies concede that their published EMs do not show purified particles, then they definitely do not possess purified particles claimed to be viral. (In this context, it has to be remarked that some researchers use the term “isolation” in their papers, but the procedures described therein do not represent a proper isolation (purification) process. Consequently, in this context the term “isolation” is misused).
Thus, the authors of four of the principal, early 2020 papers claiming discovery of a new coronavirus concede they had no proof that the origin of the virus genome was viral-like particles or cellular debris, pure or impure, or particles of any kind. In other words, the existence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA is based on faith, not fact.
We have also contacted Dr Charles Calisher, who is a seasoned virologist. In 2001, Science published an “impassioned plea…to the younger generation” from several veteran virologists, among them Calisher, saying that:
[modern virus detection methods like] sleek polymerase chain reaction […] tell little or nothing about how a virus multiplies, which animals carry it, [or] how it makes people sick. [It is] like trying to say whether somebody has bad breath by looking at his fingerprint.”[3]
And that’s why we asked Dr Calisher whether he knows one single paper in which SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated and finally really purified. His answer:
I know of no such a publication. I have kept an eye out for one.”[4]
This actually means that one cannot conclude that the RNA gene sequences, which the scientists took from the tissue samples prepared in the mentioned in vitro trials and for which the PCR tests are finally being “calibrated,” belong to a specific virus — in this case SARS-CoV-2.
In addition, there is no scientific proof that those RNA sequences are the causative agent of what is called COVID-19.
In order to establish a causal connection, one way or the other, i.e. beyond virus isolation and purification, it would have been absolutely necessary to carry out an experiment that satisfies the four Koch’s postulates. But there is no such experiment, as Amory Devereux and Rosemary Frei recently revealed for OffGuardian.
The necessity to fulfill these postulates regarding SARS-CoV-2 is demonstrated not least by the fact that attempts have been made to fulfill them. But even researchers claiming they have done it, in reality, did not succeed.
One example is a study published in Nature on May 7. This trial, besides other procedures which render the study invalid, did not meet any of the postulates.
For instance, the alleged “infected” laboratory mice did not show any relevant clinical symptoms clearly attributable to pneumonia, which according to the third postulate should actually occur if a dangerous and potentially deadly virus was really at work there. And the slight bristles and weight loss, which were observed temporarily in the animals are negligible, not only because they could have been caused by the procedure itself, but also because the weight went back to normal again.
Also, no animal died except those they killed to perform the autopsies. And let’s not forget: These experiments should have been done before developing a test, which is not the case.
Revealingly, none of the leading German representatives of the official theory about SARS-Cov-2/COVID-19 — the Robert Koch-Institute (RKI), Alexander S. Kekulé (University of Halle), Hartmut Hengel and Ralf Bartenschlager (German Society for Virology), the aforementioned Thomas Löscher, Ulrich Dirnagl (Charité Berlin) or Georg Bornkamm (virologist and professor emeritus at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Munich) — could answer the following question I have sent them:
If the particles that are claimed to be to be SARS-CoV-2 have not been purified, how do you want to be sure that the RNA gene sequences of these particles belong to a specific new virus?
Particularly, if there are studies showing that substances such as antibiotics that are added to the test tubes in the in vitro experiments carried out for virus detection can “stress” the cell culture in a way that new gene sequences are being formed that were not previously detectable — an aspect that Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock already drew attention to in her Nobel Lecture back in 1983.
It should not go unmentioned that we finally got the Charité – the employer of Christian Drosten, Germany’s most influential virologist in respect of COVID-19, advisor to the German government and co-developer of the PCR test which was the first to be “accepted” (not validated!) by the WHO worldwide – to answer questions on the topic.
But we didn’t get answers until June 18, 2020, after months of non-response. In the end, we achieved it only with the help of Berlin lawyer Viviane Fischer.
Regarding our question “Has the Charité convinced itself that appropriate particle purification was carried out?,” the Charité concedes that they didn’t use purified particles.
And although they claim “virologists at the Charité are sure that they are testing for the virus,” in their paper (Corman et al.) they state:
RNA was extracted from clinical samples with the MagNA Pure 96 system (Roche, Penzberg, Germany) and from cell culture supernatants with the viral RNA mini kit (QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany),”
Which means they just assumed the RNA was viral.
Incidentally, the Corman et al. paper, published on January 23, 2020 didn’t even go through a proper peer review process, nor were the procedures outlined therein accompanied by controls — although it is only through these two things that scientific work becomes really solid.
Irrational test results
It is also certain that we cannot know the false positive rate of the PCR tests without widespread testing of people who certainly do not have the virus, proven by a method which is independent of the test (having a solid gold standard).
Therefore, it is hardly surprising that there are several papers illustrating irrational test results.
For example, already in February the health authority in China’s Guangdong province reported that people have fully recovered from illness blamed on COVID-19, started to test “negative,” and then tested “positive” again.
A month later, a paper published in the Journal of Medical Virology showed that 29 out of 610 patients at a hospital in Wuhan had 3 to 6 test results that flipped between “negative”, “positive” and “dubious”.
A third example is a study from Singapore in which tests were carried out almost daily on 18 patients and the majority went from “positive” to “negative” back to “positive” at least once, and up to five times in one patient.
Even Wang Chen, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, conceded in February that the PCR tests are “only 30 to 50 per cent accurate”; while Sin Hang Lee from the Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory sent a letter to the WHO’s coronavirus response team and to Anthony S. Fauci on March 22, 2020, saying that:
It has been widely reported in the social media that the RT-qPCR [Reverse Transcriptase quantitative PCR] test kits used to detect SARSCoV-2 RNA in human specimens are generating many false positive results and are not sensitive enough to detect some real positive cases.”
In other words, even if we theoretically assume that these PCR tests can really detect a viral infection, the tests would be practically worthless, and would only cause an unfounded scare among the “positive” people tested.
This becomes also evident considering the positive predictive value (PPV).
The PPV indicates the probability that a person with a positive test result is truly “positive” (ie. has the supposed virus), and it depends on two factors: the prevalence of the virus in the general population and the specificity of the test, that is the percentage of people without disease in whom the test is correctly “negative” (a test with a specificity of 95% incorrectly gives a positive result in 5 out of 100 non-infected people).
With the same specificity, the higher the prevalence, the higher the PPV.
In this context, on June 12 2020, the journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt published an article in which the PPV has been calculated with three different prevalence scenarios.
The results must, of course, be viewed very critically, first because it is not possible to calculate the specificity without a solid gold standard, as outlined, and second because the calculations in the article are based on the specificity determined in the study by Jessica Watson, which is potentially worthless, as also mentioned.
But if you abstract from it, assuming that the underlying specificity of 95% is correct and that we know the prevalence, even the mainstream medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt reports that the so-called SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests may have “a shockingly low” PPV.
In one of the three scenarios, figuring with an assumed prevalence of 3%, the PPV was only 30 percent, which means that 70 percent of the people tested “positive” are not “positive” at all. Yet “they are prescribed quarantine,” as even the Ärzteblatt notes critically.
In a second scenario of the journal’s article, a prevalence of rate of 20 percent is assumed. In this case they generate a PPV of 78 percent, meaning that 22 percent of the “positive” tests are false “positives.”
That would mean: If we take the around 9 million people who are currently considered “positive” worldwide — supposing that the true “positives” really have a viral infection — we would get almost 2 million false “positives.”
All this fits with the fact that the CDC and the FDA, for instance, concede in their files that the so-called “SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests” are not suitable for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis.
In the “CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel“ file from March 30, 2020, for example, it says:
Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms”
And:
This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.”
And the FDA admits that:
positive results […] do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease.”
Remarkably, in the instruction manuals of PCR tests we can also read that they are not intended as a diagnostic test, as for instance in those by Altona Diagnostics and Creative Diagnostics[5].
To quote another one, in the product announcement of the LightMix Modular Assays produced by TIB Molbiol — which were developed using the Corman et al. protocol — and distributed by Roche we can read:
These assays are not intended for use as an aid in the diagnosis of coronavirus infection”
And:
For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.”
Where is the evidence that the tests can measure the “viral load”?
There is also reason to conclude that the PCR test from Roche and others cannot even detect the targeted genes.
Moreover, in the product descriptions of the RT-qPCR tests for SARS-COV-2 it says they are “qualitative” tests, contrary to the fact that the “q” in “qPCR” stands for “quantitative.” And if these tests are not “quantitative” tests, they don’t show how many viral particles are in the body.
That is crucial because, in order to even begin talking about actual illness in the real world not only in a laboratory, the patient would need to have millions and millions of viral particles actively replicating in their body.
That is to say, the CDC, the WHO, the FDA or the RKI may assert that the tests can measure the so-called “viral load,” i.e. how many viral particles are in the body. “But this has never been proven. That is an enormous scandal,” as the journalist Jon Rappoport points out.
This is not only because the term “viral load” is deception. If you put the question “what is viral load?” at a dinner party, people take it to mean viruses circulating in the bloodstream. They’re surprised to learn it’s actually RNA molecules.
Also, to prove beyond any doubt that the PCR can measure how much a person is “burdened” with a disease-causing virus, the following experiment would have had to be carried out (which has not yet happened):
You take, let’s say, a few hundred or even thousand people and remove tissue samples from them. Make sure the people who take the samples do not perform the test.The testers will never know who the patients are and what condition they’re in. The testers run their PCR on the tissue samples. In each case, they say which virus they found and how much of it they found. Then, for example, in patients 29, 86, 199, 272, and 293 they found a great deal of what they claim is a virus. Now we un-blind those patients. They should all be sick, because they have so much virus replicating in their bodies. But are they really sick — or are they fit as a fiddle?
With the help of the aforementioned lawyer Viviane Fischer, I finally got the Charité to also answer the question of whether the test developed by Corman et al. — the so-called “Drosten PCR test” — is a quantitative test.
But the Charité was not willing to answer this question “yes”. Instead, the Charité wrote:
If real-time RT-PCR is involved, to the knowledge of the Charité in most cases these are […] limited to qualitative detection.”
Furthermore, the “Drosten PCR test” uses the unspecific E-gene assay as preliminary assay, while the Institut Pasteur uses the same assay as confirmatory assay.
According to Corman et al., the E-gene assay is likely to detect all Asian viruses, while the other assays in both tests are supposed to be more specific for sequences labelled “SARS-CoV-2”.
Besides the questionable purpose of having either a preliminary or a confirmatory test that is likely to detect all Asian viruses, at the beginning of April the WHO changed the algorithm, recommending that from then on a test can be regarded as “positive” even if just the E-gene assay (which is likely to detect all Asian viruses!) gives a “positive” result.
This means that a confirmed unspecific test result is officially sold as specific.
That change of algorithm increased the “case” numbers. Tests using the E-gene assay are produced for example by Roche, TIB Molbiol and R-Biopharm.
High Cq values make the test results even more meaningless
Another essential problem is that many PCR tests have a “cycle quantification” (Cq) value of over 35, and some, including the “Drosten PCR test”, even have a Cq of 45.
The Cq value specifies how many cycles of DNA replication are required to detect a real signal from biological samples.
“Cq values higher than 40 are suspect because of the implied low efficiency and generally should not be reported,” as it says in the MIQE guidelines.
MIQE stands for “Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments”, a set of guidelines that describe the minimum information necessary for evaluating publications on Real-Time PCR, also called quantitative PCR, or qPCR.
The inventor himself, Kary Mullis, agreed, when he stated:
If you have to go more than 40 cycles to amplify a single-copy gene, there is something seriously wrong with your PCR.”
The MIQE guidelines have been developed under the aegis of Stephen A. Bustin, Professor of Molecular Medicine, a world-renowned expert on quantitative PCR and author of the book A-Z of Quantitative PCR which has been called “the bible of qPCR.”
In a recent podcast interview Bustin points out that “the use of such arbitrary Cq cut-offs is not ideal, because they may be either too low (eliminating valid results) or too high (increasing false “positive” results).”
And, according to him, a Cq in the 20s to 30s should be aimed at and there is concern regarding the reliability of the results for any Cq over 35.
If the Cq value gets too high, it becomes difficult to distinguish real signal from background, for example due to reactions of primers and fluorescent probes, and hence there is a higher probability of false positives.
Moreover, among other factors that can alter the result, before starting with the actual PCR, in case you are looking for presumed RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, the RNA must be converted to complementary DNA (cDNA) with the enzyme Reverse Transcriptase—hence the “RT” at the beginning of “PCR” or “qPCR.”
But this transformation process is “widely recognized as inefficient and variable,” as Jessica Schwaber from the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine in Toronto and two research colleagues pointed out in a 2019 paper.
Stephen A. Bustin acknowledges problems with PCR in a comparable way.
For example, he pointed to the problem that in the course of the conversion process (RNA to cDNA) the amount of DNA obtained with the same RNA base material can vary widely, even by a factor of 10 (see above interview).
Considering that the DNA sequences get doubled at every cycle, even a slight variation becomes magnified and can thus alter the result, annihilating the test’s reliable informative value.
So how can it be that those who claim the PCR tests are highly meaningful for so-called COVID-19 diagnosis blind out the fundamental inadequacies of these tests—even if they are confronted with questions regarding their validity?
Certainly, the apologists of the novel coronavirus hypothesis should have dealt with these questions before throwing the tests on the market and putting basically the whole world under lockdown, not least because these are questions that come to mind immediately for anyone with even a spark of scientific understanding.
Thus, the thought inevitably emerges that financial and political interests play a decisive role for this ignorance about scientific obligations. NB, the WHO, for example has financial ties with drug companies, as the British Medical Journal showed in 2010.
And experts criticize “that the notorious corruption and conflicts of interest at WHO have continued, even grown“ since then. The CDC as well, to take another big player, is obviously no better off.
Finally, the reasons and possible motives remain speculative, and many involved surely act in good faith; but the science is clear: The numbers generated by these RT-PCR tests do not in the least justify frightening people who have been tested “positive” and imposing lockdown measures that plunge countless people into poverty and despair or even drive them to suicide.
And a “positive” result may have serious consequences for the patients as well, because then all non-viral factors are excluded from the diagnosis and the patients are treated with highly toxic drugs and invasive intubations. Especially for elderly people and patients with pre-existing conditions such a treatment can be fatal, as we have outlined in the article “Fatal Therapie.”
Without doubt eventual excess mortality rates are caused by the therapy and by the lockdown measures, while the “COVID-19” death statistics comprise also patients who died of a variety of diseases, redefined as COVID-19 only because of a “positive” test result whose value could not be more doubtful.
NOTES:- [1] Sensitivity is defined as the proportion of patients with disease in whom the test is positive; and specificity is defined as the proportion of patients without disease in whom the test is negative. [2] E-mail from Prof. Thomas Löscher from March 6, 2020 [3] Martin Enserink. Virology. Old guard urges virologists to go back to basics, Science, July 6, 2001, p. 24 [4] E-mail from Charles Calisher from May 10, 2020 [5] Creative Diagnostics, SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus Multiplex RT-qPCR Kit
Torsten Engelbrecht is an award-winning journalist and author from Hamburg, Germany. In 2006 he co-authored Virus-Mania with Dr Klaus Kohnlein, and in 2009 he won the German Alternate Media Award. He has also written for Rubikon, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Financial Times Deutschland and many others.
Konstantin Demeter is a freelance photographer and an independent researcher. Together with the journalist Torsten Engelbrecht he has published articles on the “COVID-19” crisis in the online magazine Rubikon, as well as contributions on the monetary system, geopolitics, and the media in Swiss Italian newspapers.


The Messenger

Words are inadequate to describe certain experiences that happen outside the law of cause and effect .
Although they are universal , they are often so weird that to recount them makes most people uncomfortable , unless they are New Agers , spiritualists , or mind-curers who believe in the great American tradition of the happiness machine , revelations on every bathroom wall , Jesus ’ s face in cloud formations , or apparitions in every shadow .
I am none of those .
But strange , real experiences do happen , however , usually very infrequently in one ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but not looking for them .
The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung called them synchronicity , meaning a meaningful coincidence in time without a causal relationship between a psychic state and a physical event , or dreams or thoughts , also without a causal connection , that occur simultaneously across physical distances .
Since a recounting of their outward manifestations is bizarre , and their meanings are personal , and since we live in the era of science as the dominant ideology , and a culture of pseudo-science , schlock weirdness , and “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ skeptically mock with a condescending grin their reality .
Because American culture has always been replete with charlatans and scammers who have preyed on people ’ s gullibility and ignorance , such experiences have gotten a bad name .
To admit to experiencing such a meaningful coincidence is to open oneself to derision , despite the testimonies of such esteemed authorities as Jung and William James , to name but two .
But I think I ’ ll take a chance .
I have been living in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country , known for its peaceful rural roads , lakes , streams , and vast tracts of mountain forests rife with wildlife .
It is paradise for fishing and hunting , and the woods are filled with gorgeous hiking trails that attract urbanites in search of peace and quiet , those proverbial country escapes .
Ever since we moved here , I have made sure to get outdoors to run or walk in all kinds of weather , preferably alone and when few people were out .
To be alone by a lake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or a snowstorm is my idea of paradise .
With my family I have hiked many of the mountain trails .
And over the years I have seen many animals : bobcats , deer , bald eagles , herons – the list is very long .
But my great wish has never been granted : to see a bear and to see it up close .
Friends and neighbors find this hard to believe , for anyone who has lived in this area for just a few years has usually seen one .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ When I was a boy , the only son with seven sisters , my father told me a story that has always stuck with me .
In the early years of the twentieth century , his father , my grandfather , was picnicking with his family and a few other families at Bear Mountain in upstate New York along the Hudson River .
As they were reclining on their blankets preparing to eat in a meadow below the mountain , a huge bear came roaring toward them out of the tree line .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ approach , everyone except my grandfather got up screaming and ran downslope away from the bear .
My grandfather stood his ground , as my grandmother and great-uncle told my father ; he stood very tall and straight and started to play the penny whistle his father had brought with him from Ireland .
What the tune was I never really knew .
My father said my grandmother remembered strains of Amazing Grace but his uncle , Uncle Black Jack , a NYC Police Department blacksmith , remembered a lively jig .
Who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him and the blankets spread with food , stopped just short , stood huge on its hind legs , let out a fierce roar , then dropped down , turned , and loped back up toward the trees where he disappeared into the mountain forest .
My wish has never been to stand down a bear in such a manner .
Just to see one up close would be enough .
My grandfather had a fierceness that I lack , and anyway , I don ’ t have a pennywhistle .
When I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little sound emerges , and what does isn ’ t tuneful , and he was a master whistler as well .
But bears have always been eluding me , as if the time was not ripe , or I was not prepared for their arrival .
Then just yesterday , Father ’ s Day , I was sending an article of mine – “ My Father ’ s Voice ” – to my only son and daughter .
It begins like this : I heard my wife scream from the kitchen for me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it and there , eight feet from the open window , was a bear facing us and almost swinging from the bird feeder and the branch above , its feet akimbo , an almost mischievous look on its face .
It watched us as we watched it for 4-5 minutes .
Then , afraid that it might break the open window that had another bird feeder stuck to it , I cranked the window in , the bear walked over , stood up , looked at us and the feeder that was too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all fours and started walking away as we rushed out to see it walk across the driveway and the neighbor ’ s lawn .
I feebly whistled after it ; it stopped , turned and looked back , then continued on its merry way .
My wish had been granted , shortly after the summer solstice , the first day of summer , my wife ’ s and my anniversary , and Father ’ s Day .
It immediately felt as if my father had sent me a gift .
My wife quickly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had taken to our son and daughter .
The night before , as a Father ’ s Day gift , my son and girlfriend had taken us out to dinner .
As we sat at an outdoor courtyard under the trees of an old inn , I was asked to speak of my father .
Unusually for me , I was a bit lost for words , except to say he was a wonderful father , the best I could have hoped for and how close we were .
At the back of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I love of him pushing in a stroller the son who sat to my left when he was very young .
It was taken on the street outside the inn where we were dining , right behind my back .
Shortly after the bear had come to visit us , still amazed , we went for a long walk , and when we returned , there was a video on the computer from our son to whom I had earlier sent the article about his grandfather .
In January , our son had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after ten years living down south .
They had bought a house about a mile away near the lake and woods where we had just walked .
The same bear had walked through the woods adjacent to our walk , pushed over the fence around their large yard , and was in their yard eyeing their bird feeder .
My son couldn ’ t tell if the bear was whistling because his dogs were barking too loud .
But I heard my father laughing at the message he had sent .
I recalled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ read and written about were like mini-short stories , akin to a father sitting beside a child ’ s bed and telling him a goodnight tale .
They always ended on an up-note , no matter how serious what preceded .
He was a storyteller talking to an adult son , just as in my childhood he would tell me bed-time improvisations on the Pinocchio story , tales of lies and deceptions and bad actors .
Those stories had to have an edge to them , a bit of a question mark , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the phrase quien sabe ( who knows ? )
.
Those letters came through the mail .
The latest message came by bear .
That I know .

Edward Curtin
Words are inadequate to describe certain experiences that happen outside the law of cause and effect. Although they are universal, they are often so weird that to recount them makes most people uncomfortable, unless they are New Agers, spiritualists, or mind-curers who believe in the great American tradition of the happiness machine, revelations on every bathroom wall, Jesus’s face in cloud formations, or apparitions in every shadow. I am none of those.
But strange, real experiences do happen, however, usually very infrequently in one’s life for those who are accessible but not looking for them.
The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung called them synchronicity, meaning a meaningful coincidence in time without a causal relationship between a psychic state and a physical event, or dreams or thoughts, also without a causal connection, that occur simultaneously across physical distances.
Since a recounting of their outward manifestations is bizarre, and their meanings are personal, and since we live in the era of science as the dominant ideology, and a culture of pseudo-science, schlock weirdness, and “miracles,” it is easy to skeptically mock with a condescending grin their reality.
Because American culture has always been replete with charlatans and scammers who have preyed on people’s gullibility and ignorance, such experiences have gotten a bad name. To admit to experiencing such a meaningful coincidence is to open oneself to derision, despite the testimonies of such esteemed authorities as Jung and William James, to name but two.
But I think I’ll take a chance.
I have been living in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts for forty years. It is beautiful country, known for its peaceful rural roads, lakes, streams, and vast tracts of mountain forests rife with wildlife. It is paradise for fishing and hunting, and the woods are filled with gorgeous hiking trails that attract urbanites in search of peace and quiet, those proverbial country escapes.
Ever since we moved here, I have made sure to get outdoors to run or walk in all kinds of weather, preferably alone and when few people were out. To be alone by a lake or stream in sun, rain, or a snowstorm is my idea of paradise. With my family I have hiked many of the mountain trails. And over the years I have seen many animals: bobcats, deer, bald eagles, herons – the list is very long.
But my great wish has never been granted: to see a bear and to see it up close. Friends and neighbors find this hard to believe, for anyone who has lived in this area for just a few years has usually seen one. Not me, for forty years.
When I was a boy, the only son with seven sisters, my father told me a story that has always stuck with me. In the early years of the twentieth century, his father, my grandfather, was picnicking with his family and a few other families at Bear Mountain in upstate New York along the Hudson River. As they were reclining on their blankets preparing to eat in a meadow below the mountain, a huge bear came roaring toward them out of the tree line. This was 1905.
Seeing the bear approach, everyone except my grandfather got up screaming and ran downslope away from the bear. My grandfather stood his ground, as my grandmother and great-uncle told my father; he stood very tall and straight and started to play the penny whistle his father had brought with him from Ireland. What the tune was I never really knew.
My father said my grandmother remembered strains of Amazing Grace but his uncle, Uncle Black Jack, a NYC Police Department blacksmith, remembered a lively jig. Who knows? The bear came walking toward him and the blankets spread with food, stopped just short, stood huge on its hind legs, let out a fierce roar, then dropped down, turned, and loped back up toward the trees where he disappeared into the mountain forest.
My wish has never been to stand down a bear in such a manner. Just to see one up close would be enough. My grandfather had a fierceness that I lack, and anyway, I don’t have a pennywhistle. When I try to whistle with my mouth, little sound emerges, and what does isn’t tuneful, and he was a master whistler as well. But bears have always been eluding me, as if the time was not ripe, or I was not prepared for their arrival.
Then just yesterday, Father’s Day, I was sending an article of mine – “My Father’s Voice” – to my only son and daughter. It begins like this:
Although my father, whose namesake I am, died twenty-seven years ago, I just spent a hilarious and profound afternoon with him. For a few hours on a beautiful late spring afternoon, I sat out on the porch and listened to his inimitable voice beguile, instruct, and entertain me. He had me laughing out loud as I read through a large folder of letters he had sent me over the years. We were together again. It was his voice I heard, his voice speaking to me. It could be no other. In the beginning and end are the words. If we are lucky, we hear them.
I heard my wife scream from the kitchen for me to come fast. I ran to it and there, eight feet from the open window, was a bear facing us and almost swinging from the bird feeder and the branch above, its feet akimbo, an almost mischievous look on its face. It watched us as we watched it for 4-5 minutes.
Then, afraid that it might break the open window that had another bird feeder stuck to it, I cranked the window in, the bear walked over, stood up, looked at us and the feeder that was too high for it, went down on all fours and started walking away as we rushed out to see it walk across the driveway and the neighbor’s lawn. I feebly whistled after it; it stopped, turned and looked back, then continued on its merry way.
My wish had been granted, shortly after the summer solstice, the first day of summer, my wife’s and my anniversary, and Father’s Day. It immediately felt as if my father had sent me a gift. My wife quickly sent the photos of the bear she had taken to our son and daughter.
The night before, as a Father’s Day gift, my son and girlfriend had taken us out to dinner. As we sat at an outdoor courtyard under the trees of an old inn, I was asked to speak of my father. Unusually for me, I was a bit lost for words, except to say he was a wonderful father, the best I could have hoped for and how close we were. At the back of my mind, I saw a photograph I love of him pushing in a stroller the son who sat to my left when he was very young. It was taken on the street outside the inn where we were dining, right behind my back.
Shortly after the bear had come to visit us, still amazed, we went for a long walk, and when we returned, there was a video on the computer from our son to whom I had earlier sent the article about his grandfather. In January, our son had moved back to town with his girlfriend after ten years living down south. They had bought a house about a mile away near the lake and woods where we had just walked.
The same bear had walked through the woods adjacent to our walk, pushed over the fence around their large yard, and was in their yard eyeing their bird feeder. My son couldn’t tell if the bear was whistling because his dogs were barking too loud.
But I heard my father laughing at the message he had sent.
I recalled how his letters that I had just read and written about were like mini-short stories, akin to a father sitting beside a child’s bed and telling him a goodnight tale. They always ended on an up-note, no matter how serious what preceded.
He was a storyteller talking to an adult son, just as in my childhood he would tell me bed-time improvisations on the Pinocchio story, tales of lies and deceptions and bad actors. Those stories had to have an edge to them, a bit of a question mark, just as his letters are peppered with the phrase quien sabe (who knows?).
Those letters came through the mail.
The latest message came by bear. That I know.
Quien sabe? You?


offguardian--2020-06-28--Three New Reads – June

Three New Reads – June

Was Pyongyang ’ s destruction this month of a border town ‘ liaison office ’ – touted as symbol of reconciliation but in reality lacking the truth component – a further manifestation of Kim Jong Un irrationality ?
What game is Washington playing , yet again by proxy , in India ’ s mountainous and disputed border with China ?
And do black lives matter or don ’ t they ?
Here to help us with such questions are my three reads for the month .
Why North Korea blew up the inter-Korean liaison office ( 2200 words ) If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Western media than Bashar al-Assad or Vladimir Putin , it is North Korea ’ s Kim Jong Un .
But those given to scepticism ( an outlook often confused with cynicism in intellectual circles ) have learned the hard way to ask these two questions when a non Western leader is reviled , or held up as with the angels : How objectively sourced is the evidence for such a portrayal ?
Take Saddam .
With hindsight , partial answers to the first question are understood even at The Guardian , which has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facilitate – often as not without expressly advocating – wars it will later distance itself from .
And as if to prove the truth of my aside just now , a belated answer to the cui bono question is also given by the Guardian .
In fact I find that second answer too reductive .
We can add to its thesis , that it was all about oil , Naomi Klein ’ s Shock Doctrine understanding that it was all about privatisation .
( Evidence not then available shows her wrong , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out oil . )
Add too the wider reality , as documented in their very different ways by such as Pepe Escobar and Michael Hudson , that Iraq marks an early round of a war to maintain Western hegemony in the face of Eurasia Rising .
Which brings us back to Kim .
It is understood by most consumers of Western media that North Korea is a hell on earth ( no : seventy years of blockade have nothing to do with this ) run by an insane dynasty .
As I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t like complexity in third world leaders .
Devils or saints , we want easily assimilated morality tales with all the nuance of Enid Blyton creations .
And since it precedes – just !
– the lived experience of baby boomers , Washington ’ s genocidal bombing of NK in the early fifties gets no mention .
Ditto the truth , clear to any twelve year old versed in schoolyard realpolitik – yet somehow beyond the ken of Western intelligentsia – that Pyongyang ’ s nuclear weapons are all that prevent it going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The drivers may not be identical – no oil – but the logic certainly is .
Which is ample introduction to this piece by Stephen Gowans , author of Patriots , Traitors & Empires : The Story of Korea ’ s Struggle for Freedom .
Fittingly , this much shorter piece opens with a quote from Fidel Castro … … and goes on to set the early June context in which : … on account , we all know , of Kim being ‘ odious ’ ( GuardianSpeak ) or ‘ bonkers ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protesters in US by calling their struggle a “ color revolution ” ( 2250 words ) Perhaps because I ’ m a Libran – not that we Librans believe in astrology , mind !
– I find myself at odds with broadly mirror opposite positions on so many big issues .
Take the 2016 US election .
I couldn ’ t stand Trump but saw HRC as equally criminal , equally sociopathic .
Moreover , her plan for Syria – the no fly zones which had reduced Africa ’ s most prosperous state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the quaysides of Tripoli – promised head on confrontation between the world ’ s two leading military powers .
Or take Brexit .
Remainers who took the EU bankers ’ club to be internationalist dismayed me .
But that did not lead me to conclude that a Brexit led by a rival wing of UK rulers , and informed both by atavistic chauvinism and an equally delusional vision , will be just hunky dory .
It won ’ t , and the non dialectical view of many Lexiteers – EU is bad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of timing , context and rationale , be good – seems boneheaded .
Like saying that since capitalism is exploitative , closing for-profit enterprises today so workers can build cooperatives tomorrow , in otherwise unaltered conditions , would be an excellent idea .
Speaking of non dialectical assessments , I have the same problems with both sides of the BLM debate .
To deny that protests taking place in the USA aren ’ t accompanied by criminality ( as are all insurrections ) is naive .
On a different note it is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that tipping statues of slavers into rivers while ( a ) enjoying the fruits of Britain ’ s plundering past and ( b ) remaining oblivious to continuing exploitation of the global south is equally naïve .
But to engage in one-sided denunciations of Black Lives Matter – even to the point of saying the US protests are “ color revolutions ” of the kind which , for reactionary purposes and venal goals , were hijacked and artificially exacerbated in Ukraine and Syria – seems to me equally wide of the mark .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ me that a better approach to broadly progressive but limited and naïve protest movements – from CND to Occupy – is to stand in solidarity with them , while simultaneously advancing more penetrating analyses .
In any case one man better placed than most to draw empirically grounded distinctions , on what is and what is not a Soros instigated “ color revolution ” , is Andre Vltchek , author of this piece .
While the West has been preoccupied with Covid-19 and BLM , the manufacturing of Sinophobia by its media has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disputed Himalayan territory .
This goes back a long way .
In 1962 Chinese troops entered Ladakh ( known to Kipling fans as the arena in which the denouement of his spy yarn , Kim , plays out ) .
Flush with success the previous year in ousting Portugal from Goa – and heedless of how well China ’ s Red Army had squared up to the USA in Korea – India ’ s elite forces were despatched to see off “ the invader ” .
The result was a humiliation for “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As senior generals fell on their swords , Prime Minister Nehru was widely blamed – on the one hand for military unpreparedness , on the other for failing to pursue a peaceful solution prior to China ’ s move .
And still the situation simmers .
But now the context is another cold war fought on one side by proxy .
And Washington is as determined as ever to weaken a rising power destined to become its twenty-first century nemesis .
We should all be paying close attention .
One of last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the context of Syria , a Pepe Escobar piece on this rivalry .
This month Andrew Korybko told of the Himalayan stand-off in terms of PM Modi playing with fire .
Here though the WSWS , like Escobar , offers a more overarching view .
Call me repetitive , but I say we should all be paying close attention .
For the full archive of Three New Reads , click here .

Philip Roddis
Was Pyongyang’s destruction this month of a border town ‘liaison office’ – touted as symbol of reconciliation but in reality lacking the truth component – a further manifestation of Kim Jong Un irrationality? What game is Washington playing, yet again by proxy, in India’s mountainous and disputed border with China? And do black lives matter or don’t they?
Here to help us with such questions are my three reads for the month.
*
If any current leader is more vilified by Western media than Bashar al-Assad or Vladimir Putin, it is North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. But those given to scepticism (an outlook often confused with cynicism in intellectual circles) have learned the hard way to ask these two questions when a non Western leader is reviled, or held up as with the angels:
How objectively sourced is the evidence for such a portrayal?
Cui bono?
Take Saddam. With hindsight, partial answers to the first question are understood even at The Guardian, which has form on whipping up moral outrage to facilitate – often as not without expressly advocating – wars it will later distance itself from. And as if to prove the truth of my aside just now, a belated answer to the cui bono question is also given by the Guardian.
In fact I find that second answer too reductive. We can add to its thesis, that it was all about oil, Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine understanding that it was all about privatisation. (Evidence not then available shows her wrong, in an otherwise exemplary assessment, to rule out oil.) Add too the wider reality, as documented in their very different ways by such as Pepe Escobar and Michael Hudson, that Iraq marks an early round of a war to maintain Western hegemony in the face of Eurasia Rising.
Which brings us back to Kim. It is understood by most consumers of Western media that North Korea is a hell on earth (no: seventy years of blockade have nothing to do with this) run by an insane dynasty. As I’ve noted before, we don’t like complexity in third world leaders. Devils or saints, we want easily assimilated morality tales with all the nuance of Enid Blyton creations.
And since it precedes – just! – the lived experience of baby boomers, Washington’s genocidal bombing of NK in the early fifties gets no mention. Ditto the truth, clear to any twelve year old versed in schoolyard realpolitik – yet somehow beyond the ken of Western intelligentsia – that Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons are all that prevent it going the way of Baghdad and Tripoli. The drivers may not be identical – no oil – but the logic certainly is.
Which is ample introduction to this piece by Stephen Gowans, author of Patriots, Traitors & Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom. Fittingly, this much shorter piece opens with a quote from Fidel Castro …
But peace cannot be hoped for on the basis of some making concessions and the others making none. Peace based on the demands of the other side is not peace, it is ignominious surrender, and no revolutionary country sells itself or surrenders.
… and goes on to set the early June context in which:
North Korea recently blew up the “inter-Korean liaison office in the border town of Kaesong,” an act Western media saw as “provocative”. Located in North Korea, it opened “following a 2018 inter-Korean pledge to tone down military hostilities and bring peace to the Korean Peninsula.” Now banner and building are gone. Hopes for peace between the two Koreas have, according to Western accounts, dissolved in a puff of North Korean smoke …
… on account, we all know, of Kim being ‘odious’ (GuardianSpeak) or ‘bonkers’ (MailSpeak) …
*
Perhaps because I’m a Libran – not that we Librans believe in astrology, mind! – I find myself at odds with broadly mirror opposite positions on so many big issues. Take the 2016 US election. I couldn’t stand Trump but saw HRC as equally criminal, equally sociopathic. Moreover, her plan for Syria – the no fly zones which had reduced Africa’s most prosperous state to chaos, terror and slave auctions on the quaysides of Tripoli – promised head on confrontation between the world’s two leading military powers.
Or take Brexit. Remainers who took the EU bankers’ club to be internationalist dismayed me. But that did not lead me to conclude that a Brexit led by a rival wing of UK rulers, and informed both by atavistic chauvinism and an equally delusional vision, will be just hunky dory. It won’t, and the non dialectical view of many Lexiteers – EU is bad, ergo leaving it must, regardless of timing, context and rationale, be good – seems boneheaded. Like saying that since capitalism is exploitative, closing for-profit enterprises today so workers can build cooperatives tomorrow, in otherwise unaltered conditions, would be an excellent idea.
Speaking of non dialectical assessments, I have the same problems with both sides of the BLM debate. To deny that protests taking place in the USA aren’t accompanied by criminality (as are all insurrections) is naive. On a different note it is a duty of international socialists to point out that tipping statues of slavers into rivers while (a) enjoying the fruits of Britain’s plundering past and (b) remaining oblivious to continuing exploitation of the global south is equally naïve.
But to engage in one-sided denunciations of Black Lives Matter – even to the point of saying the US protests are “color revolutions” of the kind which, for reactionary purposes and venal goals, were hijacked and artificially exacerbated in Ukraine and Syria – seems to me equally wide of the mark.
You may or may not agree with me that a better approach to broadly progressive but limited and naïve protest movements – from CND to Occupy – is to stand in solidarity with them, while simultaneously advancing more penetrating analyses. In any case one man better placed than most to draw empirically grounded distinctions, on what is and what is not a Soros instigated “color revolution”, is Andre Vltchek, author of this piece.
*
While the West has been preoccupied with Covid-19 and BLM, the manufacturing of Sinophobia by its media has continued apace. One current hotspot being disputed Himalayan territory.
This goes back a long way. In 1962 Chinese troops entered Ladakh (known to Kipling fans as the arena in which the denouement of his spy yarn, Kim, plays out). Flush with success the previous year in ousting Portugal from Goa – and heedless of how well China’s Red Army had squared up to the USA in Korea – India’s elite forces were despatched to see off “the invader”. The result was a humiliation for “the world’s largest democracy”. As senior generals fell on their swords, Prime Minister Nehru was widely blamed – on the one hand for military unpreparedness, on the other for failing to pursue a peaceful solution prior to China’s move.
And still the situation simmers. But now the context is another cold war fought on one side by proxy. And Washington is as determined as ever to weaken a rising power destined to become its twenty-first century nemesis. We should all be paying close attention.
One of last month’s reads quoted, in the context of Syria, a Pepe Escobar piece on this rivalry. This month Andrew Korybko told of the Himalayan stand-off in terms of PM Modi playing with fire. Here though the WSWS, like Escobar, offers a more overarching view. Call me repetitive, but I say we should all be paying close attention.
For the full archive of Three New Reads, click here.


offguardian--2020-07-01--Julian Assange Faces Second Superseding Indictment

The Kafkaesque Imperium has taken yet another absurd step towards mean absurdity with another superseding indictment against Julian Assange .
This move by the US Department of Justice seems to have surprised those involved in his extradition proceedings .
Mark Summers QC , one of the members of the Assange legal team , did not conceal his astonishment at the call over hearing at London ’ s Westminster Magistrates ’ Court .
What is baffling about this latest act of brutish pantomime is that the spruced up indictment does not contain new charges so much as added flesh .
WikiLeaks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this fact with consternation .
We already know the sinister import of the charges , the lion ’ s share of 17 focused on alleged violations of the US Espionage Act , and one of conspiring to commit computer intrusion .
US prosecutors evidently felt that the latter charge required bulking .
On June 24 , the DOJ ’ s Office of Public Affairs made mention of a federal grand jury ’ s return of “ a second superseding indictment [ … ] charging Julian P. Assange , the founder of WikiLeaks , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.
” No additional counts are added , but the new document is not immaterial in what it builds upon .
It seeks to draw out the character of Assange as the enterprising “ hacker ” who also sought to recruit his fellow kind , a move that transparently seeks to undermine any journalistic or publisher credentials .
It also casts a wider net against WikiLeaks , its associates and those who gave it a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of alleged nefarious acts ( no longer restricted to March 2010 , it targets alleged activities between 2009 and 2015 ) .
The document makes mention , for instance , of Sarah Harrison , former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg , and digital activist Jacob Appelbaum .
It also hones in on Assange on the conference circuit , noting how he , along with “ a WikiLeaks associate ” , participated at the “ Hacking at Random ” conference in the Netherlands .
Assange “ sought to recruit those who had or could obtain authorized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ search for , steal , and send to WikiLeaks the items on the ‘ Most Wanted Leaks ’ list that was posted on WikiLeaks ’ s website.
” Assange is described as encourager and provocateur , suggesting to potential recruits that , “ unless they were ‘ a serving member of the United States military , ’ they would have no legal liability for stealing classified information and giving it to WikiLeaks because ‘ TOP SECRET ’ meant nothing as a matter of law.
” This indictment does little to improve on previous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the indispensable Shadowproof , the DOJ draws heavily on statements from FBI informants , namely Sigurdur “ Siggi ” Thordarson and Hector Xavier Monsegur ( “ Sabu ” ) of the LulzSec hacker group .
Thordarson was fired from WikiLeaks in November 2011 after his embezzlement ventures amounting to $ 50,000 were discovered .
The Bureau ’ s pieces of silver for Thordarson ’ s services amounted to $ 5,000 .
Monsegur ’ s part in the whole business was , according to activist Jeremy Hammond and key figure in the hacking of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ WikiLeaks in a cash-for-leaks scheme .
It was also Monsegur who gave the hacker collective AntiSec access to the company ’ s information trove .
Hammond was duly entrapped in transferring , without his knowledge , confidential data to an FBI server .
Monsegur ’ s rather smelly pride of place in the indictment is that of allegedly fielding requests from Assange “ to look for ( and provide to WikiLeaks ) mail and documents , databases and pdfs.
” Another protagonist also makes an appearance in the prosecutorial show .
“ To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ materials to WikiLeaks in the future , Assange and others at WikiLeaks openly displayed their attempts to assist [ Edward ] Snowden in evading arrest.
” Harrison , tagged “ WLA-4 ” , is noted as assisting Snowden make his exit from Hong Kong to Moscow in 2013 .
The assistance provided by WikiLeaks is deemed conspiratorial ; vocalised support for Snowden given by Assange at the Chaos Computer Club conference on December 31 , 2013 , is trotted as an example of incitement to theft .
Gosztola notes the purposeful mutilations by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regarding radical transparency .
Assange , for instance , is noted as claiming : The actual quote is more qualified in its philosophical belligerence , emphasising such liberated knowledge as “ a disciplining force ” and “ constructive constraint ” upon “ those with extraordinary power and information ” while also being “ used to construct and understand the new world that we ’ re entering into.
” Assange ’ s stance on information , and his encouragement to the young to rush into the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency , is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , encouraging the theft of classified information and the ruination of secrecy .
A better reading of this , urges Gosztola , is to see this as a call “ to young people to help the public address a crisis of corruption in government by forcing transparency at a time when the government abuses the classified information system to conceal waste , fraud , abuse , and other illegal actions.
” The new indictment has made something of a mockery of the London extradition proceedings .
Judge Vanessa Baraitser conceded to being informed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but still awaits its official receipt .
Prosecution barrister Joel Smith merely remarked that both parties were still pouring over its contents and implications .
“ If we need to involve the court … then we will inform the court at the appropriate time.
” Summers was less sanguine , suggesting that the expansive larding of the new indictment would affect future management hearings .
“ This shows , ” stated Hrafnsson , “ how they are abusing due process in the UK and flaunting the legal system ’ s rules.
” During @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her merry self , suggesting that Assange had no good reason to avoid attending the call-over session .
According to word from Belmarsh prison officials , he was refusing to attend for fear of contracting COVID-19 , which was no reason at all .
Medical evidence had to be supplied for any absence at the next call-over session on July 27 .
Another entry into the book of travesty that is this entire affair has been made .
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College , Cambridge .
He lectures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : [ email protected ]

Binoy kampmark
The Kafkaesque Imperium has taken yet another absurd step towards mean absurdity with another superseding indictment against Julian Assange. This move by the US Department of Justice seems to have surprised those involved in his extradition proceedings.
Mark Summers QC, one of the members of the Assange legal team, did not conceal his astonishment at the call over hearing at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
We are surprised by the timing of this development. We were surprised to hear about it in the press.”
What is baffling about this latest act of brutish pantomime is that the spruced up indictment does not contain new charges so much as added flesh. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson could only remark upon this fact with consternation. We already know the sinister import of the charges, the lion’s share of 17 focused on alleged violations of the US Espionage Act, and one of conspiring to commit computer intrusion.
US prosecutors evidently felt that the latter charge required bulking.
On June 24, the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs made mention of a federal grand jury’s return of “a second superseding indictment […] charging Julian P. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, with offenses that relate to Assange’s alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.” No additional counts are added, but the new document is not immaterial in what it builds upon.
It seeks to draw out the character of Assange as the enterprising “hacker” who also sought to recruit his fellow kind, a move that transparently seeks to undermine any journalistic or publisher credentials. It also casts a wider net against WikiLeaks, its associates and those who gave it a lending hand, while expanding the timeline of alleged nefarious acts (no longer restricted to March 2010, it targets alleged activities between 2009 and 2015).
According to the charging document, Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks.”
The document makes mention, for instance, of Sarah Harrison, former spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and digital activist Jacob Appelbaum. It also hones in on Assange on the conference circuit, noting how he, along with “a WikiLeaks associate”, participated at the “Hacking at Random” conference in the Netherlands. Assange “sought to recruit those who had or could obtain authorized access to classified information and hackers to search for, steal, and send to WikiLeaks the items on the ‘Most Wanted Leaks’ list that was posted on WikiLeaks’s website.”
Assange is described as encourager and provocateur, suggesting to potential recruits that, “unless they were ‘a serving member of the United States military,’ they would have no legal liability for stealing classified information and giving it to WikiLeaks because ‘TOP SECRET’ meant nothing as a matter of law.”
This indictment does little to improve on previous defects.
As Kevin Gosztola writes in the indispensable Shadowproof, the DOJ draws heavily on statements from FBI informants, namely Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson and Hector Xavier Monsegur (“Sabu”) of the LulzSec hacker group. Thordarson was fired from WikiLeaks in November 2011 after his embezzlement ventures amounting to $50,000 were discovered.
According to WikiLeaks,
In light of the relentless ongoing prosecution of US authorities against WikiLeaks, it is not surprising that the FBI would try to abuse this troubled young man and involve him in some manner in the attempt to prosecute WikiLeaks staff.”
The Bureau’s pieces of silver for Thordarson’s services amounted to $5,000.
Monsegur’s part in the whole business was, according to activist Jeremy Hammond and key figure in the hacking of the intelligence firm Stratfor, to entrap WikiLeaks in a cash-for-leaks scheme. It was also Monsegur who gave the hacker collective AntiSec access to the company’s information trove. Hammond was duly entrapped in transferring, without his knowledge, confidential data to an FBI server.
Monsegur’s rather smelly pride of place in the indictment is that of allegedly fielding requests from Assange “to look for (and provide to WikiLeaks) mail and documents, databases and pdfs.”
Another protagonist also makes an appearance in the prosecutorial show. “To encourage leakers and hackers to provide stolen materials to WikiLeaks in the future, Assange and others at WikiLeaks openly displayed their attempts to assist [Edward] Snowden in evading arrest.”
Harrison, tagged “WLA-4”, is noted as assisting Snowden make his exit from Hong Kong to Moscow in 2013. The assistance provided by WikiLeaks is deemed conspiratorial; vocalised support for Snowden given by Assange at the Chaos Computer Club conference on December 31, 2013, is trotted as an example of incitement to theft.
Gosztola notes the purposeful mutilations by the prosecutors regarding statements made by Assange regarding radical transparency. Assange, for instance, is noted as claiming:
that ‘the famous leaks that WikiLeaks has done or the recent Edward Snowden revelations’ showed that ‘it was possible now for even a single system administrator to…not merely wreck[] or disabl[e] [organizations]…but rather shift[] information from an information apartheid system…into the knowledge commons.”
The actual quote is more qualified in its philosophical belligerence, emphasising such liberated knowledge as “a disciplining force” and “constructive constraint” upon “those with extraordinary power and information” while also being “used to construct and understand the new world that we’re entering into.”
Assange’s stance on information, and his encouragement to the young to rush into the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency, is taken as an exhortation of bad faith, encouraging the theft of classified information and the ruination of secrecy.
A better reading of this, urges Gosztola, is to see this as a call “to young people to help the public address a crisis of corruption in government by forcing transparency at a time when the government abuses the classified information system to conceal waste, fraud, abuse, and other illegal actions.”
The new indictment has made something of a mockery of the London extradition proceedings.
Judge Vanessa Baraitser conceded to being informed of the superseding document by email, but still awaits its official receipt. Prosecution barrister Joel Smith merely remarked that both parties were still pouring over its contents and implications. “If we need to involve the court … then we will inform the court at the appropriate time.”
Summers was less sanguine, suggesting that the expansive larding of the new indictment would affect future management hearings. “This shows,” stated Hrafnsson, “how they are abusing due process in the UK and flaunting the legal system’s rules.”
During the hearing, Judge Baraitser was again her merry self, suggesting that Assange had no good reason to avoid attending the call-over session. According to word from Belmarsh prison officials, he was refusing to attend for fear of contracting COVID-19, which was no reason at all. Medical evidence had to be supplied for any absence at the next call-over session on July 27. Another entry into the book of travesty that is this entire affair has been made.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]