On the Road to Serfdom ?

It’s Official: Your DNA is Weaponized

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A House Intelligence Committee member warns Americans against using DNA testing kits

Biosamples gathered by various DNA testing services could be sold and used to develop bioweapons specifically tailored to target certain groups or even individuals, US lawmakers have claimed at the Aspen Security Forum – echoing concerns long voiced by Russian officials.

“There are now weapons under development, and developed, that are designed to target specific people,” US Representative Jason Crow (D-Colorado), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in Colorado on Friday. “That’s what this is, where you can actually take someone’s DNA, take their medical profile, and you can target a biological weapon that will kill that person or take them off the battlefield or make them inoperable.”

Given that threat, Crow added, it’s troubling that expectations of privacy for personal data have diminished over the past 20 years, to the point that young people have “very little expectation of privacy” and readily give their data to private companies, such as DNA testing services.

“People will very rapidly spit into a cup and send it to 23andMe and get really interesting data about their background,” Crow said. “And guess what? Their DNA is now owned by a private company. It can be sold off with very little intellectual property protection or privacy protection.”

He added that the US will need to create new guidelines for protection of personal health data, including DNA, “because that data is actually going to be procured and collected by our adversaries for the development of these systems.”

Moscow has been warning about the dangers of uncontrolled gathering of DNA samples for years, with President Vladimir Putin stating back in 2017 that according to Russian intelligence services, biological samples were being harvested “purposefully and professionally” all over Russia by various NGOs and other organizations for unclear purposes.

Over the past years, the Pentagon has “significantly expanded its research potential not only in the field of creating biological weapons, but also obtaining information about antibiotic resistance and the presence of antibodies to certain diseases in populations of specific regions,” Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force, claimed in May.

In a series of briefings starting in March, the Russian military has been presenting evidence of the Pentagon’s alleged involvement in funding biolaboratories in Ukraine. According to Russia’s Investigative Committee, the US poured more than $224 million into biological research in Ukraine between 2005 and early 2022.

While Washington admitted its support of 46 biological research facilities in Ukraine over the past 20 years, it insists it was all part of a peaceful public health project. The US military accused Russia and China of “spreading disinformation and sowing mistrust” about its efforts to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction – while Western media dismissed the claims as a conspiracy theories and science fiction.

Concerns over customized bioweapons extend beyond human DNA data, according to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities and Armed Services Committee, who spoke on a panel with Crow. America’s adversaries can also direct bioweapons specifically at US livestock and crops to create a food security crisis, she claimed.

“There’s a number of ways we can look at biological weapons and the need to make sure not only are we securing human beings, but then also the food that will sustain us,” Ernst added.

A report issued earlier this year by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission suggested that China could someday attempt to wage biological warfare against genetically modified American crops, given its increased “interest in US agriculture” and GMO-related intellectual property.

“While China’s main interest in obtaining GM seeds from the United States is in improving its crop yields, the potential weaponization of agricultural IP is possible,” it said. “Similar to hacking a computer code, Beijing could easily hack the code or DNA of US GM seeds and conduct biowarfare by creating some type of blight that could destroy US crops.”

Eastern Europe Awakening

Serbian Interior Minister A. Vulin: Foreign Spies Forced Me Into Taking Anti-Russia Stance

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A major foreign intelligence service has been pressing Serbian Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin over his attitude towards Russia and China, the official revealed on Saturday. The minister expects a large media campaign against him to kick off next week.

“One of the largest intelligence services in the world, if not the largest, told me that my stance was unacceptable and that if I do not change [it] and do not abandon the policy that I am pursuing … then I will not be a member of the government and they will do absolutely everything to smear me,” Vulin told media outlet Pink.

A media campaign against him is expected to begin next week, Vulin claimed. Despite the pressure, the minister said he refused to cooperate in any way with the foreign spies. “I haven’t worked and won’t work for anyone except for the Serbian people, the Serbian state, and I won’t be completely loyal to anyone, except for the president of all Serbs, Aleksandar Vucic,” the minister said.

The condition was that I start working for this foreign intelligence service. I will not, even at the cost of my own life.

The minister also urged the country’s president to keep Serbia neutral, as well as to maintain good relations with Russia and China, regardless of external pressure.

Top Serbian officials have repeatedly said the country faced mounting foreign pressure amid the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Belgrade, however, has refused to join any anti-Russian sanctions or other hostile acts by the collective West, maintaining that Serbia will continue pursuing its own interests, while keeping its long-standing ties with Moscow.

Vulin has taken a particularly strong position amid the ongoing crisis. Early in July, the minister said the US and the EU have been openly pressing Serbia into becoming “a NATO foot soldier” in order to become “someone who wants to engage in a conflict with Russia.”

“We are very clear: We will not engage in a conflict with Russia, we will not engage in other people’s wars, we will not be someone else’s foot soldiers,” he declared back then.

Military Affairs

On Persian Military Strategy

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by Alexander Kharchenko

Since we are talking about the Iranian military-industrial complex, I will share my observations. For 5 years in Syria, I worked side by side with the Iranians and saw their Wunderwaffe on the battlefield.

At first it seemed strange to me that the Iranians make low-quality copies of AKs, crooked gun barrels and terrible tank shells from which the crew is dying. At the same time, they had good thermal imagers, ATGMs, and their attack UAVs chopped up ISIS in thin slices in the long ago 2017. Let’s figure out this paradox.

It is useless to compare the Russian military-industrial complex with the Iranian one. We have different philosophies. We wanted to fight head on with NATO, while the Iranians were preparing Afghanistan for the Americans to the tenth degree. The Persians* realize that in open combat against the NATO armada they have no chance. Therefore, their military strategy requires those types of weapons that the Russian army has not paid attention to for decades.

Based on the Afghan experience, the Persians realized that the defeat of the armed forces did not at all mean defeat in the war. The Iranians learned to conduct professional guerrilla warfare. In Syria, Yemen and Iraq, they honed their skills in building “territorial defense”. Highly motivated and poorly trained natives of one village, under the guidance of an Iranian mentor, became a formidable force capable of resisting both ISIS and Hadi forces.

The Iranians were preparing to burn American convoys from ambush, so they produced tens of thousands of large-caliber sniper rifles, ATGMs and thermal imagers. In addition, they mastered the production of cheap but effective UAVs for strikes against American bases. Reconnaissance of American positions requires thousands of UAVs with good cameras, and they were able to arrange their production because it was critical to their safety. At that time, we were building rockets capable of circumnavigating the globe.

While we were modernizing the nuclear triad, the Persians, with the help of a powerful ideology and competent actions of the special services, turned their nation into a weapon of a new kind. You can still defeat an army, but you can never defeat a whole nation. And from the Persians, we can learn not only the experience of building UAVs.

(c) Alexander Kharchenko

@OpenUkraine 🇮🇷 Leading pro-Russian Ukrainian channel on Iranian military industrial complex and warfare:

*Most people are not aware that Persians make up only ~55% of Iran’s population and when one wants to show respect one calls all of them “Persians” – ZradaXXII.

Capitalism in Decay

“If fascism ever comes to America . . .”

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“If fascism ever comes to America, it will come under the name of liberalism” – Ronald Reagan

Cold War

Why the “worst people in America” are for an Endless War with Russia? Tucker on 🇺🇦 Ukraine and 🐻 Putin

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Western Hegemony's Collapse

Putin Predicts “Revolutionary” Changes in the World

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Speaking at a business forum, Putin said that “truly revolutionary,” “enormous” changes would lead to the creation of a new, “harmonious, fairer and more community-focused and safe” world order. In this new epoch, “only truly sovereign states can ensure high growth dynamics,” he said.

By the term ‘sovereignty’ the Russian president means “freedom of national development, and thus of each person individually,” as well as “technological, cultural, intellectual, educational viability of the state” and a “responsible, active and nationally minded, nationally oriented civil society.”

Such a state, the president said, will serve as an example for others when it comes to “the standards and quality of people’s life, the protection of traditional values and high humanistic ideals.”

This kind of world is in sharp contrast to the Western-dominated unipolar world order, which, in Putin’s words, is “becoming a brake on the development of our civilization.”

He accused the West of being “racist and neo-colonial,” saying that its ideology “is becoming increasingly more like totalitarianism.”

The president argued that despite attempts by Western elites to preserve the existing world order, the changes are “irreversible.”

Putin has been discussing the end of the “unipolar” world for a long time. In his famous 2007 Munich Security Conference speech, the Russian president said that “the unipolar world that had been proposed after the Cold War did not take place.” He explained that a world of “one master, one sovereign” is destructive not only for everyone within the system but also for the sovereign itself. He accused the US of neglecting the “basic principles of international law” and stressed that “unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions” had never solved any problems.

In May, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed hope that his country’s military offensive in Ukraine, when completed, would force the Western nations “to stop promoting the so-called unipolar world under the dominance of the United States and its allies.”

Western Hegemony's Collapse

The Chinese Foreign Ministry Called for an International Investigation of War Crimes by the UK and the US

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🇨🇳🇺🇸🇬🇧The Chinese Foreign Ministry called for an international investigation of war crimes by the UK and the US

Anglozionism

Would-Be British PM Rishi Sunak – WEF Front Man

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BY NATALIE WINTERSRAHEEM J. KASSAM
via The National Pulse

Former British finance minister Rishi Sunak – a frontrunner to become Britain’s next Prime Minister – has family ties to a technology partner of the World Economic Forum that has advocated for a Chinese Communist Party-style economy complete with trackable, digital identities and currency.

Sunak, who topped the second round of voting by Conservative Members of Parliament (MP) in the Tory leadership race on July 15th following Boris Johnson’s resignation, is widely considered the “neoliberal” or “globalist” candidate.

The father of Sunak’s wife Akshata Murthy is the founder of Infosys, an Indian information technology company that provides services to a host of Fortune 500 companies and banks. One of the company’s leading services is Finacle, a digital banking platform. Murthy remains a foreign citizen with “non dom” i.e. non UK tax-paying status despite her husband’s work as Britain’s most senior finance chief, and expectation of becoming Prime Minister.

Infosys is listed as an official partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which has been accused of seeking to develop the technological infrastructure to implement a global “social credit score” system.

Social credit scores have been used by authoritarian regimes to deny rights and restrict the movements of individuals who fail to comply with diktats. For the World Economic Forum, social credit priorities would likely focus on left-wing social issues like climate change, diversity, and equity.

Klaus Schwab’s Candidate.

Far from being a silent partner, InfoSys has earned praise from the WEF, being dubbed a “global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting.”

“With three decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, it steers clients through their digital journey by enabling them with an artificial intelligence-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change…”
– WEF on the Sunak-linked InfoSys

Several Infosys executives have also contributed articles to the WEF website, including the company’s Global Head, President, and Chief Compliance Officer.

Infosys President Mohit Joshi has penned articles for the site in favor of digital banking, which provides the technological framework for the “social credit score” system the WEF has come under scrutiny for attempting to effectuate across the world.

Joshi echoes these sentiments in an article for the WEF from August 2020: “Why it’s time to take central banks’ digital currencies seriously.”

“What is clear is that the crisis of COVID-19 presents many challenges – but also a unique opportunity to rethink how money is managed and used in our society,” he asks.

“There also credible concerns that paper money can transmit the virus,” he claimed before asking:

“Who then can blame the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) when it announced in February that it would be destroying cash collected in high-risk environments, such as public transport, markets or in hospitals?”

“Digital currencies could remove the cumbersome operational and security apparatus which surround conventional forms of money transmission,” continues his article, before claiming “there are political and social benefits as well.”

China’s Candidate.

“The potential for China here is immense. If the e-RMB is adopted broadly as a system to streamline trade and reduce risk, China could become the world’s trade banker, as well as its factory. Yet the bigger goal for China is actually more local, and relates to financial inclusion. Digitising the RMB will grant access to financial services to hundreds of millions of citizens, including some of the most disadvantaged. This benefit is something that can be applied to any country across the world,” continues the article, which also revealed that Infosys is contributing to digitization efforts.

Another op-ed by Joshi – “Digital identity can help advance inclusive financial services” – advocates for granting every person a “unique digital identity” to conduct financial transactions. He points to the Chinese Communist Party as a successful example of this policy:

“The Chinese government in Zhejiang Province has developed an “enterprise digital code” for just this purpose, responding to small and mediums banks (SMBs) with easy-to-access financial resources. MYBank, a subsidiary of Ant Financial, the Chinese Big Tech firm, collaborates with the Chinese government through this scheme to provide cheap loans and other financial products to SMBs.”

He also calls for the creation of a “digital stability board” to regulate all payments.

“This “digital stability board” would give members the platform to share best practices and monitor risks in digital commerce and health care, for instance. With this board in place, data trusts could be built to manage individuals’ and SMBs’ data,” he explains.

Infosys is also a member of the WEF’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI), which includes cross-industry representatives from the world’s largest corporations. The National Pulse recently exposed how the initiative, which purports to fight for transparency in business practices, is the former CEO of Reuters who now serves as a board member at COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer.

Its leaders are also involved with different WEF sub-groups, such as the Global Head of Sustainability and Design Consulting Services Corey Glickman, who is a member of the WEF Pioneer Cities working group.

Sunak himself has a history of being soft on China, telling the Telegraph that he wanted a “complete sea change” in relations with the Chinese Communist Party in favor of increased trade ties and economic collaboration. China, in turn, has endorsed Sunak’s candidacy.

Cultural/Ideological Divide

Americans’ Trust in Media – New Record Low

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One out of six Americans trust the newspapers and just one out of ten trust television, according to a recent Gallup survey. These are the lowest numbers since 1973 and 1993, respectively, representing a drastic drop over the past year. There is also a widening gap in media trust between Democrats and the rest of the country.

Only 16% of respondents said that they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers, the first time this number went below 20% since Gallup began tracking data in 1973, while 43% said they had “very little” trust in the press.

Things looked even worse for television, with only 11% – the lowest percentage on record since 1993 – having a great deal of confidence in TV news, compared to 49% with “very little” trust.

Overall trust in both newspapers and TV news has dropped significantly since 2021, by five percentage points in both cases. While the trend has been uniform across all political persuasions, the poll revealed considerable gaps.

Despite a three-point loss, 35% of Democrats still trusted the newspapers, compared to just 5% of Republicans and 12% of independents. Democrats’ trust in TV news dropped by six percentage points to 20%, while independents slid five points to just 8%. Meanwhile, Republicans actually began trusting TV news slightly more than in 2021, going from 6% to 8%.

The overall decline of trust in the media was part of a trend with most major American institutions, Gallup found.

“Americans are less confident in major US institutions than they were a year ago, with significant declines for 11 of the 16 institutions tested and no improvements for any,” Gallup said, commenting on the result of the survey. It involved 1,015 participants, polled between June 1-20.

Trust in the US Supreme Court slid by 11 points overall, going from 31% to 13% among the Democrats and from 40% to 25% among the independents in the aftermath of controversial rulings on abortion and gun rights, while gaining a mere 3% among the Republicans.

Confidence in the military was down by 10 points among Republicans and up by four points among the Democrats. Americans of all political stripes lost trust in the police, with a pronounced 11-point loss among Republicans.

Losing faith in the White House under President Joe Biden, however, seemed to unify the country. While Republican trust in the presidency was down ten points to just 2%, it collapsed among the independents (from 31% to just 18%) and was in free fall among Biden’s fellow Democrats, going from 69% in 2021 to just 51% today.

Woke Lunacy

Sholz – Germany to Assume the Voice of Europe and Lead the World

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Olaf Scholz, Federal Chancellor of Germany, grandson of Fritz von Scholz, SS Gruppenfuehrer

 If the European Union hopes to compete in global politics, it can no longer afford to allow individual member states to veto the bloc’s actions, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an article published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on Sunday.
Arguing that the bloc should become a geopolitical actor, the German leader highlighted the importance of unity in Europe in light of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. He insisted it was time to put an end to the “selfish blockades” of EU decisions by individual members.
“We simply can no longer afford national vetoes, for example in foreign policy, if we want to continue to be heard in a world of competing great powers,” he wrote.

Under current EU rules, any policy decisions must be approved by all 27 member states. However, after countries like Hungary and Slovakia held up the implementation of the EU’s sixth sanctions package against Russia due to energy concerns, some have called for the bloc’s principle of unanimity to be abandoned.
Last month, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Politico that the union should ditch the unanimity requirement in matters of foreign policy and should move to qualified majority voting. She noted that “the speed at which things happen” was too slow and that it was important for the “European voice” to be heard and seen without one single member being able to block it.
In his article, Scholz also stated that the EU had been weakened by “permanent disunity” and “permanent dissent between member states, ”claiming that unity was Europe’s most important response to the “change of times.”
He suggested that one of the ways unity across the bloc and its allies could be achieved was if Germany “assumes responsibility for Europe and the world in these difficult times.”
Scholz noted that Germany could bring together “East and West, North and South in Europe” since it was located in the middle of the continent and was a country that “lay on both sides of the Iron Curtain.”
The chancellor added that it was important to “close our ranks” in all areas in which Europe has been struggling, such as migration policy, European defense, technological sovereignty, and “democratic resilience.”