Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Environmentalists Converge on New Orleans To Disrupt Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Lease Sale


Hundreds of Gulf Coast residents and environmentalists from across the country protested against a federal lease sale of 44.3 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to the oil and gas industry yesterday in New Orleans.

The group marched from Duncan Plaza to the Mercedes-Benz Superdome — where the sale was held — calling for an end to drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and an immediate hiring of a thousand workers to clean up and repair aging oil infrastructure, including rigs, platforms, pipelines and refineries.

They included Gulf Coast residents and local environmental organizations 350 Louisiana, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Bridge the Gulf and Vanishing Earth. Members of national groups Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Oil Change International, Indigena, Bold Nebraska, Keeper of the Mountains Foundation, the Center for Biological Diversity, Rethink Energy, Tar Sands Blockade and Rainforest Action Network also took part in the protest.

No effort was made to stop the protesters from entering the Superdome or the room where the auction took place. While the protest had been publicized since February on social media, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) seemed caught off guard.
Protesters march to the Superdome in New Orleans. ©2016 Julie Dermansky

Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, leads protesters to the lease sale inside the Superdome. ©2016 Julie Dermansky

The protesters chanted throughout the lease sale, which lasted about an hour and a half. They drowned out the voice ofBOEM Gulf of Mexico Regional Director Michael Celata who was calling out the bids and announcing the lease winners.




VIDEO



“We have being saying ‘Yes’ and going along with drilling in the Gulf far too long,” Cherri Foytlin, a Gulf Coast activist, told DeSmog, “Today I said, ‘No.’”

Security personnel tried to remove Foytlin from a platform at the lease sale. When police officers grabbed her, Foytlin went limp, ending up lying on her back. Rather than drag her away, she was permitted to remain on the platform.

Police try to remove Cherri Foytlin from the protest. © 2016 Julie Dermansky

Cherri Foytlin, after being released by the police, returns to where she was standing before they tried to remove her. ©2016 Julie Dermansky

“They could have arrested me,” Foytlin told DeSmog. “But there were too many of us that they would also have to arrest.”

A representative from BOEM asked Foytlin what the group thought they were going to accomplish since their actions were not going to stop the sale. Foytlin explained she was protecting the planet for the sake of her children.

She asked him to “go back to the President and tell him that this is just the beginning. Our numbers are swelling.”

“If this president really wants to be the guy he said he was going to be after Paris, he needs to be proactive and stop the sale of federal land for drilling right now,” Foytlin told DeSmog.

VIDEO



“This is horrible,” BOEM representative Caryl Fagot said to DeSmog. “What do they think they are doing?”

BOEM representative Caryl Fagot reacts to protesters during the lease sale in the Superdome. ©2016 Julie Dermansky

At a March 17 public hearing on the next round of Gulf of Mexico lease sales slated for 2017, Fagot said nothing would stop the March 23 auction and that the place to voice one’s opinion was at one of the BOEM public hearings beforehand, not at the event itself.

The activists disagreed. “This is beautiful,” Bucket Brigade director Anne Rolfes told DeSmog.

Oil and gas industry representatives at the federal lease sale in the Superdome. ©2016 Julie Dermansky

John Filostrat, a BOEM public affairs officer, makes an effort to control the crowd. ©2016 Julie Dermansky

Rolfes testified at BOEM’s hearing, but still had hoped to stop the lease sales. The hundreds of people willing to disrupt the meeting gave her hope. Two years before, only a couple dozen protesters attended the lease sale.

After the sale, a few of the protesters taunted workers who were taking down BOEM’s displays in the Superdome’s hallway. “You should be ashamed,” one of the activists said to them.

“The sneakers you are wearing are made with oil. Your cell phone too,” a worker countered. The worker conceded safety on the oil rigs isn’t what it should be, but told DeSmog he thought the protesters were ignorant.

Twenty-six offshore energy companies submitted 148 bids on 128 blocks for Central Sale 241. No bids were submitted for Eastern Sale 226, according to BOEM’s press release.  It was the fewest bids submitted at in auction in the last 20 years.



The protesters held a rally outside the Superdome after the sale. Among them was activist Hilton Kelley, the Goldman Environmental Prize winner who has fought to keep pollution at bay in the African-American West Side neighborhood of Port Arthur.

“The people who live on the Gulf Coast have suffered enough because of BP,” he told DeSmog.

“Though we didn’t stop the sale, our voices were heard,” Kelley said, describing the protest as “righteous.”

Protesters pose for a group photo as a helicopter passes over them. ©2016 Julie Dermansky

Lead photo credit: Children take part in a protest against new federal lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. ©2016 Julie Dermansky

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Momentum Builds Against Obama Admin Plans To Auction Oil and Gas Drilling Rights In Gulf of Mexico


Hundreds of Gulf Coast residents are expected to join a coalition of environmental and social justice groups on Wednesday to protest outside the Superdome, where the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) intends to auction off leases for offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Forty-seven organizations sent a letter to President Obama last week calling for him to cancel the planned lease auctions that would release millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling. The sales include 43 million acres set to be auctioned on Wednesday, and another 47 million acres proposed for auction in 2017. 
Only two people spoke at BOEM’s public hearing in New Orleans on March 17 on the bureau's proposed plan to offer 47.41 million acres to the oil and gas industry to lease in the Central Planning Area of the Gulf of Mexico in 2017.

BOEM representative Caryl Fagot told DeSmog after the public hearing:  “This was the place for people to voice their opposition to new leasing, not at the auction itself, when it is too late.”


BOEM makes a presentation at a public hearing in New Orleans. ©2016 Julie Dermansky

Though the Obama Administration recently took the Atlantic Coast out of its 2017-2022 plan for offshore fossil fuel development, it proposed three leases for the Arctic and ten for the Gulf of Mexico.

Fagot pointed out that those who missed the hearings on proposed lease sales in the Gulf to take place in 2017, have until May 2 to send in their comments.

The two speakers who testified were Anne Rolfes, the director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and Monique Verdin, member of the United Houma Nation tribe and a Gulf Coast liaison of the Indigenous Environmental Network. Both called for no new leasing in the Gulf. New drilling puts the region at risk for another oil spill and any oil recovered, when burned off, will contribute to climate change.

Video: Monique Verdin Speaks at BOEM’s Public Hearing in New Orleans.

Rolfes thinks BOEM did a bad job getting the word out about the March 17 meeting because many area residents oppose expansion of offshore drilling operations. She became aware of the hearing only two days prior, after finding a public notice in a local weekly newspaper.

BOEM defended its public hearing notification process, stating it ran ads in local newspapers and posted the information on the bureau’s website. But BOEM representatives admitted its last two hearings were not well attended. There was only one person at one event, and at another, no one showed up at all.


Video: John Filostrat, a BOEM public affairs officer, explains the new agencies created to replace the Minerals Management Service after the BP oil disaster. 

BOEM is one of three agencies created by the Obama Administration to replace the Minerals Management Service, after it was determined the regulatory agency was ill-equipped to prevent or deal with the BP oil disaster. The bureau is responsible for environmental studies and managing new leases on the outer continental shelf.

The other two agencies are the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR). BSEE is responsible for safety and environmental regulations on all offshore energy developments, andONRR collects royalties from oil and gas produced on federal property.

An environmental activist at the March 17 hearing voiced his concern about the BOEM plans to lease in 2017. He said leases are in waters that are double the depth of the waters where the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred, and asked BOEM how the bureau would get a similar incident under control in much deeper waters.

“It would be difficult,“ a BOEM representative conceded.


Vessels at the site where the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, leading to the 2010 BP oil disaster. ©2010 Julie Dermansky

“We take unknown environmental damages into account in our work,” Beth Ord, a biologist with BOEM, told DeSmog. However, despite the incomplete scientific data on the impacts of the BP blowout, it is BOEM’s job to determine the feasibility of new projects in the Gulf, and make sure that if new drilling takes place, it is done safely.

“The Gulf of Mexico has been devastated by negligent oil companies and continues to be plundered for profit,” said Ruth Breech, a senior campaigner at Rainforest Action Network at a press conference before BOEM’s hearing. Breaking up the regulatory agency doesn’t change her stance that the oil should be left in the ground.

Organizers of the upcoming Superdome protest hope they can build on the momentum created by the national Keep It in the Ground movement’s direct actions to block federal auctions of drilling rights on public lands across the country.

“The people in the Gulf Coast are finally waking up to the utter destruction of handing over our Gulf of Mexico to Big Oil. Oil spills, a destroyed coast and seafood in peril is what has come from drilling over the last fifty years,” said Rolfes, who is working with the Rainforest Action Network and other groups to stop the auction on 23 March.

Rolfes acknowledged that many jobs in Louisiana are connected to the oil and gas industry, making her stance a touchy subject in Louisiana. But she believes new job opportunities can be created to restore the coast and build renewable energy sources.

“In a chilling foretelling, BP nicknamed its own Deepwater Horizon oil drilling lease ‘Macondo,’ the cursed town of mirrors in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude, and the story of generations doomed to repeat history,” Janet MacGillivray, Esq., with Indigena, wrote in a press release. MacGillivray’s organization is involved with the programming including seminars and films that is taking place in the days preceding the auction.

Josh Fox, the producer and director of Gasland and Gasland 2, will screen his film How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change, at the Joy Theater on 21 March. All of the events are free and open to the public.

The information presented at BOEM’s public hearing is on the bureau’s website. Public comments on the proposed 2017 leases can be made by email until May 2.

Lead image: Anne Rolfes, the director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Monique Verdin, a Gulf Coast Liaison for Indigenous Environmental Network, and Ruth Breech, a senior campaigner at Rainforest Action Network at a press conference held before BOEM’s public hearing in New Orleans. ©2016 Julie Dermansky

Sunday, January 17, 2016

As Goes Syria, So Goes the World

By Janet C. Phelan
Column: Politics
86434442

The US engagement in the Middle East has an unexplored impetus and if allowed to continue unchecked will have unexpected and world-changing consequences.

The world has become inured to war. Since 2000, the US alone has launched over forty military actions,  ranging from deployment of a few military personnel in East Timor, ostensibly to aid in a government transition, to full blown invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Conflict has also broken out in Yemen, Somalia, Lebanon, Ukraine, Pakistan and Chad, to name just a few locations.

Countries known for a generally tranquil and orderly way of life, such as France and Germany, have experienced bloodshed as a result of armed terrorist attacks within their borders. In the US, a recent killing spree in San Bernardino left 14 dead and 22 seriously injured, and was deemed to be an IS related attack.

It does appear that the US has developed a unique signature in repeated events involving reportedly disgruntled or allegedly mentally ill individuals, who have sprayed schools, malls and hospitals with gunfire in dozens of such incidents.

Another War?—Pass me the sixpack

 Altogether, one might say that the entire world has become a battlefield.

Of necessity, one’s visceral reactions to violent events become tempered through repetition.  Dead bodies and burned out buildings do, over time, lose their shock value. And so the prospect of yet another military invasion—this time of Syria—might be met with a tepid response from a public accustomed to over a decade of war.

In a recent Sputnik interview, Paul Craig Roberts declared that “I don’t think the world will stand for another illegal US invasion so for the US to send another army into Syria would be another illegal invasion and I don’t think that it will likely happen.”


However, Roberts’ perceptions are not supported by a recent CNN survey, which found that a majority of the Americans polled stated that they would now support an invasion of Syria.

“Let’s Roll!”—President George W. Bush, November, 2001

As US aggression in the Middle East moves forward with what some believe to be bewildering relentlessness, we may need to take a harder look at US domestic policies in order to better assess her policies abroad.  Clues to America’s ultimate intentionality lie at home.  Through the lens of a frank assessment of her domestic policies, one may come to an enhanced understanding of America’s aggression in the Middle East.

And through this lens, however darkly the image may appear, we can see how the actions of the US, taken in total, may result in a devastation on American soil that has no rival in recent history.

 What we need to look at are the eugenics programs now operational in the US. These programs are largely given wide berth by the mainstream media and it is only through the diligent efforts of alternative media that many of these programs have come to public attention.

Under the ludicrous misnomer of “adult guardianship,” the elderly and disabled are being stripped of their assets and sent to early graves.

The elderly and disabled—the “useless eaters” of society—have been a continuing focus of all eugenics movements. Under Adolph Hitler’s T-4 program—the first forced euthanasia  program launched by the Nazis—over 200,000 ethnic Germans are thought to have been gassed to death, long before Hitler pounced on the Jews.
Hitler was instructed in many of his ideas about eugenics and the “Master Race” by those in the eugenics movement in the United States. The first US state to introduce a compulsory sterilization bill of those deemed “unfit” was Michigan, in 1897. Other states followed suit, including Pennsylvania, Indiana, Washington and California.  In 1927 the infamous Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell legitimized the forced sterilization of residents at a Virginia home for the mentally retarded. While California was known to have conducted the most sterilizations, North Carolina’s program is thought to have been the “most aggressive” of the 32 states with eugenics programs, giving social workers the power to order sterilizations. The North Carolina program was operational up until the 1970’s.

 People as lab rats

The Tuskegee syphilis experiments, conducted in secret between 1932 and 1972 by the US Public Health Service, studied the progression of untreated syphilis in African American males in Alabama, under the pretext of providing free health care, in a shocking violation of medical ethics.

According to reports, sterilizations are still being performed in California jails.

The actions of such health institutions as Phoenix Children’s Hospital and UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute reveal a continuing focus on genetics and experimentation on the mentally ill.  In Arizona, children suffering from certain genetic illnesses are being forcibly taken from their families and put into experimental drug programs, at least some of which are being sponsored by a research facility known as Translational Genomics Research Institute, also known as TGen.

 PCH has an agreement with TGen to refer children ill with NMD (Neuromuscular disease) into TGen research programs. This reporter has acquired documents from the State of Arizona relevant to TGen grants and proposals.  According to a grant proposal from TGen researcher Dr. Justin Hunter, “Dr. Saunder Bernes, senior pediatric neurologist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital (PCH), has agreed to refer Arizona residents with NMD for these studies (see attached letter of support).” The grant was awarded to Dr. Hunter on October 23, 2014.

Phoenix Children’s Hospital has hotly denied any such agreements with TGen. In an email dated January 8, 2016, Debra Stevens, Director of Marketing and Communications at PCH, wrote the following:  “Dr. Bernes declined the request for an interview and supports our previous statements as follows: We do not have a patient referral contract with TGen.”

In a recent high-profile court case in Arizona, the parental rights of Melissa Diegel were terminated after she began to question PCH’s referral of her two daughters, both diagnosed with a mitochondrial disease, into an experimental drug program sponsored by TGen. In a court case steeped in judicial misconduct and secrecy, Diegel’s right to even see her daughters was first revoked by Judge Kristin Hoffman after Diegel reportedly discovered her children were wasting away in foster care.  According to Diegel, Kayla had lost 16 pounds and Hannah had lost 14 lbs.  Hannah and Kayla are now up for adoption and Judge Hoffman has sealed the court record.

UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital is a high rise modern building gracing several acres in downtown Westwood, a neighborhood featuring sprawling multi-million dollar mansions and toney shopping. Formerly on the grounds of NPI, in the shadows of the towering hospital, was a detached one-story building housing an adult psychiatric unit referred to as “A-South.”  For at least some period of time, A-South curiously only serviced those on public assistance.  The independent structure known as A-South was razed sometime in the last ten years.

The patients on A-South were provided “treatment” which could be considered in violation of the Nuremberg Code, which mandates informed consent. Some A-South patients were given electroshock therapy far in excess of recommended standards. In at least one case, a patient was given a medication which produced seizure-like activity, resulting in numerous falls. Prior to the hospitalization, the patient did not have seizures or falling episodes.

When she requested that the medication be terminated, she was told that it would not be. When she then demanded release from the hospital, she was also refused this. She then informed staff that she had placed a phone call to an attorney. She was discharged within the hour.

UCLA maintains that no such detached unit ever existed.  In response to a public records act request, UCLA manager Robert Baldridge wrote that: 

“A South was the location (A floor, south wing) in the old NPI of one of the inpatient units.” He goes on to write that “A South” is simply a reference to a particular physical location of the hospital….” He denied that research took place on A-South, stating that “it was not a research unit, but a standard clinical unit.”

He has also refused to supply a list of residents who were assigned to A-South, in a violation of the California Public Records Act.

UCLA Senior Media relations officer Enrique Rivero also promotes the myth of “no detached structure” delineated as A-South. In a recent email, Rivero wrote this reporter in response to an email providing proof of the existence of A-South: “The A-south at both of these links are not a separate building, they are sections within the Neuropsychiatric institute within the ucla center for the health sciences. The A is the floor and the south is the part of the building.”

Dr. Michael Gitlin, whose tenure at UCLA exceeds thirty years, remembers A-South well. In an interview this December, Gitlin stated that  A-South was indeed a detached building and was demolished about ten years ago.

More Eugenics Programs

As recently reported in NEO, yet another covert eugenics mechanism has been uncovered, involving “heart attack” drugs, which are masquerading as normal pharmaceuticals. It is believed that these “impostor  pharmaceuticals” are being dispensed to targeted populations in nursing homes and also to unsuspecting political targets

The shift in policy away from President Lyndon Johnson’s vision of “The Great Society,” to a society which uses human beings as lab rats, subjected to non-consensual experimentation and outright murder speaks to the existence of a cemented and pervasive eugenics policy within the US government.

 This shift in policy, coupled with the layers of protective denial, provides a different lens through which to view the US’s aggression in the Middle East. By insistently stirring the cauldron in that region, the US has put Israel at enhanced risk. The Iran deal is exemplary of this endangerment to the Jewish state.

Most Israelis no longer see the US as the great friend of Israel.  Rather, the US is increasingly viewed as a potential Judas. According to John Loftus, former DOJ prosecutor and author of four intelligence histories, the US has always engaged in a policy of duplicity with Israel. The subtitle to his national bestseller, co-authored with Mark Aarons, entitled “The Secret War Against the Jews,” pithily sums up his central thesis: “How Western Intelligence Betrayed the Jewish People.”  

It would only take one missile launched from Syria to decimate the Jewish state.  President Assad has repeatedly threatened that should the US attack Syria, he would retaliate by bombing Israel.

What Assad may not have realized is that this is exactly what the US intends.

As Goes Syria, So Goes the World

As reported in the Washington Post on October 30, 2015, “President Obama is sending a small number of Special Operations troops to Northern Syrian, marking the first full-time deployment of US forces to the chaotic country.”

 In addition, Obama has requested Congressional approval “in case he wants more.”

If Syria (or failing Syria, Iran) should bomb Israel, a chunk of the covert eugenics program launched by America will have come to fruition. The problem will then remain as to how to deal with those in the diaspora, as well as other “genetically undesirables” residing within the US—most likely people of color and indigenous peoples. The US has in place a nearly undetectable delivery system which could eliminate targeted sectors of her population, while leaving non-targets unscathed.

The use of water as a weapon has historical precedent; however, this may be the first time that a nation has deployed such a massive bio/chem weapon against its own citizens.

As a war-jaded US population appears to have given the green light to a US invasion of Syria—a faraway country, inhabited by people who, on the surface at last, are alien to US culture and customs—the lesson of interconnectedness of all living beings must be attended to. If we fail to do so, devastation and death will visit our own shores, in a pre-planned “plague” which will forever change the face of America from one of diversity to one of homogeneity.  Through telecommunications and travel, the world has become quite small. The once interesting hypothetical that what happens in a distant land may have profound reverberations thousands of miles away is no longer theoretical.

These two threads of American aggression—a caboodle of wars in the Middle East coupled with her own eugenics efforts at home—must be recognized for what they really are: a thrust towards world domination coupled with remaking the face of the world population.

Our ability to recognize this dark union may be our strongest and best hope for a future worth inhabiting.

Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook. 

Saturday, December 26, 2015

The Anthrax Files: US Forces Conducted Multiple Secret Anthrax Experiments in South Korea

Column: Society
Region: Eastern Asia
Country: South Korea

By Janet C. Phelan
1439625617_1

The initial admission by the Department of Defense that one sample of  live anthrax was inadvertently sent to  Osan Air Base in South Korea has now been revealed  to be grossly inaccurate.

According to a recent report by a US/South Korea joint working group, a US military defense laboratory at Dugway Proving Grounds mailed anthrax to South Korea at least fifteen times prior to the previously acknowledged March, 2015 delivery. These other anthrax samples were delivered to Yongsan Garrison, in central South Korea, between 2009 and 2014. In addition, a 1-milliliter sample of the Yersinia pestis bacterium (which can cause the bubonic plague) was sent along with the anthrax to Osan.

The United States has denied accusations that it lied in a May press release, which stated that: “The laboratory biological defense training, part of the Joint United States Forces Korea Portal and Integrated Threat Recognition Program at Osan Air Base, has been halted pending further review… This was the first time the training has been conducted.”

In an email reply to the Washington correspondent with Korean publication JoongAng Daily, Pentagon spokesman Bill Urban wrote:  “Following the inadvertent delivery of potentially live Bacillus anthracis, the 51st Fighter Wing at Osan Air Base correctly informed the public in the Osan area that the shipment supported the first Joint U.S. Forces Korea Portal and Integrated Threat Recognition program’s training at that location.”

JoongAng went on to report that  Urban suggested that the press release had been misunderstood and the intended meaning was  that “the first time”  training only referred to the first in Osan, not in all of South Korea.

It has recently come to light that the Pentagon FedExed live anthrax to all fifty states and to nine foreign countries. The Department of Defense has declared that errors in the process of inactivating the anthrax resulted in the inadvertence wherein live anthrax was FedExed to foreign and domestic laboratories. 

The joint working group has refused to discuss the amount of the anthrax samples used in Yongsan, citing “military secrets.” The working group’s conclusions are already under fire, with allegations being mounted that it relied too heavily on input from Washington.

Under current regulations, the US does not need to inform the South Korean government if it sends “inactive” germs. Since the recent crisis involving live anthrax being sent to South Korea and elsewhere, recommendations are being considered to change this practice to include advisories to foreign countries that biological materials are being shipped in, and for what purpose.

The US states that the anthrax sent to Osan was to be used to test protective gear. The US has consistently stated that North Korea maintains an offensive biological weapons program and is manufacturing weaponized anthrax and smallpox, among other agents, at a facility at Pyongyang.

In response, the North Korean government has offered to throw open the doors of the Pyongyang plant and has invited the Americans in to check the facility, which North Korea states is a pesticide manufacturing plant. As reported in The Guardian, a spokesman for the North Korean National Defence Commission said, “Come here right now, with all the 535 members of the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as the imbecile secretaries and deputy secretaries of the government who have made their voices hoarse screaming for new sanctions.”

A report from US Undersecretary of Defense Frank Kendall concerning the DoD review of the laboratory procedures which resulted in the purported failure to inactivate the anthrax has raised further questions. Kendall states that Dugway Proving Grounds has had “a relatively high incidence (20%) of post-inactivation viability tests that showed unsuccessful inactivation, but failed to address all the root causes of this high incidence.” (emphasis added)

Kendall also makes a curious reference to an apparent intent behind the failure to inactivate anthrax at Dugway. He writes: “I agree with the Review  Committee that the combination of unique characteristics  at DPG, to include high volume production, low sampling size, intentionally impure products, and more immediate post-inactivation viability testing are possible contributing factors.” (emphasis added)  The report by Kendall does not elaborate on why “intentionally impure products” might be utilized or manufactured at DPG.

A former member of the military disagrees with the purported “inadvertence” of the live anthrax mailing. Speaking under terms of confidentiality, a source with former military connections had this to say about the US’s biological weapons program:  “…weaponizing bio & chem materials is in full swing at government research labs (Dugway & Tooele being one of the biggest – as I witnessed back in the late 1980’s). The obvious thing is that they could not have shipped out such quantities with the level of relevant ease if they were not in full swing.”

 According to Department of Defense spokesperson, Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway, Major, U.S. Marine Corps, “To date, there have been no joint working groups in addition to the Republic of Korea-United States Biological Defense Cooperation Joint Working Group.”

It would therefore appear that the other eight countries known to have received live anthrax from the US– Japan, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, Norway and Switzerland –did not exhibit extensive concerns about the receipt of the active germ warfare agent.

And really, what’s the problem with a bio-bomb among friends, anyway?

Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.


Story originally posted at the following link:

http://journal-neo.org/2015/12/26/the-anthrax-files-us-forces-conducted-multiple-secret-anthrax-experiments-in-south-korea/