Month: May 2021

After suing AstraZeneca for falling far short of its promise to deliver 300MM doses of its vaccine to the EU by the end of the year (so far, it’s only on track to deliver roughly one-third of that due to manufacturing hiccups and other issues).

The vaccine, which is still in widespread use despite evidence of rare but sometimes deadly cerebral blood clots, was designed by Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical giant with cooperation from Oxford University. The EU took the company to court back in April after the company confirmed that deliveries would likely fall far short of expectations.

The EU’s struggle to compensate for this shortfall has at times led to hostility with its neighbors, including the newly independent UK. The EU’s ruling body, the European Commission, nearly ordered a ban on all exports produced on the continent to claim more supplies for Europeans, but ultimately that plan was quashed.

Still, Brussels wants the company to deliver at least 120M doses by the end of June. AstraZeneca had delivered only 50M doses as of the beginning of May, though it has likely delivered at least a few million more by now. Still, 50MM is only a quarter of the 200MM that were expected to be delivered by now.

A lawyer for the EU told Reuters that the bloc is seeking monetary compensation for each promised dose that wasn’t delivered. The rate proposed by the EU would be roughly €10 ($12) per day of delay per dose, starting July 1. At that rate, the fine would amount to $12M per million vaccines per day, or roughly $2.4 billion per day if the number missing is still 200MM.

Brussels wants the company to deliver at least 120 million vaccines by the end of June. AstraZeneca had delivered 50 million doses by the beginning of May, just a quarter of the 200 million vaccines foreseen in the contract by then.

“AstraZeneca did not even try to respect the contract,” the EU’s lawyer, Rafael Jafferali, told a Brussels court in the first hearing on the substance of the legal case.

He said the EU was seeking 10 euros ($12.2) for each day of delay for each dose as compensation for AstraZeneca’s non-compliance with the contract. This penalty would apply from July 1, 2021, if the judge accepted it.

Jafferali said the EU was seeking an additional penalty of at least 10 million euros for each breach of the contract that the judge may decide.

A lawyer for AZ denounced the accusations as “shocking” and argued that manufacturing vaccines is fraught with complexities that sometimes can’t be anticipated.

“This is not a contract for the delivery of shoes or T-shirts,” AstraZeneca’s lawyer Hakim Boularbah told the court later on Wednesday, stressing the complexity of manufacturing a new vaccine.

The EU accusations were “shocking”, Boularbah said, noting the company had formulated its delivery targets based on early estimates of production capacity. He added that the vaccine was sold at cost.

AstraZeneca has repeatedly said the contract was not binding as it only committed to make “best reasonable efforts” in delivering doses.

Jafferali said that principle had not been respected because the drugmaker had not delivered to the bloc 50 million doses produced in factories that are listed in the contract as suppliers to the EU, including 39 million doses manufactured in Britain, 10 million produced in the United States and 1 million in the Netherlands.

AZ’s factories in Britain, and their refusal to export vaccines, is central to the lawsuit. The company claims that it fulfilled its commitments by alerting the EU to production delays.

AstraZeneca’s lawyer said the British factories were mentioned in the EU contract for information, but there was no commitment to use them. They were expected to produce vaccines solely for Britain until February 2021, when the company expected to deliver 100 million doses to London. It has not yet completed its deliveries to Britain.

Jafferali said AstraZeneca had pledged in the EU contract not to have other engagements that would prevent it from abiding by the terms of the deal.

The lawyer also said AstraZeneca had failed to communicate to the EU in a timely manner the magnitude of its supply problems because it repeatedly sent messages, including publicly, that it was able to meet its targets, before finally admitting there were large shortfalls in March.

The company had warned the EU in December of production problems, but communicated only at the end of January, just before the start of deliveries, a much larger cut than initially expected for the first-quarter.

Boularbah said AstraZeneca had continuously kept the EU informed about its production plans and problems.

A verdict is expected next month.

Authored by Jessica Corbett via Common Dreams,

On the heels of Israel’s recent bombardment of the Gaza Strip, a London-based charity revealed Tuesday that civilians accounted for 91% of people killed or injured when explosive weapons were used in populated areas worldwide from 2011 to 2020.

The new Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) report (pdf) is based on data collected as part of the group’s Explosive Violence Monitoring Project. It emphasizes that the data, taken from English-language media reporting, “is not an attempt to capture every single casualty of every incident around the world.”

However, the report provides insight on the devastating impact of using explosive weapons—including air-dropped bombs, artillery shells, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and mortars—in densely populated areas and demands global commitments to end such violence.

“Since the monitor began, AOAV has recorded the appalling suffering caused across the globe by both manufactured and improvised weapons,” the report says. “We call on states and other users to commit politically to stop using explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas. The harm recorded over the last 10 years and reflected in this report illustrates the stark urgency needed for a political declaration detailing such a commitment.”

AOAV tallied 357,370 deaths or injuries in 28,879 incidents across 123 countries and territories—and at least 262,413 of those casualties or 73% were civilians. Overall, explosive weapons killed 155,118 people—of which 92,588 or 60% were civilians—and injured 202,252 people, of which 169,825 or 84% were civilians.

As the report details:

Civilians were most at risk when explosive weapons were used in populated areas—a well-established pattern of harm.

60% of all recorded incidents took place in populated areas. In those attacks, AOAV recorded 263,798 casualties. Civilians accounted for 91% (238,892) of those killed or injured in populated areas. This compares to 25% of victims being reported as civilians when explosive weapons were used in areas not identified as highly populated areas.

AOAV executive director Iain Overton told The Guardian the report clearly demonstrates that “when explosive weapons are used in towns and cities, civilians will be harmed.” That conclusion, he added, was “as true as it is today in Gaza as it was a decade ago in Iraq and beyond.”

The highest numbers of civilian deaths and injuries were recorded in Syria (77,534), Iraq (56,316), Afghanistan (28,424), Pakistan (20,719), and Yemen (16,645). Though Gaza and Lebanon ranked ninth and 13th in terms of civilian casualties by numbers, they had the highest percentages of deaths and injuries endured by civilians—90% and 91%, respectively.

IEDs were responsible for 52% of all deaths and injuries while manufactured explosive weapons accounted for another 47%. In other events, both types were used.

Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen saw the highest number of civilian deaths and injuries in the last decade with 77,534, 56,316, 28,424, 20,719 and 16,645 civilian casualties respectively. pic.twitter.com/qKaj2iGkHO

— Iain Overton (@iainoverton) May 25, 2021

AOAV points out that the consequences of such incidents are not limited to immediate deaths and injuries, highlighting that “further casualties have been caused by the reverberating impacts.”

“Explosive remnants of war contaminate the land, posing a risk to civilians for generations and frequently preventing local populations from returning or using the land for livelihood activities,” explains the report. “The destruction of civilian infrastructure takes years to repair and can leave civilians without access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities or prevent access to services such as healthcare,” AOAV continues. “Such impacts cost further lives, exacerbate the mental health impact for survivors, and see rises in poverty and disease.”

In an effort to prevent future casualties and damage, Ireland put forth a “Draft Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians From Humanitarian Harm Arising From the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas” (pdf) in January, and has welcomed comments on the proposal.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is among the parties that have offered comments (pdf), stating that “in the ICRC’s view, the revised draft provides a solid basis for further work towards clear and concrete political commitments to strengthen the protection of civilians from harm caused by these weapons,” and detailing some recommendations aimed at “clarifying and strengthening the text.”

The Guardian reports that though the draft “has won the support of Belgium and will be considered at a U.N. meeting in Geneva later this year,” countries including the U.S., U.K., Israel, and France have reservations “while Russia, accused of repeated breaches of humanitarian law during indiscriminate bombing in Syria, has not participated.” According to AOAV’s report, “For civilians living in conflict zones this declaration cannot come soon enough—states and civil society must ensure that stronger standards are not watered-down by states that reject the need for constraint.”

“States should also seek to improve their policies and practices in light of the harm that is predicted when explosive weapons are used in populated areas,” the group adds. “The international community must not only take note of the scale of the figures we have included in this report but be cognizant of the fact that each number represents a life, frequently young, and almost always a civilian.”

Earlier this month, Israel’s assault of Gaza—which included the destruction of medical facilities and apartment buildings, one of which housed international media offices—killed at least 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, and wounded over 1,900 people, according to local health officials. Although Palestinian groups also launched rockets toward Israel, most were stopped by the nation’s air defenses; 13 people have been killed in Israel.

Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

So why are journalists not covering it?

Michael Capuzzo, a New York Times best-selling author , has just published an article titled “The Drug That Cracked Covid”. The 15-page article chronicles the gargantuan struggle being waged by frontline doctors on all continents to get ivermectin approved as a Covid-19 treatment, as well as the tireless efforts by reporters, media outlets and social media companies to thwart them.

Because of ivermectin, Capuzzo says, there are “hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying.” Yet media outlets have done all they can to “debunk” the notion that ivermectin may serve as an effective, easily accessible and affordable treatment for Covid-19. They have parroted the arguments laid out by health regulators around the world that there just isn’t enough evidence to justify its use.

For his part, Capuzzo, as a reporter, “saw with [his] own eyes the other side [of the story]” that has gone unreported, of the many patients in the US whose lives have been saved by ivermectin and of five of the doctors that have led the battle to save lives around the world, Paul Marik, Umberto Meduri, José Iglesias, Pierre Kory and Joe Varon. These are all highly decorated doctors. Through their leadership of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance, they have already enhanced our treatment of Covid-19 by discovering and promoting the use of Corticoid steroids against the virus. But their calls for ivermectin to also be used have met with a wall of resistance from healthcare regulators and a wall of silence from media outlets.

“I really wish the world could see both sides,” Capuzzo laments.

But unfortunately most reporters are not interested in telling the other side of the story. Even if they were, their publishers would probably refuse to publish it.

That may explain why Capuzzo, a six-time Pulitzer-nominated journalist best known for his New York Times-bestselling nonfiction books Close to Shore and Murder Room, ended up publishing his article on ivermectin in Mountain Home, a monthly local magazine for the of the Pennsylvania mountains and New York Finger Lakes region, of which Capuzzo’s wife is the editor.

It’s also the reason why I decided to dedicate today’s post to Capuzzo’s article. Put simply, as many people as possible –particularly journalists — need to read his story.

As Capuzzo himself says, “I don’t know of a bigger story in the world.”

Total News Blackout

On December 8 2020, FLCCC member Dr Pierre Kory gave nine minutes of impassioned testimony to the US Homeland Security Committee Meeting on the potent anti-viral, anti-inflammatory benefits of ivermectin.

A total of 9 million people (myself included) saw the video on YouTube before it was taken down by YouTube’s owner, Google. As Capuzzo exhaustively lays out, both traditional and social media have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep people in the dark about ivermectin. So effective has this been that even in some of the countries that have benefited most from its use (such as Mexico and Argentina) many people are completely unaware of its existence. And this is no surprise given how little information is actually seeping out into the public arena.

A news blackout by the world’s leading media came down on Ivermectin like an iron curtain. Reporters who trumpeted the COVID-19 terror in India and Brazil didn’t report that Ivermectin was crushing the P-1 variant in the Brazilian rain forest and killing COVID-19 and all variants in India. That Ivermectin was saving tens of thousands of lives in South America wasn’t news, but mocking the continent’s peasants for taking horse paste was. Journalists denied the world knowledge of the most effective life-saving therapies in the pandemic, Kory said, especially among the elderly, people of color, and the poor, while wringing their hands at the tragedy of their disparate rates of death.

Three days after Kory’s testimony, an Associated Press “fact-check reporter” interviewed Kory “for twenty minutes in which I recounted all of the existing trials evidence (over fifteen randomized and multiple observational trials) all showing dramatic benefits of Ivermectin,” he said. Then she wrote: “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence Ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.” Like many critics, she didn’t explore the Ivermectin data or evidence in any detail, but merely dismissed its “insufficient evidence,” quoting instead the lack of a recommendation by the NIH or WHO. To describe the real evidence in any detail would put the AP and public health agencies in the difficult position of explaining how the lives of thousands of poor people in developing countries don’t count in these matters.

Not just in media but in social media, Ivermectin has inspired a strange new form of Western and pharmaceutical imperialism. On January 12, 2021, the Brazilian Ministry of Health tweeted to its 1.2 million followers not to wait with COVID-19 until it’s too late but “go to a Health Unit and request early treatment,” only to have Twitter take down the official public health pronouncement of the sovereign fifth largest nation in the world for “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information.” (Early treatment is code for Ivermectin.) On January 31, the Slovak Ministry of Health announced its decision on Facebook to allow use of Ivermectin, causing Facebook to take down that post and removed the entire page it was on, the Ivermectin for MDs Team, with 10,200 members from more than 100 countries.

In Argentina, Professor and doctor Hector Carvallo, whose prophylactic studies are renowned by other researchers, says all his scientific documentation for Ivermectin is quickly scrubbed from the Internet. “I am afraid,” he wrote to Marik and his colleagues, “we have affected the most sensitive organ on humans: the wallet…” As Kory’s testimony was climbing toward nine million views, YouTube, owned by Google, erased his official Senate testimony, saying it endangered the community. Kory’s biggest voice was silenced.

“The Most Powerful Entity on Earth”

Malcom X once called the media “the most powerful entity on the earth.” They have, he said, “the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of masses”. Today, that power is now infused with the power of the world’s biggest tech and social media companies. Together social and traditional media have the power to make a medicine that has saved possibly millions of lives during the current pandemic disappear from the conversation. When it is covered, it’s almost always in a negative light. Some media organizations, including the NY Times, have even prefaced mention of the word “ivermectin” — a medicine that has done so much good over its 40-year lifespan that its creators were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015 — with the word “controversial.”

Undeterred, many front-line doctors have tried to persuade their respective health regulators of the unparalleled efficacy and safety of ivermectin as a covid treatment. They include Dr. Tess Lawrie, a prominent independent medical researcher who, as Capuzzo reports, evaluates the safety and efficacy of drugs for the WHO and the National Health Service to set international clinical practice guidelines:

“[She] read all twenty-seven of the Ivermectin studies Kory cited. The resulting evidence is consistent and unequivocal,” she announced, and sent a rapid meta-analysis, an epidemiolocal statistical multi-study review considered the highest form of medical evidence, to the director of the NHS, members of parliament, and a video to Prime Minister Boris Johnson with “the good news… that we now have solid evidence of an effective treatment for COVID-19…” and Ivermectin should immediately “be adopted globally and systematically for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”

Ignored by British leaders and media, Lawrie convened the day-long streaming BIRD conference—British Ivermectin Recommendation Development—with more than sixty researchers and doctors from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, Belgium, Argentina, South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Australia, and Japan. They evaluated the drug using the full “evidence-to-decision framework” that is “the gold standard tool for developing clinical practice guidelines” used by the WHO, and reached the conclusion that Ivermectin should blanket the world.

“Most of all you can trust me because I am also a medical doctor, first and foremost,” Lawrie told the prime minster, “with a moral duty to help people, to do no harm, and to save lives. Please may we start saving lives now.” She heard nothing back.

Ivermectin’s benefits were also corroborated by Dr. Andrew Hill, a renowned University of Liverpool pharmacologist and independent medical researcher, and the senior World Health Organization/UNITAID investigator of potential treatments for COVID-19. Hill’s team of twenty-three researchers in twenty-three countries had reported that, after nine months of looking for a COVID-19 treatment and finding nothing but failures like Remdesivir— “we kissed a lot of frogs”— Ivermectin was the only thing that worked against COVID-19, and its safety and efficacy were astonishing—“blindingly positive,” Hill said, and “transformative.” Ivermectin, the WHO researcher concluded, reduced COVID-19 mortality by 81 percent.

Why All the Foot Dragging?

Yet most health regulators and governments continue to drag their feet. More evidence is needed, they say. All the while, doctors in most countries around the world have no early outpatient medicines to draw upon in their struggle against the worst pandemic in century. Drawing on his own experience, Capuzzo describes the absence of treatments for COVID-19 as a global crisis: 

When my daughter Grace, a vice president at a New York advertising agency, came down with COVID-19 recently, she was quarantined in a “COVID hotel” in Times Square with homeless people and quarantining travelers. The locks on her room door were removed. Nurses prowled the halls to keep her in her room and wake her up every night to check her vitals—not to treat her, because there is no approved treatment for COVID-19; only, if her oxygen plummeted, to move her to the hospital, where there is only a single eective approved treatment for COVID-19, steroids that may keep the lungs from failing. 

There are three possible explanations for health regulators’ refusal to allow the use of a highly promising, well-tolerated off-label medicine such as ivermectin:

• As a generic, ivermectin is cheap and widely available, which means there would be a lot less money to be made by Big Pharma if it became the go-to early-stage treatment against covid.

• Other pharmaceutical companies are developing their own novel treatments for Covid-19 which would have to compete directly with ivermectin. They include ivermectin’s original manufacturer, Merck, which has an antiviral compound, molnupiravir, in Phase 3 clinical trials for COVID-19. That might explain the company’s recent statement claiming that there is “no scientific basis whatsoever for a potential therapeutic effect of ivermectin against COVID-19. 

• If approved as a covid-19 treatment, ivermectin could even threaten the emergency use authorisation granted to covid-19 vaccines. One of the basic conditions for the emergency use authorisation granted to the vaccines currently being used against covid is that there are no alternative treatments available for the disease. As such, if ivermectin or some other promising medicine such as fluvoxamine were approved as an effective early treatment for Covid-19, the vaccines could be stripped of authorisation.

This may explain why affordable, readily available and minimally toxic drugs are not repurposed for use against Covid despite the growing mountains of evidence supporting their efficacy. 

Ivermectin has already been approved as a covid-19 treatment in more than 20 countries. They include Mexico where the mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Scheinbaum, recently said that the medicine had reduced hospitalisations by as much as 76%. As of last week, 135,000 of the city’s residents had been treated with the medicine. The government of India — the world’s second most populous country and one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of medicines — has also recommended the use of ivermectin as an early outpatient treatment against covid-19, in direct contravention of WHO’s own advice.

Dr Vikas P. Sukhatme, the dean of Emory School of Medicine, recently wrote in a column for the Times of India that deploying drugs such as ivermectin and fluvoxamine in India is likely to “rapidly reduce the number of COVID-19 patients, reduce the number requiring hospitalization, supplemental oxygen and intensive care and improve outcomes in hospitalized patients.” 

Four weeks after the government included ivermectin and budesonide among its early treatment guidelines, the country has recorded its lowest case count in 40 days.

In many of India’s regions the case numbers are plunging in almost vertical fashion. In the capital Delhi, as in Mexico City, hospitalisations have plummeted. In the space of 10 days ICU occupancy fell from 99% to 70%. Deaths are also falling. The test positivity ratio slumped from 35% to 5% in just one month.

One of the outliers of this trend is the state of Tamil Nadu, where cases are still rising steeply. This may have something to do with the fact that the state’s newly elected governor, MK Stalin, decided to exclude ivermectin from the region’s treatment protocol in favor of Remdesivir. The result? Soaring cases. Late last week, Stalin reversed course once again and readopted ivermectin. 

For the moment deaths in India remain extremely high. And there are concerns that the numbers are being under-reported. Yet they may also begin to fall in the coming days. In all of the countries that have used ivermectin widely, fatalities are the last thing to fall, after case numbers and hospitalizations. Of course, there’s no way of definitively proving that these rapid falloffs are due to the use of ivermectin. Correlation, even as consistent as this, is not causation. Other factors such as strict lockdowns and travel restrictions no doubt also play a part.

But a clear pattern across nations and territories has formed that strongly supports ivermectin’s purported efficacy. And that efficacy has been amply demonstrated in three meta-analyses.

India’s decision to adopt ivermectin, including as a prophylaxis in some states, is already a potential game-changer. As I wrote three weeks ago, if case numbers, hospitalizations and fatalities fall in India as precipitously as they have in other countries that have adopted ivermectin, it could even become a watershed moment. But for that to happen, the news must reach enough eyes and ears. And for that to happen, reporters must, as Capuzzo says, begin to do their job and report both sides of this vital story.

Belarus’ long time leader Alexander Lukashenko has spoken out on Wednesday over the Ryanair diverted flight saga, pushing back against widespread accusations coming from the former Soviet satellite country’s opposition but especially Western leaders that his security services engaged in “state hijacking” of the airliner carrying activist and blogger Roman Protasevich. Promises of EU and US additional sanctions were swift after Protasevich and his girlfriend were detained on charges of inciting riots and publishing the personal information of police and officers of the state online. State airline Belavia is also facing an airspace ban over Europe and carriers out of the EU are avoiding flying over Belarus. 

Instead of concealing the ordeal or downplaying the detention which has attracted international media scrutiny and outrage, Lukashenko has gone on the offense, lashing out at his critics while justifying the detention of Protasevich, calling him an “extremist” who was ultimately taking cues from a foreign entity in his activism and journalism, or even “inciting riots” – as he’s being charged with. “One extremist with his female accomplice. So let his numerous Western patrons answer this question: Which intelligence services did this individual work for?” Lukashenko said as quoted by the Belarus Segodnya newspaper.

“Not only him but his accomplice as well. These Western advocates should answer one more question: who paid him for taking part in the war in Donbass?” Belarus’ president added, “Perhaps, they fear this the most. So they’re making a fuss. His experience as a mercenary is huge.“

It’s long been reported and a subject of controversy in Belarusian and Eastern European media that Pratasevich was indeed in war-torn Donbas in Ukraine at the height of fighting there in 2015. And BBC among others is now acknowledging:

“Mr Protasevich confirmed in an interview last year that he had spent a year in the conflict-hit Donbas region and was wounded, but said he was covering the conflict as a journalist and photographer.” 

He was “embedded” with the far-right and neo-Nazi linked Azov Battalion while they fought fierce battles against pro-Russia separatists. However, BBC notes that Protasevich has insisted he was only there as a journalist: “A former commander of the Azov unit has backed Mr Protasevich’s version of events, confirming that he spent time with them as a journalist and was wounded,” the report says.

Anglo-American journalists working the Russia beat doing a bang-up job maintaining disciplined silence over Protasevich’s Nazi ties. You only need state censorship if journalists won’t self-censor, which ours do as a motor reflex. https://t.co/7eeKhYTSTx

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) May 26, 2021

Minsk is now accusing the young detained activist of essentially being a mercenary and “terrorist” who’s long plotted the overthrow of the legitimate government. Lukashenko added in his Wednesday comments:

“These facts are well-known not only here, but in brotherly Russia, and also throughout the world. And he did not hide this. Well, here, in Belarus, he and his accomplices also plotted a massacre and a bloody coup,” Lukashenko said further.

Photographs of Protasevich’s time in Eastern Ukraine increasingly point to him having been more than a mere journalist in the conflict…

A much clearer picture of #Protasevich at the Azov parade in Mariupol in 2015. The account is a bot but here’s the original from Azov Vkontaktehttps://t.co/6Y1w5lXqoW

— Volodymyr Ishchenko (@Volod_Ishchenko) May 26, 2021

The Belarusian president stressed and claimed further that “there was a terrorist on that plane.”

Instead of skirting the issue, Lukashenko owned up directly to authorizing Protasevich being removed from the plane along with his girlfriend:

“According to the law, this person had been put on a terrorist list, and his organization is recognized as an extremist one. Who does not know this? And that we detained him, a Belarusian national, and his partner who holds our residence permit at the airport, this is our sovereign right to do so,” he said.

However, the president stated the Ryanair flight was not initially diverted because of efforts to apprehend Protasevich, but because there was a bomb threat. The West has accused the bomb threat of being a ruse orchestrated to force the plane’s emergency diversion and landing.

“As we predicted, ill-wishers from outside and inside the country have changed their ways of attacking our country,” Lukashenko said, according to state media. “They crossed many red lines, crossed the boundaries of common sense and human morality.”

Authored by Steve Miller via RealClearInvestigations (emphasis ours),

In the months leading up to November’s election, voting officials in major cities and counties worked with a progressive group funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and its allies to create ballots, strategically target voters and develop “cure” letters in situations where mail-in ballots were in danger of being tossed out.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL, provided millions of dollars in private funding for the elections that came from a $350 million donation from Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.  The CTCL gave “COVID-19 response” grants of varying amounts to  2,500 municipalities in 49 states.

In exchange for the money, elections divisions agreed to conduct their elections according to conditions set out by the CTCL, which is led by former members of the New Organizing Institute, a training center for progressive groups and Democratic campaigns.

A CTCL partner, the Center for Civic Design, helped design absentee ballot forms and instructions, crafted voter registration letters for felons and tested automatic voter registration systems in several states, working alongside progressive activist groups in Michigan and directly with elections offices in Georgia and Utah.

Still other groups with a progressive leaning, including the Main Street Alliance, The Elections Group and the National Vote at Home Institute, provided support for some elections offices.

Facebook, with the CTCL, was also part of the effort, providing a guide and webinar for election officials on how to engage voters. Included were directions to report “voter interference” to Facebook authorities. The company also provided designated employees in six regions of the U.S. to handle questions. Together, the groups strategically targeted voters and waged a voter assistance campaign aimed at low-income and minority residents who typically shun election participation, helping Democratic candidates win key spots all over the U.S.

The little-explored roles of CTCL and other such groups emerged in emails and other records obtained by RealClearInvestigations and public documents secured by conservative litigants and groups, including the Foundation for Government Accountability, which has filed more than 800 public records requests with elections offices accepting the grants.

Previously, the Zuckerberg-funded effort has been described in generally positive terms, notably when NPR reported in December on “How Private Money From Facebook’s CEO Saved The 2020 Election” — in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump’s doubts about the legitimacy of the process and “Congress’ neglect.”

‘Curing Absentee Ballots’

According to court documents filed by the Thomas More Society, a conservative law firm, the Zuckerberg-funded CTCL allowed elections departments to use grant money to buy vehicles to transport “voter navigators.”  The group filed unsuccessful lawsuits in several states before the election, contending the private funding created unconstitutional public-private partnerships. Several other suits remain active.

The election department in Green Bay, Wis., promised as part of its CTCL grant of $1 million that it would employ the vote navigators to “assist voters, potentially at their front doors, to answer questions … and witnessing absentee ballot signatures,” according to documents filed in legal complaints in Wisconsin by Erick Kaardal, a Minneapolis-based lawyer who has worked on the Thomas More Society lawsuits.

Caleb Jeffreys, one of at least two voter navigators in Green Bay, described his duties as including “curing absentee ballots.” Jeffreys, now a city employee in Green Bay according to his LinkedIn profile, did not respond to an interview request.

Even as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has moved to roll back some of the COVID-19-inspired restrictions to allow Canadians to enjoy their all-too-brief summer, the latest reports suggest that the US-Canada border – the world’s longest undefended frontier – will remain closed until at least September. And even once it does reopen, most Canadians appear to support requirements for proof of vaccination before any unvaccinated American heathens are allowed to enter Canada.

According to Bloomberg, roughly half of the respondents to a recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute said that the border should remain shut until September, and more than three quarters of respondents said they would support a vaccine passport.

Source: Bloomberg

The border with the US has been closed for more than a year, but now that Canada is accelerating its vaccination program, Trudeau is facing growing pressure from business groups (not to mention the opposition Conservatives) to come up with a concrete reopening plan. And as Trudeau mulls whether to trigger an early election in an attempt to win back his parliamentary majority, the politics of the border reopening are suddenly critical.

More than half of Canadian adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and the country’s three largest provinces – Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia – have announced phased reopening plans.

During a recent press briefing, Trudeau stressed that Canada still has a long way to go toward reopening.

“There are lots of reasons to be hopeful but that doesn’t mean we can let our guard down yet,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa.

“Ultimately, the freedoms of a ‘one-dose summer’ may prove inadequate to a pandemic fatigued country, and that may well extend to border reopening timelines as well,” Kurl said. “The next month will be telling.”

Last week, Trudeau’s government announced another month-long extension of border restrictions until June 21. According to the poll, there isn’t much support for an immediate reopening after a recent flareup in cases last month. But as case numbers continue to slow, and vaccination tallies rise, public opinion might shift sooner than the PM expects – especially as Canadians are forced to watch as their American peers return to a state of near-normalcy, which is already happening across all 50 states.

New Zealand officials have of late looked at their much larger Aussie neighbor and expressed concern that the island could soon find itself in the middle of a similar trade war with China and generally a target of Beijing’s wrath. New Zealand is after all part of the 70-year old “Five Eyes” intelligence grouping of English-speaking nations that includes the US, UK, Australia and Canada – all of which have been increasingly vocal against China’s human rights abuses and coercive trade and spy measures abroad.  Wellington is under growing pressure from its bigger, influential allies to get more vocal. 

In April New Zealand’s foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, sought to distance her country from the “pressure” and controversy as they spotlighted human rights abuses connected with the Uyghur Muslim population as well as Hong Kong, and other anti-democracy malfeasance, calling such criticisms “uncomfortable”. But despite the conciliatory attempts to stay somewhat “neutral” on the China criticism and growing antagonism, Mahuta is now warning the tiny nation could soon find itself in the center of a “storm” of anger from China in “only a matter of time”.

She’s now openly pushing for greater diversity of exports before that day comes after witnessing the Australia example and the devastation wrought by a trade war with its single biggest export destination – vocalizing something which itself is sure to gain Beijing’s scrutiny. 

“We cannot ignore, obviously, what’s happening in Australia with their relationship with China. And if they are close to an eye of the storm or in the eye of the storm, we’ve got to legitimately ask ourselves – it may only be a matter of time before the storm gets closer to us,” she said in a Guardian interview this week.

“The signal I’m sending to exporters is that they need to think about diversification in this context – Covid-19, broadening relationships across our region, and the buffering aspects of if something significant happened with China,” she said, and posed further, “Would they be able to withstand the impact?” 

An estimated 30% of all New Zealand’s exports now goes to China (accounting for over $33 billion), a clearly massive enough chunk for Beijing to unleash real damage if it wanted to, after a past decade of steady reliance on China as NZ’s “big buyer”, stemming back to the New Zealand–China Free Trade Agreement signed in 2008.

For now it appears Beijing is desirous of keeping things in accord with FM Mahuta’s April assessment of wanting to stay away from hurling “uncomfortable” accusations, or staying far away from “distractions”. 

In reaction to Mahuta’s Monday published interview statements, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, expressed hope that the two countries can work in “the same direction, make the pie of cooperation bigger, rise above external distractions.” The Chinese statements were made Wednesday.

The Chinese statement laid out that progress in relations can only be achieved “on the premise that the two sides have long been committed to mutual respect, mutual trust and win-win results” – ultimately toward a “comprehensive strategic partnership”.

Of course Beijing has alternately lately voiced that it’s precisely “mutual respect and trust” that is fundamentally lacking in the current state of deteriorated relations with Washington.

Torrential rains, howling winds, and tidal surges from Cyclone Yaas wreak havoc in eastern India as the virus-stricken country experiences its second cyclone in less than two weeks, according to Bloomberg. 

More than two million people were evacuated from the eastern states of Odisha and West Bengal as Yaas made landfall Wednesday morning, destroying homes, farms and affecting ten million people. 

NEW: Cyclone Yaas made landfall in Northeast India. It brought with it hurricane-force winds, heavy rain, and storm surge several feet high. Here’s a look at flooded streets. #KOMONews pic.twitter.com/dOzgtNHsXW

— Holly Menino (@hollymenino) May 26, 2021

West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said Yaas had destroyed more than 300,000 homes in the state, adding that crops have been swamped, livestock farms have been devastated, and river embankments have been breached. He said around 1.5 million were evacuated ahead of landfall. In neighboring Odisha, more than 500,000 people were evacuated. 

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) continues to define Yaas as a “very severe cyclonic storm.” 

VERY SEVERE CYCLONIC STORM YAAS CENTRED ABOUT 50 KM SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF BALASORE.LANDFALL PROCESS HAS COMMENCED AROUND 0900 HRS IST. pic.twitter.com/esPuoaECL0

— India Meteorological Department (@Indiametdept) May 26, 2021

“Landfall process of Cyclone Yaas is complete. Between 1030 am (05:00 GMT) to 11.30 am (06:00 GMT), it crossed 20km (12 miles) south from the Balasore coast,” IMD director-general Mrutyunjay Mohapatra told Al Jazeera.

“The cyclone is now moving towards Mayurbhanj district and Jharkhand (state),” he said.

This is the second storm in ten days to batter India. Last week, cyclone Tauktae, categorized as “extremely severe,” barreled through the country’s western coast and sank a drilling rig, killing dozens. 

The twin disasters come as India is battling the second wave of COVID-19, increasing pressure on hospitals and medical workers. 

“This cyclone spells double trouble for millions of people in India as there is no respite from COVID-19,” said Udaya Regmi, the South Asia head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Hazra said it would be near impossible to maintain social distancing in the emergency shelters.

… and it’s a good thing India is preparing to unleash another stimulus package as the latest surge in infections and cyclones could hamper the nation’s economic recovery.