TBR News July 8, 2017

Jul 08 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., July 8, 2017:” It has been said that no general staff ever developed a new weapon that they did not fully intend to use. Although Hitler was strongly opposed to the use of poison gas, having been a victim of it in the 1914 war, German scientists developed terrible nerve gasses during the Second World War that were never used, but were certainly loaded into standard artillery shells for possible use. After the war, these shells were dumped into the Baltic Sea and it is only a matter of time before the metal casings corrode sufficiently to permit an enormous amount of lethal gas to escape, wreaking havoc on the Baltic states and parts of Poland.

Bacteriological warfare has been practiced in the past as witness the comments about infecting Indians with smallpox, and no doubt it will be practiced in the future. But Müller’s comments about the inability to control its spread should constitute the greatest reason for not utilizing it. Information has emerged in the 90s that during the Cold War, US military agencies have experimented to one degree or another with such substances, using their civilian population as guinea pigs. A number of outbreaks of diseases such as Legionnaire’s Disease and AIDS have been suggested by reputable epidemiologists as highly suspect in origin but as official governmental agencies strongly deny these allegations, such suggestions must be entirely discounted.

The case of Generalarzt Walter Paul Schreiber emphasizes the US government’s interest in the development of bacteriological agents for field use. The official German records show that Professor Dr. habil Walter Schreiber was born in Berlin on March 21, 1893. He served in various posts in the German Army including Chief of the Department for Science and Health at the Medical Corps, Headquarters of the German Army. Prior to 1939, Schreiber had visited the United States to study U.S. Military medical techniques in February and March of 1927. During the war, he had problems with the Gestapo because he raised objections to the development of and experimentation on Soviet prisoners of war with various bacteriological agents. Schreiber was eventually warned against further protests and returned to his duties. He was a specialist in communicable diseases and authored a work in 1944 on the plague in south-east Russia. Schreiber was the senior medical officer of Berlin, captured by the Russians, and worked with them until 1948 when he escaped to the West.

After extensive debriefing, Schreiber, his wife and son were brought to the United States under the CIA’s “Operation Paperclip” on September 8, 1951, and he was attached to the USAF School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, San Antonio, Texas. When Schreiber’s wartime activities were discovered by the media, he had to leave the United States.”

Table of Contents

  • Trump and Putin find chemistry, draw criticism in first meeting
  • Trump: Meeting with Putin was ‘tremendous’
  • Macron to Putin: ‘We can move to new phase in Russia-France relations’
  • Battle for Mosul: IS defeat imminent, says state TV
  • Erdogn says Turkey will respond to any threats on its border
  • As Trump and Putin meet, US and Russia agree ceasefire for southwest Syria
  • The Biometric Frontier
  • Stolen Gold and Coming Revolution
  • Black Friday: Hamburg’s G-20 Security Failure
  • Untreatable gonorrhea ‘superbug’ spreading around world, WHO warns

Trump and Putin find chemistry, draw criticism in first meeting

July 8, 2017

by Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason

Reuters

HAMBURG-In a meeting that ran longer than either side had planned, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin discussed alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election on Friday but agreed to focus on better ties rather than litigating the past.

Trump, a Republican who called it an “honor” to meet with the Russian president, drew swift criticism from Democrats at home, who accused him of dismissing U.S. intelligence and giving Putin’s denial, reiterated on Friday, of Russian interference too much weight.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters at a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 major economies in Hamburg that Trump had “positive chemistry” with Putin during the meeting, which lasted some two hours and 15 minutes.

He opened their discussion by pressing Putin about “the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election” and had a robust exchange, Tillerson said.

The Russian president has denied any meddling in the U.S. democratic process last year and Moscow has asked for proof that it took place. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Trump accepted Putin’s assertions that the allegations, backed by U.S. intelligence agencies, were false.

Tillerson said they both sought to move on.

“The presidents rightly focused on how do we move forward from what may be simply an intractable disagreement at this point,” Tillerson said.

That explanation did not sit well with Democrats.

“Working to compromise the integrity of our election process cannot and should not be an area where ‘agree to disagree’ is an acceptable conclusion,” said U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in a statement.

On Thursday in Poland Trump gave lukewarm support to the view that Moscow interfered in the 2016 U.S. political process.

Trump promised a rapprochement with Moscow during his campaign but has been unable to deliver because his administration has been dogged by investigations into the allegations of Russian interference in the election and ties with his campaign.

Trump says his team did not collude with Russia.

Tillerson said they agreed to work on commitments of “non-interference in the affairs of the United States and our democratic process as well as those in other countries.”

Andrew Weiss, a former National Security Council official responsible for Russia, said Trump had sent the wrong signal with upbeat body language and by not pushing Putin harder on alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.

“The atmospherics were chummy,” said Weiss, who is now at Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington. “The clear push from Trump to normalize U.S.-Russian relations was on display in the meeting.”

“GOING VERY WELL”

The two leaders spent a lot of time discussing Syria, and after their meeting an agreement between the United States, Russia and Jordan on a ceasefire in southwestern Syria was announced.

The face-to-face encounter was one of the most eagerly anticipated meetings between two leaders in years.

Trump and Putin spoke through translators with their respective foreign ministers present for six minutes before reporters were allowed into the room for their statements. Afterwards the reporters were ushered out and the meeting continued.

“President Putin and I have been discussing various things, and I think it’s going very well,” Trump told reporters, sitting alongside the Russian leader.

“We’ve had some very, very good talks. … We look forward to a lot of very positive things happening for Russia, for the United States and for everybody concerned. And it’s an honor to be with you.”

Putin, through a translator, said: “We spoke over the phone with you several times,” adding: “A phone conversation is never enough.”

“I am delighted to be able to meet you personally, Mr. President,” he said, noting that he hoped the meeting would yield results.

Both men sat with legs splayed. Trump listened intently as Putin spoke.

The encounter went longer than expected, and first lady Melania Trump came in at one point to urge them to conclude, Tillerson said. The two men later joined other G20 leaders at a concert. Mrs. Trump sat next to Putin at dinner.

Before the get-together, some feared the U.S. president, a political novice whose team is still developing its Russia policy, would be less prepared for the talks than Putin, a former KGB agent who has dealt with previous U.S. presidents and scor

Amid criticism of Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Syria and the investigations into its role in the U.S. campaign, Trump has come under growing pressure to take a hard line against the Kremlin.

On Thursday, Trump delivered some of his sharpest remarks about Moscow since becoming president, urging Russia to stop its “destabilizing activities” and end its support for Syria and Iran.

But Trump stopped short on Thursday of any personal criticism of Putin and declined to say definitively whether he believed U.S. intelligence officials’ assertion that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

“I think it was Russia but I think it was probably other people and/or countries, and I see nothing wrong with that statement. Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure,” Trump said on a visit to Poland.

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Arshad Mohammed in Washington and Andrea Shalal and Denis Dyomkin in Hamburg; Writing by Jeff Mason and Noah Barkin; Editing by James Dalgleish)

 Trump: Meeting with Putin was ‘tremendous’

July 8, 2017

RT

US President Donald Trump said that his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday was “tremendous.” The first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders lasted for more than two hours on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg.

“I had a tremendous meeting yesterday with President Putin,” Trump said while speaking with UK Prime Minister Theresa May on Saturday.

Putin and Trump met for more than two hours, instead of the planned 30-40 minutes. The leaders had “positive chemistry” and “connected quickly,” US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said after the meeting on Friday.

The US and Russian leaders were joined at the meeting by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The leaders discussed many topics, including Ukraine, Syria, and cybersecurity and fighting terrorism, according to Putin, who spoke at a news conference later.

After the meeting, US and Russian officials announced a ceasefire agreement in southwestern Syria, set to take effect on July 9. The ceasefire applies to the southern Daraa, Quneitra, and As-Suwayda provinces.

“In this zone, the ceasefire regime will take effect on July 9 starting 12:00 Damascus time,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the meeting between Trump and Putin.

The presidents also agreed to create a bilateral channel to promote a settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, Lavrov said, adding that the Ukrainian crisis was discussed “in a concrete, businesslike” manner.

Macron to Putin: ‘We can move to new phase in Russia-France relations’

July 8, 2017

RT

Russia and France can now move to a new phase in bilateral relations, French President Emmanuel Macron told his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

“On the subject of bilateral and regional issues, I welcome the quality and the intensity of the work that has been established since [meeting in Versailles in May],” Macron told Putin.

So I think now we can move on to a new phase because we both saw that we were doing what we were saying,” Macron concluded.Putin said that Russia continues to implement all the Versailles agreements concerning bilateral relations between Moscow and Paris.

“We are moving towards all directions which we discussed in Versailles,” he said.

Putin and Macron vowed to improve relations and jointly address international problems during their first official meeting in Versailles in May.

The French president admitted at the time, however, that he had “some disagreements” with his Russian counterpart, but said that the two leaders discussed them openly in a “frank exchange of views.”

According to Macron, serious international problems cannot be resolved without Moscow. France is interested in intensifying cooperation with Russia, particularly in resolving the Syrian crisis, he said, adding that this issue demands “an inclusive political solution.”

President Putin welcomed Macron’s statement, saying that Moscow and Paris are determined to cooperate in resolving the crises in Syria, Ukraine and the Korean Peninsula, as well as to fight terrorism together.

Battle for Mosul: IS defeat imminent, says state TV

July 8, 2017

BBC News

So-called Islamic State (IS) defences in the Iraqi city of Mosul are collapsing fast and troops expect to take full control in the next few hours, state television has announced.

Only a few metres remain to be taken, a correspondent said.

Some Iraqi security forces have been seen dancing in the streets even though commanders have nor confirmed the news.

Iraqi forces, backed by US-led air strikes, have tried to retake the key city since 17 October last year.

Thousands of Iraqi security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Sunni Arab tribesmen and Shia militiamen, supported by US-led coalition warplanes and military advisers, have been involved in the battle to retake Mosul.

The government announced the full “liberation” of eastern Mosul in January, but the west of the city has presented a more difficult challenge, with its narrow, winding streets.

The UN has warned that IS may be holding more than 100,000 people in the city as human shields.

Last October, the Iraqi army said there were 6,000 militants in the city. Fewer than 300 were thought to be holding out.

Some 900,000 people have been displaced from the city since 2014 – about half the the pre-war population- aid organisations say.

Last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the destruction of the ancient mosque in the city of Mosul was “an official declaration of defeat” by IS.

Iraqi forces say IS blew up the Great Mosque of al-Nuri and its famous leaning minaret as jihadists battled to stop advancing pro-government troops.

 

Erdogan says Turkey will respond to any threats on its border

  • Syrian rebels said on Friday they were preparing to join the Turkish military in a major new offensive against Kurdish forces in northwestern Syria, raising the prospect of yet another front in an increasingly complex conflict.
  • Turkish officials have not commented on any military preparations in northern Syria. Turkish troops launched an incursion across the border last August in support of Syrian rebel fighters, targeting both Islamic State and the YPG.

July 8, 2017

by Dominic Evans

Reuters

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Turkey would not watch passively as weapons are sent to Kurdish fighters on its southern border, saying his country would respond to any threats to national security.

The United States has been arming Kurdish YPG fighters taking part in the battle to recapture the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State, angering its NATO ally Turkey. Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdish PKK group that has waged a long insurgency in southeast Turkey.

Turkey, Washington and the European Union have all designated the PKK as a terrorist organization.

“We will definitely not remain silent and unresponsive to the support and arming of terror organizations next to our borders and the forming of terror islands in the region,” Hurriyet Daily News website quoted Erdogan as saying.

“We will not hesitate to use our right to self defense against formations threatening the security of our country,” Erdogan told a news conference at the G20 summit in Hamburg, according to the web site.

Erdogan expressed Turkey’s alarm at the U.S. decision to arm the YPG at a White House meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in May. The two men also met at the G20 summit.

Syrian rebels said on Friday they were preparing to join the Turkish military in a major new offensive against Kurdish forces in northwestern Syria, raising the prospect of yet another front in an increasingly complex conflict.

Turkish officials have not commented on any military preparations in northern Syria. Turkish troops launched an incursion across the border last August in support of Syrian rebel fighters, targeting both Islamic State and the YPG.

( Editing by Helen Popper)

 

As Trump and Putin meet, US and Russia agree ceasefire for southwest Syria

The US and Russia have agreed to a ceasefire for parts of Syria on the sidelines of the G20 summit. Jordan confirmed it was party to the accord due to begin at the weekend.

July 7, 2017

by Bernd Riegert

DW

It was only planned for a half-hour, but it lasted for more than two as US President Donald Trump met with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Hamburg Friday evening.

“President Putin and I have been discussing various things, and I think it’s going very well,” Trump told reporters, sitting alongside the Russian leader. “We’ve had some very, very good talks… We look forward to a lot of very positive things happening for Russia, for the United States and for everybody concerned. And it’s an honor to be with you,” he said in reference to the Russian president.

“I am delighted to be able to meet you personally, Mr President,” Putin said.

The main result of their discussions was the confirmation of an agreement on a ceasefire in southwestern Syria, which was to start at noon Damascus time (0900 UTC) on Sunday. It is the first US-Russian effort under the Trump presidency to curtail even part of Syria’s six-year civil war. The Jordanian government is also reported to be involved in the accord.

“Today in Amman, Russian, American and Jordanian experts … agreed on a memorandum of understanding to create a de-escalation zone” in the regions of Daraa, Quneitra and Sweida, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday. “There will be a ceasefire in this zone from midday Damascus time on July 9.”

Lavrov was among those sitting in on the talks between Trump and Putin in Hamburg. He said the ceasefire would be supervised by Russian military police “in coordination with the Jordanians and Americans.”

US confirms collaboration

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed the agreement and said it showed that Washington and Moscow were able to work together. “Let me characterize: The meeting was very constructive; the two leaders, I would say, connected very quickly,” said Tillerson, adding: “There was a very clear positive chemistry between the two.”

“We had a very lengthy discussion regarding other areas in Syria that we can continue to work together on to de-escalate the areas and the violence, once we defeat ISIS,” he said using an acronym for the “Islamic State” group.

Tillerson said the area covered by the ceasefire affected Jordan’s security and was a “very complicated part of the Syrian battlefield.”

Tillerson hinted at other issues raised, including alleged Russian meddling in last year’s US elections. He said the discussions had begun with Putin being pressed about “the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election,” which Putin again denied.

“The presidents rightly focused on how do we move forward from what may be simply an intractable disagreement at this point,” Tillerson said.

Jordan in the tripartite agreement

Jordan confirmed it was party to the “tripartite agreement” with Russia and the United States. Government spokesman Mohammed Momani said: “A ceasefire will take place along a line of contact agreed upon between the Syrian government forces and associated troops on one side and rebels on the other.”

“The three nations voiced their commitment to working on a political solution” based on UN-backed talks in Geneva and UN Security Council Resolution 2254, Mohammed Momani was quoted as saying by the official Petra news agency.

Delaying Beethoven in Hamburg

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who hosted the G20 members for an evening dinner and concert, praised the meeting between Trump and Putin.

“We are very pleased that they are meeting each other,” Merkel said as she and other G20 participants waited at the city’s Elbphilharmonie concert hall to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which includes the “Ode to Joy” theme adopted by the European Union as its anthem.

Putin arrived in the concert hall, which was under strong police protection, 10 minutes later than planned, while Trump and his wife, Melania, were the last to arrive, nearly an hour after the first guests were about to take their seats. The concert started 35 minutes later than scheduled.

Others attending were Canada’s President Justin Trudeau with his wife, Sophie Gregoire, French President Emmanuel Macron with his wife, Brigitte, Argentinian President Mauricio Macri with his wife, Juliana, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Junker, President of the European Council Donald Tusk, and the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde. Notable by his absence was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Across the river, protesters danced in the streets as they played rock music very loudly in a bid to disrupt the evening.

On Saturday, the G20 summit continues with efforts to forge a consensus on trade and climate change. Deals were being drafted overnight in the hope of finding agreements which were hard to find on the first day of the summit. “The sherpas have a lot of work ahead of them tonight,” Merkel said, referring to the trade dossier. “I hope they can bring us a good result tonight. But here the discussions are very difficult; I don’t want to talk around that.”

Protests in the city

Outside the heavily guarded conference hall and summit venues, protesters had been voicing their opposition to the summit all day.

Cars were set on fire and shop windows smashed as protesters moved sometimes violently from one part of the city to another. Police called in reinforcements from other German states.

Merkel said she could understand peaceful protest, but demonstrations which “put people’s lives in danger, put the protesters own lives in danger, … are unacceptable.”

Police said 196 officers had been injured, 83 demonstrators temporarily detained and another 19 taken into custody as protests continued into the night. Police worked into the night dismantling burning barricades. They described the situation as “very serious.”  Protesters torched cars and trucks, smashed windows of banks, looted retail stores, and hurled paving slabs and other objects, before police managed to restore order.

The most dramatic event overnight was the police pursuit of members of the radical Black Bloc movement across scaffolding as barricades below threw out thick smoke.

Police appealed to media and private individuals not to film or distribute images of the police operations, because they could endanger their officers. “It is an appeal and has nothing to do with censorship,” Hamburg police said via Twitter just after midnight.

A peaceful majority

A police spokesman said only small numbers of far-left or anarchist protesters were involved in the disturbances, while the majority of an estimated 100,000 demonstrators in the city remained peaceful. There was condemnation from protest organizers of the violence and looting of shops – including a local pharmacy which has provided apprenticeships for refugees.

Hamburg’s fire department said Friday that ambulances had transported 60 civilians to the city’s hospitals, including 11 people who were severely injured when they fell off a wall after fleeing from riot police.

G20 participants praised the work of the police, but some said they had never seen protesters so close to such a summit before.

The Biometric Frontier

“Show Me Your Papers” Becomes “Open Your Eyes” as Border Sheriffs Expand Iris Surveillance

July 8, 2017

by George Joseph

The Intercept

Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has found little funding for his “big, beautiful wall.” In the meantime, however, another acquisition promised to deter unauthorized immigrants is coming to the border: iris recognition devices. Thirty-one sheriffs, representing every county along the U.S.-Mexico border, voted unanimously on April 3 to adopt tools that will capture, catalogue, and compare individuals’ iris data, for use both in jails and out on patrol. Biometric Intelligence and Identification Technologies, the company behind the push, has offered the sheriffs a free three-year trial, citing law enforcement’s difficulties in identifying unauthorized immigrants whose fingerprints can be disfigured through manual labor or self-inflicted wounds.

Iris recognition is just the latest surveillance technology helping fortify what the White House hopes will make up a “digital wall,” a concept that many border sheriffs view as less intrusive than Trump’s envisioned 30-foot barricade stretching from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, California. For law enforcement, the tool promises to help identify people without reliable fingerprints and to deter repeat border crossers. And for Biometric Intelligence and Identification Technologies, which frequently goes by BI2, rapid border expansion means its existing national iris database will receive a huge influx of biometric information on unauthorized immigrants, boosting its product’s capabilities to potential law enforcement clients across the country.

While this high-tech approach to immigration enforcement has not generated anything close to the controversy of Trump’s proposed wall, the campaign to expand iris scan collection on the border is of a piece with the president’s denunciations of Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals.

According to John Leonard, senior vice president of BI2, the company’s decision to give away this technology was, in part, motivated by law enforcement’s alleged struggles with violent unauthorized immigrants. “The frustration law enforcement has is this: ‘Alright, I got this criminal, the guy raped three kids. He’s back in my community again. I don’t even know who he is, and the federal government has never given me what I need,’” Leonard said during a video call with The Intercept.

“You get all these people that say, ‘Well Trump is going after all these illegals, these immigrants, who have made America great.’ Well there’s a lot of immigrants that have made it great, but there’s a lot of assholes, too,” he said. “So BI2 is stepping up to the plate and donating this.”

In the coming months, BI2’s iris recognition devices will be installed in every sheriff’s department along the U.S.-Mexico border. Each department will receive both a stationary iris capture device for inmate intake facilities and, eventually, a mobile version, according to Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez of Val Verde County, Texas, who currently serves as the president of the Southwestern Border Sheriff’s Coalition.

The technology works by taking a high-resolution image of a person’s iris with a special infrared illumination camera, and then creating an individualized iris template based on that image. The templates exploit nearly 240 unique characteristic elements in the iris, compared to the 40 to 60 used for fingerprints, resulting in far fewer false matches. To make an identification, BI2’s iris recognition program compares an individual’s iris against the over 987,000 iris scans held in its private database, which collects images from over 180 law enforcement jurisdictions nationwide.

In May, I traveled to Wayne County, North Carolina, to observe the sheriff’s department’s new BI2 iris unit in action. Sgt. Delbert Edwards, an older man in gray, stood at his computer terminal, instructing me to step about eight inches away from a small black lens mounted on a counter. Three red lights flashed in my left eye, then a blue one. Edwards beckoned me to tilt my head back, and suddenly, a green dot popped onto the screen. The camera reflexively tilted upward, having taken what it needed from me. “Right, there you go, perfect,” Edwards said, glancing at a window on his screen where black and white images of my disembodied eyes stared back at him.

Edwards then watched as a green bar zipped back and forth under the iris image, checking against an inmate he picked at random and against hundreds of thousands of other irises captured from inmates across the country. After 20 seconds a message appeared: “Individual was not verified, and the irises didn’t match anybody else.” Behind the message was an image of the county inmate Edwards tested my iris against. On the screen, I could see a woman with brown hair, an orange jumpsuit, and a blank stare.

Sheriff Omar Lucio of Cameron County, Texas, is a big fan of BI2’s iris system. He will be one of the first border sheriffs using it. When I met Lucio in April, the white-haired sheriff sported a dark brown uniform with a cross of gold buttons and a shiny badge over his heart. Above his old-school mustache, his eyes twinkled as he praised the coming iris installation.

“The wall is not going to prevent it. Technology is the way to go,” Lucio said, referring to unauthorized immigration. “It’s not unusual for people caught illegally from Mexico to give fake names and date of births. But it doesn’t matter what you use if we have your features — your iris, your fingerprints. You can use a hundred different names. We still can say, ‘This is the guy.’”

Martinez, the head of the Southwestern Border Sheriff’s Coalition, hopes that the mobile version of BI2’s iris scanners will help his deputies when out in the field along the border in Val Verde County. “Let’s say you have an individual who doesn’t want to identify himself. If he’s not suspected of anything, without this tool, we would let him go,” Martinez said in a phone call with The Intercept. “But if we are able to get the iris scanned out in the field, having some probable cause to do so, we can find out if there’s something on him.”

The templates generated from iris images taken with BI2’s mobile application can be compared against hundreds of thousands of other iris templates in just under 20 seconds. The scans are also automatically saved into BI2’s national database, BI2’s Leonard confirmed in an email to The Intercept. Leonard, however, cautioned that ambient light could in some cases interfere with the capture process outdoors.

Giving law enforcement the ability to check and collect people’s irises for criminal history and, in effect, their citizenship information during stops could lead to racial profiling, said Nathan Wessler, staff attorney with the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “In this country, we’ve long resisted being a ‘show me your papers’ society, but this moves us to that because you increasingly can’t avoid your identity being scooped up in public,” Wessler told The Intercept. “Racial profiling is a serious concern, especially Latinos or people of color are at greater risk for iris checks simply for the color of their skin.”

The 31 border counties’ acquisition of these tools will also help rapidly build up BI2’s private iris database. At present, the database is housed by a third-party vendor in an undisclosed location in San Antonio, Texas, and in three other disaster backup facilities. The database is the largest of its kind in North America, according to Leonard.

The bigger the database, the more valuable it becomes to law enforcement. “If he doesn’t have any criminal record before, you don’t have anything. But once we do this” — scan the iris — “we’re going to have that record. We’re enrolling and you’re going to be there,” said Lucio, the Cameron County sheriff, of a hypothetical detainee. “When he’s arrested, even if he gave you a fake name at the beginning, he’s not going to fool anybody because his record is there.”

Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s civil liberties team, said local law enforcement should not be collecting biometric data to help federal immigration agencies, like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Just because you are walking in a border town and a cop says, ‘Hey, can I talk to you?’ you have no diminished expectations of privacy, and your biometrics should not be collected,” Schwartz told The Intercept. “Whatever legitimate interest police have in capturing biometrics to do ordinary law enforcement jobs, it is not proper to share that information with ICE.” Currently, ICE has direct access to many law enforcement databases.

Lucio acknowledged such technological improvements will put unauthorized immigrants at far greater risk for prison time. “No question about it. Some people have been arrested and they’re coming from across or from another county, so not going to give you any kind of a name,” Lucio said. “They know if you’re arrested a second time, it’s a federal crime” — referring to the stiff federal charges for immigrants caught re-entering the country without authorization.

Kelly Lytle Hernandez, an associate professor in the University of California, Los Angeles’s history department, argues the legal consequences of this development tie in to a much larger story about the U.S.-Mexico border. “It’s particularly interesting that this technology is being sold as a way to identify ‘chronic offenders’ of unauthorized re-entry, a crime that was invented in 1929 by Coleman Livingston Blease, a white supremacist senator from South Carolina who wanted to control the in-flow of Mexicans,” Hernandez said in an interview. “Any technology promising to ratchet up unauthorized re-entry charges is obviously wrapped up in that history.”

BI2’s expansionary push along the border comes on the heels of new business opportunities presented by Trump’s immigration enforcement push. On April 12, the Southwestern Border Sheriff’s Coalition, the group BI2 is partnering with in its three-year iris scan pilot program, requested a grant of $750,000 from the Department of Justice to “improve and expand the biometric identification capabilities of the 31 sheriff’s offices along the U.S. and Mexico border.” In a phone call, Leonard told The Intercept that such grant negotiations are “strictly between the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the sheriffs,” adding, “It’s their money and they can allocate it as they propose.”

However, according to a source familiar with the negotiations, a week after the sheriffs’ grant request was issued, Susan Richmond Johnson, a lobbyist with John Ashcroft’s TAG Holdings, attempted to set up meetings about the request with Danielle Cutrona, a senior adviser to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and some sheriffs. Johnson hoped to bring BI2 president Sean Mullin into an eventual follow-up meeting, according to the source, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on the matter and feared professional reprisal. TAG Holdings is an investor in BI2 and Johnson was an adviser to Ashcroft when he was attorney general during the Bush administration. Neither Johnson nor Mullin responded to The Intercept’s requests for comment.

Leonard did not confirm if any such follow-up took place. While some border sheriffs had a call with Justice Department officials about the grant request in the final week of May, he said, “We as a vendor are not able to listen in.”

Over the last 12 years years, BI2’s introduction of iris technology into law enforcement departments across the country has been gradual. In contrast to other countries, especially in the developing world, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. have far less incentive to switch to iris identification because so much fingerprinting infrastructure already exists. “Other countries are developing from the ground up, so iris is appealing because it is considered one of the most accurate and stable biometrics across time,” said Clare Garvie, a fellow at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law, in a phone call with The Intercept. “Here, we have legacy databases of faces and fingerprints, so the cost and time to deploy those biometric systems is much lower and more appealing.”

The long-standing use of other biometric systems in law enforcement circles has meant that private sector companies like BI2 play a large role in pushing iris identification infrastructure. Law enforcement officials say they don’t worry about the security of the biometric data they collect because BI2 is in charge of holding it for them. “The data is on the server, which is managed by BI2, so we don’t have to manage any data of that sort,” said Binit Nagori, an IT staffer at the Washington, D.C., Department of Corrections. “Our officers just scan it and send it to them. We do not worry about the data. I believe BI2 has the data in a national database.”

Schwartz, the EFF lawyer, worries that law enforcement agencies are not doing enough to ensure residents’ sensitive data is protected. “If the government is saying we just capture the data, push a button, and vendor takes care of it, that is wholly inadequate,” he said. “Every time the data is stored or transmitted there is a risk of breach. And, unlike an address or social security number, you can’t change your iris. So if the government is going to purchase tools from vendors that amass biometric data, it is necessary that they employ privacy officers who know how to prevent security breaches and move the data securely.”

This private sector leadership in the adoption of iris tools, however, means that BI2 enjoys far more access to and control over criminal justice data than one might expect. Sitting in his cabin in North Carolina, Leonard shared a screen with me and used BI2’s interface to log into two law enforcement databases — one in Washington, D.C., and the other in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana.

“Give me the last name of anybody you think might be in the jail,” Leonard instructed me while he was logged into the D.C. Department of Corrections database.

“Garcia,” I said.

He typed in the name Garcia, and a list of inmates popped up, one of whom he selected at random. A new screen then appeared showing the mug shot of a man whose race category was labeled “H.” Next to this image, on my screen, I could also see fields for his social security number, date of birth, gender, booking number, and a few other categories, which, for other mugshots, were filled out but left blank on this entry. Leonard moved on to pick another inmate to show me how iris verification would work.

Leonard clicked on another inmate. “He’s a white guy, OK, he’s one of the only white guys I could find basically,” said Leonard, who then scanned his own eyes, adding them to the program. After about 20 seconds, gray images of Leonard’s eyes disappeared from my screen and a message popped up noting that his irises did not match those of the inmate. The message said the user on the system could click to see the real identity of the irises. Leonard then clicked through and an image of him, sitting in his cabin wearing a hoodie, appeared on the screen.

“This is why it would be important on the border,” Leonard said. “Because as you build, people lie all the time.”

Much like Trump on the campaign trail, BI2 and some border sheriffs highlight notorious stories of violent criminal immigrants to argue for iris identification. During my visit to Cameron County, for example, Lucio mentioned the story of Angel Maturino Resendiz, a serial killer from Mexico who was executed by Texas in 2006.

“I’ll give you a true story that happened with an individual that was from Mexico, so you know about it. He was called the railroad rapist, or killer, OK?” said Lucio, who paused, unable to remember the story exactly. Beckoning to a nearby deputy to remind him of the character, Lucio continued, “Rodriguez was known as the railroad killer, Mike, or rapist?” The deputy leaned in close to his ear and told him the character’s real name.

“Yeah, it was Resendiz, wasn’t it?” Lucio said, now confident in his recollection. “This guy was from Mexico, a young guy, and he used to ride the railroads. And he would go to a place or city or what have you, and he would probably rape somebody or kill. So he was picked up several times, but he would give a false name and then he would be released, so by the time we get the information … the individual would be released, cross here, take off, and go back to Mexico and come back again. I think he killed about three or four people like that.”

Leonard showed me two images of a dark-skinned, middle-aged man with a buzz cut in an orange and gray jumpsuit. Under each mug shot was a different Hispanic or Latino name, and above each was a small thumbnail of a hand with crimson splotches cut across his fingertips.

“Now it’s obvious looking at the two people that this is the same guy, no question about that,” Leonard continued, scrolling his mouse between the two images of the inmate. “But he had surgically cut his fingerprints off — literally had them cut off by a doctor in the Dominican Republic, where’s he’s from,” Leonard said. “This guy was wanted on seven counts of homicide in Texas and Arizona. And we caught him because of his eyes, not because he told the truth, not because his fingerprints worked. It’s a perfect reason why fingerprints can’t be depended upon, you’re not going to cut out your eyes.”

Hernandez, the UCLA professor, contended that these grizzly tales of violence are cherry-picked to paint unauthorized immigrants with a broad criminal brush. The narrative may work to sell surveillance expansion, she argued, but also bolsters unfounded racial hatred against immigrant communities.

“The argument that there are extraordinarily violent individuals living within these populations has always been a part of immigrant exclusion projects,” Hernandez said. “Especially for Mexican-Americans, there was a clear shift in the middle of the 1950s, after Operation Wetback” — a 1950s crackdown on immigration rife with civil rights violations — “which was supposed to have solved the problem of immigration but didn’t actually stop it. So to rationalize the ongoing immigration, authorities explicitly no longer spoke about immigrants as workers, but as criminals. We’ve been stuck with that discourse ever since.”

BI2’s iris surveillance expansion on the border is moving ahead full steam despite these concerns. According to Leonard, the El Paso County sheriff’s department now has iris identification up and running, and Cameron County is next. Leonard says these installations will help authorities finally gain “control” of the border by documenting the undocumented.

“Right now, there is nothing like this on the border because the federal government has never given law enforcement agencies the technology to differentiate anybody in the field for any reason,” Leonard said. “That’s why we have so many illegal aliens: They just get in, and we don’t know who the hell they are and who they’re not.”

Hernandez, however, predicts that BI2’s iris solution will fail to stop migration flows, just as every law enforcement strategy before it failed. “This is just another example of profit making in immigration control, which seems to be on the rise with this administration,” Hernandez said. “We have always seen different waves of investment in technology, but they never have an impact on immigration. Yet we remain eternally convinced this stuff will save us from the larger problems of the border.”

Stolen Gold and Coming Revolution

July 8, 2017

by Christian Jürs

In late April 1945, a convoy of German trucks left the German-occupied Italian city of Muggia [in Istria] on the Adriatic Sea and drove north through Udine and then northeast to Villach in what was once the Greater German Reich and is now Austria.

There were five trucks, all painted the medium camouflage yellow of the later war German Wehrmacht, and one staff car bearing license plates of the SS. This car was occupied by SS-Gruppenführer Odlio Globocnik, Senior SS and Police Commander of the Adriatic Region, his driver and two SS aides. The trucks each had, besides the driver, two armed Ukrainian guards, all in field-gray Waffen-SS uniforms.

Inside the trucks were stacked dozens of heavy wooden German ammunition boxes, containers of food, cases of liquor and miscellaneous furniture, carpets and household goods.

Before the convoy reached Villach, it turned off the main highway and headed west through the Gaitaler Alps, finally stopping on the north shore of the Weissensee, a long, deep mountain lake.

The ground was still hard from the winter cold, but throughout the night and into the early hours of the next day, holes were dug in the ground at various points around the lake and the wooden ammunition boxes carefully buried. The fresh earth was hastily covered with armfuls of old pine needles and branches. All of the sites were carefully marked on a map and then the trucks drove off, past the small towns of Neusach and Techendorf and onto the main road which is now E-66.

Globocnik was later captured by a British armored unit and purported by them to have killed himself while under interrogation. In fact, U.S. intelligence reports indicate very clearly that not only did Globocnik survive the end of the war, but ended up in American employment.

He had bought his freedom by bribing the British and turning over to them the contents of two of his buried cases, which consisted of many thousands of British pound notes. The remainder of the wooden chests contained millions of dollars worth of gold coins, religious medals, gold jewelry, platinum, silver, antique coins, gold pencils, containers of dental gold and bridgework, and wedding rings.

These had originated in the concentration camp system under Globocnik’s control in the Lublin district of what had been pre-war Poland. While the head of such camps as Belzec, Sobribor and Treblinka, Globocnik who had been fired by Hitler from his official prewar position as Gauleiter, or Governor, of Vienna for theft, took advantage of his situation. He sequestered a large amount of treasure he took from the occupants of his camps as well as additional assets obtained from extensive treasure hunts in the districts he controlled.

When Heinrich Himmler learned of Globocnik’s completely unauthorized activities in his Polish domain, he ordered him to close the camps, destroy any trace of them and remove himself with a promotion, to the city of Trieste where Globocnik, a Slovenian, had been born in 1904. While there, Globocnik managed to acquire more loot and it was this money which he took into the Austrian Alps with a crew of his loyal Ukranians who had served as camp guards at Treblinka.

When the information about the positive location of Globocnik’s horde was discovered, buried in British archives, the recovery of the buried money became a subject of great interest to several people.

Under then-current Austrian law, the treasure trove was to be divided equally between the finder or finders, the government of Austria and the owner or owners of the land on which it was found.

Very discreet inquiry with agencies in Vienna disclosed that the Austrian government did not view their former Gauleiter’s money as having been acquired through criminal activities and that, therefore, the division of the find was to follow standard procedure. Had the government decreed that the buried money resulted from a criminal endeavor, the state would assume complete control over it and its eventual disposal.

Given all of this, a very cautious expedition was launched in 2000, and with careful planning and excellent security, a great deal of the buried gold was dug up, the diggers always on guard against discovery.

 

An inventory of the recovery was as follows:

Russian Imperial gold coins

810   5 Rouble pieces valued (in 1990 spot gold prices..much higher in 2017) at $64,800

475 10 Rouble pieces valued at $95,000

Austrian gold coins

1,470  Imperial 1 ducat pieces valued at $88,200

975  Imperial 4 ducat pieces valued at $438,750

1,355 10 Corona pieces valued at $101,625

2,101 20 Corona pieces valued at $630,600

217 100 Corona pieces valued at $184,450

6320 Kronen pieces valued at  $58,275

28 100 Kronen pieces valued at $56,000

4,150 25 Schilling pieces valued at 229,800

517 100 Schilling pieces valued at $310,200

Polish gold coins

4158 10 Zloty pieces valued at $249,480

French gold coins

802 20 Franc pieces valued at $64,160

50 50 Franc pieces valued at $22,500

142 100 Franc pieces valued at $60, 350

Swiss gold coins

907 10 Franc pieces valued at $54,420

1121 20 Franc pieces valued at $78,470

British gold coins

804 Sovereign pieces valued at $54,420

202 ½ Sovereign pieces valued at $15,150

The total number of coins was 20,247 and the approximate value as of the current (2017) market in gold is $24,998,707.

  •  Who dug up part of this treasure and what happened to it?
  • And who legally owned it?
  • The heirs of General Globocnik?
  •  The distant relatives of those incarcerated in his camps?
  • The owners of the land from which it was dug up?
  • The Austrian government?

And what happened to it?

The names of those who removed this hoard of gold are known and it is also known that most of the gold coins (the wedding rings were melted down in situ) were brought back to the United States by a simple and easily concealed method.

They were packed into a boat in a northern Adriatic port, having been brought down from Austria in a small, rented truck and subsequently landed on the Virginia coast at a small, unguarded marina.

From there, the coins were transported to a rural southern town and hidden in the cellar of one of the participants in the dig.

Little by little, the gold coins are converted to cash and are being cautiously distributed to a number of very far-right American proto-fascist groups and used to buy arms and ammunition for what most of these groups believed will eventually be open warfare with the government establishment and eventualy assumption of national power.

Who are these groups? Here is a listing of only some of them:

ACT for America

Alliance Defending Freedom

America’s Promise Ministries

American Border Patrol/American Patrol

American Family Association

American Freedom Party

American Renaissance

Aryan Brotherhood

Aryan Brotherhood of Texas

Aryan Nations

Blood & Honor

Brotherhood of Klans

Center for Security Policy

Church of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

The Creativity Movement

The Sovereign Citizen Movement of the US and Canada

The Dominonist Movement of America

National Alliance

National Coalition for Immigration Reform

National Socialist Movement

National Vanguard

Oath Keepers

Stormfront

The Aryan Terror Brigade.

The neo-Confederate League of the South.

Traditionalist Worker Party

White Revolution

The present gold holders; a prominent dealer in Nazi-era relics, one gun dealer and an advanced collector, were put in touch with each other by the late Willis Carto of Culpepper, Virginia. Carto, and his aide, Michael Collins Piper, had strong connections with many of these groups and instigated the treasure hunt so as to be able to adequately fund their activities.

Carto had had legal problems and was very cautious about showing the possession of any funds.

One of the methods for concealing the use of the funds is the extensive use of the militaria collecting business.

The gold has reportedly been converted into cash and used to buy exotic, and very expensive, fake Third Reich items which are then sold to the collecting world and the profits worked into the coffers of the revolutionaries.

Weapons and other material, as is strongly rumored, are generally purchased in Canada and, like the gold coins, drop-shipped via boat, to a quiet port on the east coast of the United States.

It is ironic that gold coins, and a box of gold wedding rings, that belonged to inmates in an SS camp system, are being used to support, and encourage, entities that are both anti-democratic and anti-Semitic.

Black Friday: Hamburg’s G-20 Security Failure

Stores were looted, cars burned and bands of anarchists marauded through the streets. At times, the police were completely overwhelmed by the scale of violence at the G-20 summit in Hamburg. What went wrong?

July 8, 2017

by Jörg Diehl

Spiegel

In light of Friday’s rioting, recent statements made by Hamburg officials ahead of the G-20 seem naive in the extreme. One came from the Hartmut Dudde, the head of operations for the Hamburg police, who said: “If we say here’s where things stop, then that’s where they stop. We will also take action. We’re not going to wait if crimes are being committed.”

Another statement came from his boss, Hamburg Police Chief Ralf Martin Meyer. “We are better prepared than we ever have been,” he boasted in the run-up to the G-20.

And then, of course, there’s the statement from Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz, who promised the city’s residents: “Don’t worry, we can guarantee your safety.”

But on Friday, July 7, none of these sentences applied. Even that morning, a marauding gang was raging through the Hamburg neighborhoods of Ottensen and Altona, setting cars on fire by the dozens. Later in the day, a mob raged for hours in the alternative Schanzenviertel neighborhood, long a hotbed of leftist activity. They broke windows, lit barricades on fire, looted stores and threatened to kill police. Many would later say hyperbolically that it was like “a war zone.” Others described the scene as anarchy — as though the state had receded before the mob.

The question that must now be answered is clear: What went wrong?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that it was almost impossible to fulfill the demands of the mission. In contrast to all the public statements made by security personnel, and the insistence that the 15,000 police officers on hand would be enough, many high-ranking officials were skeptical from the very beginning about holding a G-20 summit in a large city like Hamburg. One official predicted “ugly scenes.” After all, Hamburg is the center of Germany’s far-left autonomous movement. Leftist radicals in the city have access to effective structures and sophisticated logistics.

But the decision regarding where to hold such summits is made at the highest political levels, often without regard to practical considerations. Even the prediction by authorities that up to 8,000 potentially violent left-wing extremists could converge on the city did little to deter the decision-makers. “Politicians carry sole responsibility for the numerous police officers who have been injured and for the destruction wrought in the city,” says Jan Reineck, the head of the state chapter of the union that represents Germany’s criminal police. “Hamburg never should have been the venue for the G-20 summit.”

Initially, the police faced the difficulty — or even impossibility — of the assignment with fierce determination. Hamburg police moved decisively to shut down some protest camps and to crack down on the first protest on Thursday, showing the kind of toughness they had pledged in the run-up to the summit. And, intially, the public also criticized them for doing exactly that.

A Cat and Mouse Game

Afterward, though, the security forces’ strategy clearly changed. On Friday, they suddenly seemed more hesitant and looked at times like they weren’t up to the task. Instead, police officers spent hours playing an undignified cat-and-mouse game with rioters — one with limited results. Considering the scale of the crimes committed, the number of arrests that have been made so far indeed seems negligible.

Police say they took a considerable amount of time before intervening in Schanzenviertel because they feared an ambush was waiting in Schulterblatt, the street where much of the rioting took place. It was only after special forces, who had been providing protection to world leaders at the Elphilharmonie concert, became available again that the autorities were able to regain the upper hand in Schanzenviertel. “The police had a sophisticated plan for protecting the politicians,” says one experienced police official. “But they don’t appear to have had a real plan for protecting the population.”

Ultimately, even the massive deployment of 15,000 police officers proved insufficient. Police officers have reported that many had to do double shifts and were given few breaks. Among police, images are circulating of colleagues lying on the ground, completely drained.

On Friday morning at 8:47 a.m., the Hamburg police asked police departments across the entire country to send reinforcements because the city was experiencing a “large number of crimes” and “threats to life and limb,” as the urgent message read. Helicopters flew riot-control units to the city. “Anyone who can walk is being moved,” one official said. Security forces in Hamburg, though felt no initial tangible relief.

A Massive Mobilization

The police were needed to respond to a massive mobilization of radical leftists. The authorities say that protesters with the autonomous movement traveled to Hamburg from as far away as Italy, Switzerland, Greece and the Netherlands — and that they came by the thousands. They were also joined by what officials call the “experience-oriented” — violent groups of hooligans, apolitical petty criminals, the frustrated, drunks and the drug-addicted. Essentially young men looking for a kick. It’s almost impossible to differentiate them from the extremists.

The police also appear to have been lacked a plan for dealing with the thousands of onlookers who turned up on Friday night just to see what was going on. Police appealed to them, tried to gently push them back and even issued threats, but they didn’t succeed in reducing the crowd of rubberneckers. This enabled the autonomists to repeatedly hide in the crowds — with devastating results.

Untreatable gonorrhea ‘superbug’ spreading around world, WHO warns

World Health Organization tells of ‘very serious situation’ after confirming three known cases where all antibiotics were ineffective

July 6, 2017

by James Rudd

The Guardian

Untreatable strains of gonorrhea are on the rise, the World Health Organization has warned, fuelling fears that last-resort drugs will soon be futile after three confirmed cases in which antibiotics were ineffective.

Gonorrhea is the second most common bacterial sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the UK after chlamydia, with almost 35,000 cases reported in England in 2014. The WHO estimates that 78 million people worldwide contract the disease each year, with most cases affecting young men and women under the age of 25.

The latest warning is based on findings from two studies, co-authored by WHO researchers, looking at data from 77 countries; in more than 50, first-line antibiotics were ineffective.

“To control gonorrhea, we need new tools and systems for better prevention, treatment, earlier diagnosis, and more complete tracking and reporting of new infections, antibiotic use, resistance and treatment failures,” said Marc Sprenger, director of antimicrobial resistance at the WHO. “Specifically, we need new antibiotics, as well as rapid, accurate, point-of-care diagnostic tests – ideally, ones that can predict which antibiotics will work on that particular infection – and longer term, a vaccine to prevent gonorrhea

These concerns were echoed by others in the field.

“We are markedly concerned about the rise in antibiotic resistant gonorrhea in the UK,” said Prof Claudia Estcourt, a member of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV. “In a very short space of time, we have seen changes in the bacteria at an unprecedented rate, which means that many antibiotics which used to work are no longer effective. We are running out of options.”

As well as widespread resistance to first-line antibiotics for gonorrhea, resistance is increasing against second and third-line treatments, too.

Gonorrhea spreads through unprotected vaginal, oral or anal sex, as well as through the sharing of sex toys that have not been washed properly or covered with a new condom. Many of those who contract the disease experience no symptoms, but if left untreated the disease can cause infertility and, in pregnant women, puts babies at risk of blindness.

Since the introduction of antibiotics in 1930s, the bacteria responsible for gonorrhea, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, has shown a remarkable ability to stay one step ahead of our most effective antibiotics.

“Gonorrhea is a very smart bug,” said Teodora Wi, a human reproduction specialist at the Geneva-based UN health agency. “Every time you introduce a new type of antibiotic to treat it, this bug develops resistance to it.”

Wi said one of two new studies on gonorrhea published in the journal Plos Medicine had documented antibiotic-resistant cases in Japan, France and Spain.

“These are cases that can infect others. It can be transmitted,” she told reporters. “And these cases may just be the tip of the iceberg, since systems to diagnose and report untreatable infections are lacking in lower-income countries where gonorrhea is actually more common.”

Experts added that funding issues were adding to the problem.

“We are concerned that at a time of increasing drug-resistant gonorrhea and limited treatment options, overall funding for sexual health services [in the UK] is being reduced, and a quarter of local authorities have had to reduce spending on sexual health services,” said Estcourt.

Manica Balasegaram, director of the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership, said the situation was “grim” and there was a pressing need for new medicines.

The pipeline, however, is very thin, with only three potential new gonorrhea drugs in development and no guarantee any will prove effective in final-stage trials, he said.

“We urgently need to seize the opportunities we have with existing drugs and candidates in the pipeline,” he said. “Any new treatment developed should be accessible to everyone who needs it, while ensuring it is used appropriately, so that drug resistance is slowed as much as possible.”

 

 

 

 

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