Israeli Offensive in Rafah Would Lead to ‘Massacres’, Doctors Warn UN
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza will turn “inestimably worse” if Israel launches its planned ground offensive against Hamas fighters holed up at the southern end of the Palestinian enclave, Western doctors have warned.
More than 1 million civilians, many reportedly starving, have taken refuge in the area after earlier Israeli attacks leveled their neighborhoods.
“This is probably the worst crisis that can happen within this war,” Dr. Zaher Sahloul, co-founder of the US-based MedGlobal medical charity, told reporters on Tuesday at the UN headquarters in New York. “If there is any offensive, they’re going to have a bloodbath, massacres after massacres.”
He added that his colleagues who are still working in Gaza have warned that an Israeli assault on Rafah could lead to 250,000 deaths.
Sahloul was among a group of Western doctors who traveled to Washington this week for meetings with US lawmakers and government officials to bring more attention to the desperate humanitarian conditions brought on by the Israel-Hamas war.
The doctors made their pleas for a ceasefire – and to call off the planned Rafah offensive – after doing volunteer work in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.
Read more More kids killed in Gaza than in four years of global conflicts – UN
“I saw the most appalling atrocities, and I saw things that I never would have expected to have seen in any health care setting,” said Dr. Nick Maynard, a UK surgeon who has worked in the Palestinian territories for more than a decade. “I saw things at Al-Aqsa [Martyrs] Hospital which I still wake up at night thinking about – appalling injuries, particularly in women and children.”
Maynard gave the example of a young girl who was burned so badly that he could see her facial bones. “We knew there was no chance of her surviving that,” he said. “But there was no morphine to give her, so not only was she inevitably going to die, but she would die in agony.”The girl was left on the floor of the emergency room to die.
Dr. Amber Alayyan, a Texas pediatrician who does volunteer work through Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF), said supply shortages have forced physicians in Gaza to make horrific choices, such as having to perform amputations without anesthetic. There are no beds available for many of the post-operative patients, and the condition of injured Gazans is deteriorating as their wounds rot.
READ MORE: Netanyahu defies Biden on Rafah offensive
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed international pressure to cancel the Rafah operation, insisting that it must go forward to prevent Hamas from again posing a threat to West Jerusalem. The latest war erupted when Hamas fighters raided southern Israeli villages on October 7, killing over 1,100 people and taking hundreds of hostages back to Gaza.
The Israeli response has left more than 31,000 Gazans dead, according to local health authorities, and has displaced an estimated 85% of the besieged enclave’s population. The Israeli military has claimed that civilians will be moved to “humanitarian islands” to the north of Rafah before the ground offensive begins.
READ MORE: Israeli military raids Gaza’s largest hospital
“There is nowhere safe for them to go,” said Maynard, who argued that Israeli forces aim to “eradicate” the Palestinians from Gaza. “What is going on in Gaza fulfills every single definition of genocide that I have read.” The surgeon added, “If there’s an invasion, a ground invasion of Rafah, it will be apocalyptic, really, the number of deaths we’re going to see.”
EXCLUSIVE: Humanity Must Develop A Plan B To Counter The Globalists’ Anti-Human Agenda
US ‘Grand Plan’ is to ‘Reoccupy’ Africa
On Saturday, the Niger’s military leadership told the United States, which has three bases in the country, including one controlled by the CIA, that it is no longer welcome in Niger. On Monday, US officials insisted that they wanted to continue their “partnership” with Niger and confirmed that troops remain in the bases.
The United States’ “grand plan” with its drone base in Niger is to “reoccupy” Africa with “its vassal friends” like France, Koffi Kouakou, an African analyst and senior research fellow at the Center for Africa-China Studies at the University of Johannesburg told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Thursday.
“The US [isn’t] going to leave easily. The US is not going to cut and run because there’s this big ego at play [in] geopolitics [and] geoeconomics, but also hegemony,” Kouakou explained. “Those who haven’t been paying attention should pay attention.”
“The key issue is [the] US’s grand plan to get [Africa] back, with its vassal friends to reoccupy this place.”
Kouakou asserted that top US officials in Africa, including Africa Command General Michael Langley, US Ambassador to Niger Kathleen FitzGibbon and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee meeting with Nigerien leaders shows that the US is seriously concerned about its interests in the region.
But Niger is capable of facing “the American bulldog” and “raising its sovereignty” because it has somebody backing it, that “could be Russia.”
“We already know that Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine was in Russia last week cutting deals with the Russians. [That is] showing that Niger [has] a brother or somebody backing it up,” Kouakou explained. “These are the most important geopolitical issues.”
Nigerien officials have “no clue” of what is going on in US bases in the country, the two official ones base 101 and base 201, or the unofficial CIA base outside of Dirkou, Kouakou said. However, they won’t take on the US directly, Kouakou argued. “They’ll do very small [actions], slowly digging into the US’ powers. And then, the best attack is [against their] reputation, as they’ve done to the French. They will do it again to the Americans.”
Kouakou noted that the US delegation didn’t inform the Nigerien government what it wanted to talk about before arriving or give them an opportunity to adjust the agenda. “[The] hubris that the US has and this sort of ‘we are the big dog in place, we’re going to tell you what to do and agenda item one we’re going to be discussing so and so, agenda number two we’re going to discuss so and so and you have nothing to say about it,’” Kouakou said, describing the American attitude. “Of course, the Nigeriens didn’t agree.”
“In fact, [the US] wanted to sort of renew this partnership, especially about the bases, without even telling the Nigeriens,” Kouakou explained. “But now, this government is saying ‘we now want to have our sovereignty. We want to deal with different partners as we wish. And even if we were to sell anything or partner with Iran, Russia, China or anybody else, it’s our business. You don’t have to tell us what to do.’ But of course, the US officials didn’t like that. Molly Phee didn’t like it, she threatened the delegation and said ‘If you don’t retract what you said in public, you’re going to be in big trouble in the next coming months.’”
Kouakou listed the tools in the US playbook that are typically used against governments they oppose. “There are a couple of things that all of us are looking forward to seeing: an increase in terrorism in Niger, a potential ‘color revolution’ or coup d’état, or potential assassination of the leaders of Niger.”
“The big bully doesn’t threaten people just by chance,” he said.
There are concerns that Niger could turn into another Vietnam for France and the US, serving as another proxy war against Russia.
“[The US] invested a huge amount of money in this place. They’re not going to leave easily. However, where the Nigeriens have a point is ‘You’ve been there since 2012, but terrorism is still there. What have you done for us to deal with terrorism, if terrorism was really the reason for your presence on our occupied ground?’” Kouakou said, noting that Mali has done “a fabulous job” with the Africa Corps in combating terrorism. “There was no terrorism in the area until 2011 when the US and, now let’s say NATO, bombed Libya to smithereens and destroyed it. Now this whole place is running amok with terrorist groups.”
“I think Niger is now winning the information war,” Kouakou concluded, “but this is exactly our concern because the US is going to retaliate one way or another.”
EXCLUSIVE: Humanity Must Develop A Plan B To Counter The Globalists’ Anti-Human Agenda
Jen Psaki Says RFK Jr. Is A ‘Huge Problem’ For Biden 2024
MSNBC host and Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has claimed that third-party presidential candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are a “huge problem” for Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign. When fellow MSNBC host Mika […]
The post Jen Psaki Says RFK Jr. Is A ‘Huge Problem’ For Biden 2024 appeared first on The People’s Voice.
Macron Believes Ukraine Could Fall Soon
French President Emmanuel Macron believes Ukraine might be defeated on the battlefield in short order, the French edition of Politico reported on Wednesday.
The outlet’s Playbook section spoke with several members of the president’s party who had attended a working dinner at the Elysee Palace the evening before. While most of the discussion centered on the upcoming European Parliament elections, the Ukraine conflict also came up.
“Ukraine could fall very quickly,” one of the outlet’s sources quoted Macron as saying.
Macron ramped up his rhetoric about Ukraine a few weeks after a number of French nationals fighting on behalf of Kiev were killed in a Russian missile strike. At a meeting of EU leaders in Paris in late February, he refused to rule out the possibility of a NATO intervention in Ukraine.
Though the idea was quickly rejected by almost all members of the US-led bloc and its secretary-general, Macron doubled down, declaring there would be “no limits” to French support for Kiev and calling Russia an “adversary.”Meanwhile, the French Army’s Chief of Staff Pierre Schill announced that the country’s military was “ready,”presumably for a war.
Moscow has strongly condemned Macron’s remarks and cautioned NATO against taking further hostile moves. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the deployment of Western soldiers to Ukraine would make direct conflict with Russia “inevitable.”
Read more Macron ‘panicked’ over leaked Ukraine reports – Marianne
Marine Le Pen, a prominent member of the opposition National Rally party and Macron’s rival in the 2022 election, accused the president last week of “hijacking” the Ukraine issue for the sake of domestic electoral politics. Polls have shown that the French support helping Kiev with weapons and money, but draw the line at getting involved directly with boots on the ground.
Concerns that Kiev might be losing the war appear to be based on several French military assessments leaked earlier this month to the outlet Marianne. One report, following Kiev’s summer offensive, concluded that Ukraine could not win the conflict by military means. Another described the Battle of Avdeevka as a Ukrainian rout and had the French military “in cold sweat,” according to Marianne.
A few days later, the daily Le Monde claimed that Macron’s talk of possibly sending troops dated all the way back to June 2023, when the Ukrainian counteroffensive was just starting. General Schill also told the outlet that Macron’s public statements have been “foremost a political and strategic message” to Russia about France’s “will and commitment,” rather than an actual escalation.
EXCLUSIVE: Humanity Must Develop A Plan B To Counter The Globalists’ Anti-Human Agenda
CCP-Linked Virologist Fired After Transferring Ebola From Winnipeg to Wuhan Resurfaces in China – And is Collaborating With Military Scientists
A virologist who had a “clandestine relationship” with Chinese agents and was subsequently fired by the Trudeau government has popped back up in China – where she’s conducting research with Chinese military scientists and other virology researchers, including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where she’s allegedly studying antibodies for coronavirus, as well as the deadly Ebola and Niaph viruses, the Globe and Mail reports.
Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng were fired from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada and stripped of their security clearances in July of 2019.
Declassified documents tabled in the House of Commons on Feb. 28 show the couple had provided confidential scientific information to China and posed a credible security threat to the country, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
The Globe found that Dr. Qiu’s name appears on four Chinese patent filings since 2020, two with the Wuhan Institute of Virology – whose work on bat coronaviruses has placed it at the centre of concerns that it played a role in the spread of COVID-19 – and two with the University of Science and Technology of China, or USTC. The patents relate to antibodies against Nipah virus and work related to nanobodies, including against coronaviruses. -Globe and Mail
Canadian authorities began questioning the pair’s loyalty, as well as the potential for coercion or exploitation by a foreign entity, according to more than 600 pages of documents reported by The Counter Signal.
Highlights (via CTVNews.ca):
- Qiu and Cheng were escorted out of Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory in July 2019 and subsequently fired in January 2021.
- The pair transferred deadly Ebola and Henipah viruses to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in March 2019.
- The Canadian Security Intelligence Service assessed that Qiu repeatedly lied about the extent of her work with institutions of the Chinese government and refused to admit involvement in various Chinese programs, even when evidence was presented to her.
- [D]espite being given every opportunity in her interviews to describe her association with Chinese entities, “Ms. Qiu continued to make blanket denials, feign ignorance or tell outright lies.”
- A November 2020 Public Health Agency of Canada report on Qiu says investigators “weighed the adverse information and are in agreement with the CSIS assessment.”
- A Public Health Agency report on Cheng’s activities says he allowed restricted visitors to work in laboratories unescorted and on at least two occasions did not prevent the unauthorized removal of laboratory materials.
- Cheng was not forthcoming about his activities and collaborations with people from government agencies “of another country, namely members of the People’s Republic of China.”
Following their firings, Qiu returned to China despite it being under a pandemic travel lockdown until January, 2023.
“It’s very likely that she received quite preferential treatment in China on the basis that she’s proven herself. She’s done a very good job for the government of China,” said Brendan Walker-Munro, senior research fellow at Australia’s University of Queensland Law School. “She’s promoted their interests abroad. She’s returned information that is credibly useful to China and to its ongoing research.”
More via the Globe and Mail;
Documents reviewed by The Globe show that Dr. Qiu is most closely aligned with the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei. In March, 2023, a document posted by a Chinese pharmaceutical company listed Dr. Qiu as second amongst “major completion personnel” on a project awarded by the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association for study related to an anti-Ebola virus therapeutic antibody. Most of the other completion personnel were associated with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
USTC was founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and initially established to build up Chinese scientific expertise useful to the military, which at the time was pursuing technology to build satellites, intercontinental ballistic missiles and atomic bombs. The university has continued to maintain close military ties.
The document says Dr. Qiu works for USTC. Jin Tengchuan, the principal investigator at the Laboratory of Structural Immunology at USTC, lists her as a co-inventor on a patent. Mr. Jin did not respond to requests for comment.
A person who answered the phone at USTC told The Globe, “I don’t have any information about this teacher.”
In 2012, USTC signed a strategic co-operation agreement with the Army Engineering University of the People’s Liberation Army, designed to strengthen research on cutting-edge technology useful for communications, weaponry and other national-defence priorities.
Dr. Qiu is also listed as a 2019 doctoral supervisor for students studying virology at Hebei Medical University.
“Well, that makes me wonder what circumstances she was under when she emigrated to Canada. Why did she come?” asked Earl Brown, a professor emeritus of biochemistry, microbiology and immunology at the University of Ottawa’s faculty of medicine who has worked extensively in China in the past. “People leave for more freedom from China, or to make more money. But China keeps tabs on most people so I am not sure if she came over to infiltrate or whether she came and the infiltration happened later through contact with China.”
It may be impossible to answer that question. Three former colleagues at the National Microbiolgy Lab have indicated that Dr. Qiu and her husband were diligent and pleasant to deal with, but largely kept to themselves outside of work. They say Dr. Qiu was a brilliant scientist with a strong work ethic, although her English was weak. The Globe is not identifying the three who did not want to be named.
Dr. Qiu is a medical doctor from Tianjin, China, who came to Canada for graduate studies in 1996. She started at the University of Manitoba, but began working at the national lab as a research scientist in 2006, working her way up to become head of the vaccine development and antiviral therapies section in the National Microbiology Laboratory’s special pathogens program.
She was also part of the team that helped develop ZMapp, a treatment for the deadly Ebola virus, which killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa between 2014 and 2016.
“My sense is this was part of a larger strategy by China to get access to our innovation system,” said Filippa Lentzos, an associate professor of science and international security at King’s College London. “It was a way for them to to find out what was going on in Canada’s premier lab.”
Initially trained as a medical doctor, Dr. Qiu graduated in 1985 from Hebei University in the coastal city of Tianjin, which lies southeast of Beijing. Dr. Qiu went on to obtain her master of science degree in immunology at Tianjin Medical University in 1990.
Her career at Canada’s top infectious disease lab in Winnipeg began in 2003, only four years after Ottawa opened this biosafety level 4 facility at the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health.
Over time, she built up a reputation for academic collaboration, particularly with China. It was welcomed by management who felt her work was helping build a name internationally for the National Microbiology Lab.
By the time Canadian officials intervened in 2018 and began investigating, documents show, Dr. Qiu was running 44 separate projects at the Winnipeg lab, an uncommonly large workload.
Her work with former colleague and microbiologist Gary Kobinger vaulted Dr. Qiu into the international spotlight. The pair developed a treatment for Ebola, one that in its first human application led to the full recovery of 27 patients with the infection during a 2014 outbreak in Liberia.
Mr. Kobinger’s career continued to soar and he is now director of the Galveston National Laboratory, a renowned biosafety level 4 facility in Texas. In 2022, he told The Globe that it was “heartbreaking” to see what had happened to his colleague. He declined to speak for this article.
“She had lost a lot of weight with all the stress. She was so convinced that this was all a misunderstanding … and she would go back to her job,” he said in 2022. “ Her career has been destroyed with all this. She was one of the top female Canadian scientists of virology and Canada has lost that.”
Over a period of 13 months, though, the Chinese-Canadian microbiologist and her biologist husband’s lives were turned upside down.
She went from being feted at Ottawa’s Rideau Hall with a Governor-General’s Award in May, 2018, to being locked out of the Winnipeg lab in July, 2019 – the high-security facility where she had made her name as a scientist in Canada. By January, 2021, she and Mr. Cheng were fired.
Last month, after being pressed into explaining what happened, the Canadian government finally disclosed the reasons for this extraordinary dismissal: CSIS found the pair had lied about and hid their co-operation with China from Ottawa.
A big question remains following their departure: Why would Dr. Qiu risk her career, including the stature associated with developing an Ebola treatment, for China?
A big question remains following their departure: Why would Dr. Qiu risk her career, including the stature associated with developing an Ebola treatment, for China?
EXCLUSIVE: Humanity Must Develop A Plan B To Counter The Globalists’ Anti-Human Agenda
Poverty Could Trigger Revolt In Canada – Secret Report
Canada’s economic prospects are “beyond bleak” and may cause civil unrest in the next five years, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has said in a confidential report to the government in Ottawa.
Titled “Whole-of-Government Five-Year Trends for Canada,” the report was obtained through a legal request by Thompson Rivers University legal scholar Matt Malone. A “heavily redacted” version was published by the National Post on Wednesday – though even that was quickly taken down from the document-sharing website Scribd.
“Economic forecasts for the next five years and beyond are bleak,” with Canada’s current situation expected to “probably deteriorate further,” said the RCMP report, quoted by NP columnist Tristin Hopper.
“The coming period of recession will… accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations,” the report continued, adding that many Canadians under the age of 35 “are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live.”
READ MORE: Majority of Canadians say their country is ‘broken’ – poll
To corroborate the RCMP findings, Hopper pointed to a Royal Bank of Canada analysis from December, which described housing affordability as the “worst ever.” Only the richest 25% of Canadians can even hope to buy a single-family home, while condominiums were entirely out of reach for 55.5% of the households.
Despite the dire economic conditions, the RCMP mainly blamed “misinformation,” “conspiracy theories” and “paranoia” for the fact that Canadians have become disillusioned with their government.
Read more ‘Conspiracy theorists’ threaten mainstream media, says Canadian PM
“Law enforcement should expect continuing social and political polarization fueled by misinformation campaigns and an increasing mistrust for all democratic institutions,” the report said.
The RCMP did admit that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Covid-19 lockdowns have done damage to both the Canadian economy and the country’s social fabric, to the point where another pandemic response is likely to be widely rejected.
However, the author’s foremost concern seems to be populists, who have allegedly capitalized on societal polarization and “conspiracy theories” to “tailor their messages to appeal to extremist movements.”
Facing a protest by truckers in January 2022, over his government’s harsh Covid-19 policies, Trudeau infamously accused the demonstrators of extremism and declared a state of emergency. His government seized the bank accounts of several “Freedom Convoy” leaders and jailed others.
The nine-page RCMP report was labeled secret, for distribution only within the organization and to “decision-makers”in the federal government. It was intended to be a “scanning exercise” that would look at trends both in Canada and abroad “that could have a significant effect on the Canadian government and the RCMP.”
EXCLUSIVE: Humanity Must Develop A Plan B To Counter The Globalists’ Anti-Human Agenda