Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Rounding the Earth.
My name is Liam Sturgis and this is your weekly news roundup, aptly called Rounding the News.
I apologize for the slight delay.
I encountered a series of technical issues as I was getting ready to go live.
So I appreciate your patience and it looks as though we are now live on all of our favorite
platforms.
In any case, let's get started.
So first of all, we're going to jump in.
Today's episode is titled, Unreliable Narrators.
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This past Wednesday, it was a very eventful day.
And the show that we did was called Scientology, the Department of Defense and the Medical
Freedom Movement.
This was a presentation delivered by Matthew Crawford, and I highly recommend going and
seeing what that was all about.
Really rather interesting.
And once again, roundingtheearth.locals.com by far the best way to support the show and
keep up to date with everything we are doing.
Okay, so let's dive into our two news stories for today.
The first, Alberta Health Services continues to deny organ transplant to unvaccinated patients.
It's just nuts, guys.
Alberta Health Services, AHS, continues to discriminate against people that they deem
to be unvaccinated in their medical care in a move that can only be described as arbitrary
and vindictive.
Sheila Annette Lewis, an unvaccinated transplant candidate with a dire terminal illness, has
been eligible to receive an organ for well over a year now.
Well, back in September 2021, Lewis was removed from the high priority transplant waitlist
to her decision to not receive a COVID-19 genetic vaccine.
She was second in line for her organ at the time.
And because she is terminally ill, the ongoing enforcement of this policy effectively condemns
Ms. Lewis to death.
Lewis runs entirely counter to any suggestion that the policy is intended to protect the
health and well-being of the patient of Ms. Lewis.
But it's even worse than that, given there at no point existed any scientific or medical
basis to justify the policy.
Not only for her protection, but the idea that her getting the shot would somehow protect
the others around her.
It's so clearly not true.
We've all seen the presentations where they admit they never tested to see if the thing
would stop transmission or prevent infection.
All of that aside, as has been well documented, the clinical trials themselves for both the
Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 genetic vaccine products explicitly excluded vulnerable
individuals like Lewis, studying the effects of the products only on healthy individuals.
Here's a screenshot from the clinical trials.gov entry for the Pfizer BioNTech clinical trial.
And as you can see, the exclusion criteria is quite long, and it was so long, I could
only get this section of it onto the screen.
This will be available in the show notes, which you can find at roundingtheearth.locals.com
within about half an hour after the show today.
So you'll be able to go look at that clinical trial registration yourself.
And in the case of the Moderna clinical trial, which was run alongside or in partnership
with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as BARDA, the
Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, I think.
The exclusion criteria for this one explicitly list people who are acutely ill or febrile
in an immunosuppressive or immunodeficient state, or has been given any of a variety
of drugs for blood in the immune system, all boxes that Mrs. Lewis almost certainly checks.
So the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms has been representing Mrs. Lewis throughout
her case, the details of which are partially withheld by a publication ban.
So I've got to be careful what details I provide, especially because I am proud to
disclose, as I've done at least once before, that I participated in the preparation of
one of her expert reports.
I helped a medical professional from the Canadian COVID Care Alliance over a year ago get her
expert report prepared.
And so it pains me to learn that Mrs. Lewis continues to have her life-saving transplant
withheld from her.
But her case has gotten even stronger as of her most recent letter to Alberta Health Services,
which cites a report written by Dr. Stephen Pellick of Connexus Bioinformatics.
We've had Dr. Pellick on the show before to discuss natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2,
alongside Dr. Jack James Lyons-Wyler.
Now Mrs. Lewis recently participated in Connexus' ongoing study on the markers of natural immunity
to the SARS-CoV-2 virus among the general population.
I participated as well.
Now unsurprisingly, Dr. Pellick's team identified that she had, quote, extremely high levels
of antibodies, which we understand is not the only way to measure immunity to the virus.
There's many, many ways, and the point is this is but one, and she's got robust signs
of immunity.
So despite this robust evidence in support of withdrawing this arbitrary policy from
Mrs. Lewis and everyone else in such a situation, they continue to insist that it remains.
There appears to have been little recognition in response to this letter.
I quote, on April 3rd, one of the transplant physicians informed her that despite these
test results, which show she has natural immunity to COVID-19, nothing had changed in regard
to health care policies pertaining to COVID-19 vaccination requirements, and she would still
need to receive the COVID-19 vaccines before they would agree to give her an organ transplant.
He told her that the Connexus report concluded that even with natural immunity, she would
need a booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
However, the report does not say anything about Ms. Lewis needing a booster dose of
the COVID-19 vaccine to maintain immunity to COVID-19.
I can confirm that.
I've read the report.
It says nothing of the sort, and knowing Dr. Pellick, he would not say that particular
piece of advice.
Now updates on Mrs. Lewis's case can be found, or I suppose Ms. Lewis can be found on the
JCCF's website.
I wish her continued health and hopefully well-being despite her ongoing struggle to
be treated, and I urge those reading and listening to remember that there are many people still
falling victim to harmful and deadly policies such as these.
All right, moving on.
This will be our primary story for the day.
Two New York residents arrested for running illegal Chinese police station.
On Monday, April 17th, the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York held
a press conference to announce that they had arrested two New York residents for their
role in running an illegal Chinese police station within the city of New York.
Standing alongside representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and national
security officials from the Department of Justice, District Attorney Breon Peace described
the charges pending against Harry Lu Jianwang and Chen Jingping, both citizens of the United
States.
The unsealed filing notes that their prosecution was, quote, in connection with opening and
operating an illegal police station, an illegal overseas police station located in lower Manhattan,
New York for a provincial branch of the Ministry of Public Security.
And now my mouse has broken, unfortunately.
Okay.
Man, these technical issues just keep on coming.
All right.
Well, my visuals will update once my mouse comes back online.
Anyway, for a provincial branch of the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic
of China.
So this story may sound familiar to the, ah, here we go.
Visuals are back.
It may sound familiar to those who have been paying attention sort of at least to some
degree to the news for a while, but perhaps like me, you've had some of the details pass
you by.
Certainly there appears to be an escalation of sorts in rhetoric and actions between China
and the collective West, which I use to refer to the broad coalition of North America, Europe,
Australasia, the West, as new trade relations form in the East and military action looms
around Taiwan.
As pointed out in the Globe and Mail, this undercurrent of covert so-called Chinese police
stations spans far wider than just New York City.
On Wednesday this week, the outlet reported that the FBI discovered photographic evidence
on Liu Jianwen's cell phone that showed, quote, the opening of a similar covert station
in Canada.
It's not just North America, though.
Among the people depicted in a collection of other photos on the phone were, quote,
association presidents from Spain, France, Canada, and the Netherlands, an affidavit
in support of Monday's arrest warrants said.
Now where did this stem from?
This story started somewhere.
A couple of months ago we started hearing about it and it was confusing.
It remains confusing.
So where was the source?
Who first started talking about this?
Well, in September 2022, a non-governmental organization, an NGO called Safeguard Defenders
published an investigative report titled 110 Overseas detailing the People's Republic
of China's efforts to persuade Chinese nationals to return to their home country.
Officially, the government's campaign is aimed at individuals accused of telecommunications
fraud and web crimes that needed to be prosecuted within China.
However, the report argues that using threats and intimidation to target suspects abroad
amounted to violations of international law while, quote, eschewing official bilateral
police and judicial cooperation.
What I mean is there are agreements in place for this kind of thing.
There's extradition treaties and of course these differ between nations.
But the point is a system exists already to do this.
If there are indeed criminals engaging in various kinds of fraud that China has accused
and they want to try them back home, there are systems to accomplish that.
But the system described here is allegedly operating outside of those systems and therefore
outside of international law.
Now the report by Safeguard Defenders is cited as the basis on which the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police, the RCMP, began their investigation back in November of last year given that,
quote, the organization's list of the so-called Chinese police stations includes two in Markham,
Ontario, and one in the Scarborough area of Toronto.
And as far as I can tell, all of the news reports, all of the discussion around this
topic always cite this report.
It stems back to this report from this NGO.
So who is this NGO?
Well the publisher of 110 Overseas, Safeguard Defenders, is a non-profit organization registered
in Spain under the name Fundación Safeguard Defenders.
Its origins go back to an organization called the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group founded
in 2009 by Michael Castor and Peter Dahlin.
Called China Action for short, the group operated out of Beijing until 2016.
At that point in time, the Ministry of State Security, slightly different than the Ministry
of Public Security, detained and interrogated Dahlin over the course of 23 days.
The agency then forced China Action to shut down as they were supposedly operating illegally
within China and sent Dahlin fleeing to Madrid, Spain.
After a short period of laying low, the group reorganized into Safeguard Defenders, eventually
registering with the Spanish government in 2019.
But they were operating pretty much as soon as they arrived in Spain.
Now it's important to note, Safeguard Defenders opened an office in Taiwan in May 2022.
Taiwan of course is the focus of much tension between China and the United States.
Given the organization's self-declared opposition to the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, it
is worth investigating the source of Safeguard Defenders funding in order to ascertain any
outside influence that may threaten the NGO's supposed independence.
Otherwise you go from non-governmental organization to pseudo-governmental organization.
Now unfortunately, this information of who funds the NGO is not readily disclosed.
However, as the fairly transparently pro-CCP outlet CGTN reported in April 2021, the organization
previously received grants from the National Endowment for Democracy and the European Union,
which the outlet suggests were signs that China Action and its successor were operating
to some degree as agents of the United States government.
Note that Safeguard Defenders had filed formal complaints against CGTN with the Federal Communications
Commission, the FCC, and its European equivalent, the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel,
or the CSA.
So it's certainly accurate to accuse or to suggest that the article's author, Keith
Lamb, is biased.
He is.
It is not, however, in question that China Action was funded by the National Endowment
for Democracy and the European Union, as confirmed by many reports such as this one by the New
York Times and others.
I'll just quote from this article here, they appeared intent on gathering information about
groups financed by the National Endowment for Democracy, for example, even though the
European Union had given more money to Mr. Dalin's group, he said.
The National Endowment for Democracy said in a statement that it had not determined
the origins of the document shown to Mr. Dalin, nor how the Chinese authorities obtained a
copy, because indeed this passage is describing during his 23-day detainment, the Chinese
government came to him and presented him with documents showing that they knew that the
National Endowment for Democracy had funded the group.
And no one denies that.
They're a little confused how they got them.
But the premise is China is a little bit suspicious of non-government organizations that receive
funding from the government.
Now it's not for bad reason necessarily, because it is also true that the National Endowment
for Democracy has been described by both American and Chinese representatives as a surrogate
for US intelligence agencies.
In fact, Alan Weinstein, co-founder of the National Endowment for Democracy, infamously
told the Washington Post in 1991, quote, a lot of what we do today was done covertly,
25 years ago by the CIA.
The article continues, the biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly,
the flap potential is close to zero.
Openness is its own protection.
So China agrees big time.
A fact sheet published by the China Ministry of Foreign Affairs in May 2022 describes NED
as quote, one of the US government's main foot soldiers, white gloves and democracy
crusaders having subverted lawful governments and cultivated pro-US puppet forces around
the world under the pretext of promoting democracy.
Which is interesting because that seems sort of like exactly what is being leveled at China
in terms of accusations, that they are operating extra judicially or outside of the standard
systems of intergovernmental relations.
Perhaps you would say it's the opposite side of the same coin.
An accompanying article by Global Times states that NED is nominally an NGO that provides
support for democracy abroad, but in fact, it relies on continuous financial support
from the White House and Congress and takes orders from the US government.
Now as I said, the organization Safeguard Defenders doesn't list its sources of funding
citing safety concerns for its staff and partners.
But the list of team members publicly listed offers another look at the network behind
the organization.
I'm just going to look at one particular gentleman.
Chen Yangting, a coordinator whose biography lists prior journalistic work for Radio Free
Asia.
Now contrary to what the name suggests, Radio Free Asia is actually a subsidiary.
It's part of a network of related media organizations under the United States Agency for Global
Media.
Formerly called the Broadcasting Board of Governors, USAGM is an agency funded and operated
entirely by the United States government.
I want to reiterate this.
It is not simply funded by.
It is in fact an agency of the United States government, just like the FDA, just like the
CDC, just like the Department of Justice.
It operates as an independent agency of the United States government.
Radio Free Asia's board of directors includes Shanti Kalafil, who formerly served as senior
director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy.
So it's getting kind of hard to escape this NED connection here.
Now just because I have done some previous research that has brought me up close and
personal with the USAGM, I wanted to add two further points of interest, just for some
expansion of context.
USAGM is serviced by an investigative intelligence compliance staffing and training contractor
called Computer Evidence Specialists or CES, who also work for a range of federal agencies,
including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or CMS, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Agency or CISA, the Food and Drug Administration or the FDA, and the Departments
of Homeland Security, Justice, Interior, Veterans Affairs, and the Navy.
It's in good company.
The second piece of info I want to add is that USAGM is a client of the Poynter Institute,
which lists, by the way, the National Endowment for Democracy as a major funder, and hosts
the infamously dishonest PolitiFact and the International Fact-Checking Network.
Those are programs of the Poynter Institute.
Okay.
Now Ying Ting also previously wrote for Indium Media, whose logo is on the left on the screen
here, and Indium is an outlet backed by venture capital firm W.I.
Harper Group, which has offices in San Francisco, Taipei, and Beijing.
I wanted to learn a little more.
Who is this group?
Well, in April 2020, W.I.
Harper released a statement noting that despite the burgeoning COVID-19 crisis, solidarity
is awakening in the global community.
The statement went on to summarize the efforts of its various portfolio companies in responding
to the declared COVID-19 pandemic.
The listed activities include making and distributing ventilators to Italian hospitals and households
in Europe, an artificial intelligence platform called Project COVID, which describes itself
as a vaccine against misinformation, a remote learning company, a food delivery service,
a digital ID system for medical credentials, and no less than nine news websites.
Okay.
And interestingly, W.I.
Harper Group also appears alongside no less than the World Economic Forum on a 2017 clients
and affiliates list for Entertainment Media Ventures, a company, quote, operating at the
intersection of entertainment, technology, and finance.
You'll see also on this logo wall, we've got Thomson Reuters, which is a Canadian and now
global firm that is, I believe, one of the originators of the Trusted News Initiative,
which has been very happy to channel which information we get and which ones we don't.
You also have UCLA, the Fielding School of Public Health, so Yale School of Management,
so on and so forth.
Okay.
So there you go.
So that's just some context as to who the people are behind this NGO, who may be funding
the NGO currently or indirectly, but definitely formally.
So we're going to land this particular thread here and note that this illegal police station
business is not the only interesting ongoing story involving China.
In fact, to my eye, there seems to be an increasing number of strange narrative threads afoot
with decreasing clarity as to what is real and what is propaganda.
You might call it the fog of war, maybe the fog of impending war.
So if something is propaganda, even when we can identify it reasonably as such, it's even
less clear who is trying to propagandize who.
I'm going to introduce another thread of thought here, something that I've come to learn.
So, this happened.
You may have seen this, maybe not.
Four days ago, a New York rapper named DVS 7.0 boasted on Twitter that he, quote, snapped
on shumbag shifty little Adam Schiff referring, of course, to United States Representative
Adam Schiff from California.
Now, I'm going to see if I can play a video here.
I would like to be able to have us hear exactly what went down.
So let's watch this.
Hey, Schiff, are you going to do another one of those parodies where you make up?
Let's try that again.
Hey, Schiff, are you going to do another one of those parodies where you make up transcripts
again?
Are you going to make up another transcript, Mr. Schiff?
Are you going to fake stories again?
Hey, Schiff, second video.
Yo, what happened?
Telling the truth, that's it.
Hey, can you get my battery, please?
Yeah, yeah, got you.
Oh, my book bag.
Yo, book bag, get his book bag.
Y'all just taking him outside?
Are you guys taking him outside or taking him to a prison?
Thank you for the silence, big heads.
Forgive the language, but as you can see, there was a bit of discussion ongoing there.
So what happened is after exercising his right to criticize his elected official with perhaps
just a hint of harassment thrown in, DVS 7.0 was handcuffed and removed from the premises.
I don't believe he was actually placed under arrest.
I may be wrong.
Now, he had been giving Schiff a hard time throughout his appearance that day at what I learned was
the House Judiciary Committee's meeting on crime, sending him as a result to such viral heights
as being mentioned on the official website for Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.
Standard mega political stuff, right?
Except that DVS 7.0 appears to have gained the support of a very interesting group of anti-Chinese
Communist Party activists.
The replies, if you scroll through to DVS 7.0's tweet, a significant number of them were left by
users with Chinese characters in their name, which on its own doesn't mean anything.
But let's take a look at a few.
One such commenter named Wan Liu uses his bio to describe himself and an unspecified group of others
as the citizens from the new federal state of China.
Hmm.
And just to read his tweet, thank you so much for fighting against the injustice.
We free loving Chinese people will stand with you and the free loving American people to fight for
our freedom until we have our own democracy.
Thank you, sir.
Your songs are very nice.
I love them.
Very kind.
Another user going by the name Ants Castle One.
His bio simply reads hashtag free miles.
Whoa.
Now, both users in these cases, they reference in their tweets DVS 7.0's music with yet another user
specifically thanking him for the recent release of a song titled Free Miles Go.
Note the interesting design in his profile picture as well.
He says, thank you so much, my brother.
What you speak out is the voice in my mind.
I love your song.
Free Miles Go appreciated for your support to justice.
Now, Free Miles Go.
OK, so we have a song to listen to.
It was released on April 8th, 2023, and it can be heard on iTunes, Spotify and YouTube for those so inclined.
We're just going to listen to the opening monologue included in the track.
So Miles Go's arrest has started a new revolution, the American Revolution of the independence movement from the CCP led by the new federal state of China.
Free Miles Go!
So as you may have heard, it alludes to a new revolution against the CCP and once again names this new federal state of China.
And at the end, she screams Free Miles Go.
As you can see, the cover art once again features the name and face of a man who's beginning to simmer to the surface here a little.
His name is Miles Go.
Or is it?
Now, this is a question that we'll seek to answer next week.
As I believe there is a very interesting Miles Go string to pull that may further illuminate what's going on as far as China's current role in North America goes.
For today, questions are what we're left with.
Whatever is going on in this interesting little thread here, DVS 7.0 is not acting as a bystander.
It seems his interaction with Schiff is part of a larger effort, a larger campaign that DVS has chosen to join up with, for better or worse.
We're looking at a picture of DVS 7.0 wearing a t-shirt at the event that says Free Miles Go!
Stop CCP's weaponization of the DOJ, FBI, and perhaps CIA...oh, SEC.
Take down the Chinese Communist Party.
Now, I don't know DVS, and I certainly do not cast aspersions at him.
I have nothing, no beef with DVS.
Though, I admit, this collection of details just in the last couple of minutes leaves me faintly alarmed, given the uncertain nature of what the heck is going on between China and the rest of the world.
So look, I hope this episode has laid out reasons, using these two examples, to treat both sides of this China vs. US vs. the North vs. whatever story as unreliable narrators, and remind listeners slash readers of the importance of rounding the news of its most biased points.
Identifying sources of funding and ideological bend are key to processing the onslaught of information funneled in our direction every day.
And only then can one begin to seek the truth somewhere in the middle of it all.
In the meantime, a personal word of caution.
Trust, but not blindly. Verify, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Use your conscience as your filter, and don't hesitate to leave a situation if your instinct says it's time.
But don't make the mistake of losing faith in the good nature of people hidden deep underneath layers of confusion and apprehension.
There surely are bad actors out there, and their influence is disproportionate, but they are the few. Good people are the many.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for watching this episode of Rounding the News. If you want to support the show or continue diving into the show notes and engaging in discussion about this and other topics, join us over at roundingtheearth.locals.com.
If you want to financially support the show, you can do so for as little as $5 a month over there.
I also, as always, recommend if you haven't yet become a subscriber to roundingtheearth.substack.com, which is written by Matthew Crawford, the founder of Rounding the Earth, then I highly recommend you waste no further time doing so.
And last but not least, as a musician, I would love if everybody gave five minutes to go and visit me at liamsturgis.com, where I think you will find, well, no songs about Miles Guo yet, but other music you may very well enjoy and hopefully brighten your day just a little.
But in the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, thank you again, and we will see you on Monday.
Thank you.