Watch on Rumble

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to share with you that after careful thought, I have decided to bring my time with Rounding the Earth to a close.

Back in June 2022, approached me to ask if I would be interested in helping him start a podcast under the Rounding the Earth banner. I was honoured that he asked; Mathew and I had slowly but surely grown closer through our work collaborating on the Campfire Wiki and related projects with .

He suggested that in addition to producing the podcast, we would co-host the flagship Round Table series, and furthermore, I would deliver a weekly news roundup on my own.

After returning from A Citizens’ Hearing later that month, we announced our very first episode. It was a Round Table discussion with my (new) friends and titled “Science is Antiauthoritarian”.

It was a resounding success, and the show has continued to be ever since. I’ve had the opportunity to speak to and learn from dozens of people I now call friends, and have gotten to act as a conduit for the layperson seeking to understand the complexities of the post-2020 world.

Why am I leaving RTE?

The reasons behind my choice to move on from the RTE podcast are several, and are largely positive ones. Mathew and I had spoken in recent weeks about possible changes to reflect where we had come in terms of audience size and time management, so this was certainly not a decision made out of the blue.

Furthermore, Mathew was explicit from the get-go that Rounding the Earth was a platform for education, and that included for me. While my background is in audio engineering and media production, I am a layperson when it comes to science, mathematics and politics, and did not have any credentials or publications under my belt. Instead, running the RTE podcast has itself been an excellent term at the School of Hard Knocks.

More than anything, Mathew made sure I had space to express my own voice in my journey of learning and trial and error. Rounding the News was the core of this. Every week, I chose the pieces of news that felt were the most interesting and relevant, and sought to present the news in a fair, balanced light. What started as an improvised ramble evolved into a refined presentation, complete with show notes that satisfied my insatiable attention to detail (for better or for worse).

This process has helped me find my voice and sharpen my skills of discernment and presentation. I live my life as a more conscious, open-minded and well-read person thanks to the challenge that Mathew gave me.

It’s also taken a lot of work to get here, and that workload has grown alongside the show. I’ve loved the vast majority of it, but I admit, I now find myself eternally lacking for time and energy to focus on my number one passion: music.

I decided in 2013 that I was going to be a musician, and that was a recognition of both my strengths and limitations. In the end, music will always reassert itself as the dominant force in my life, and I can only stay detached from it for so long before I will quite literally shrivel up and die.

And so, back to music I go. Or, more precisely, back to me music comes. I intend to have these separated branches of my life meet once again, no longer divided into the “COVID world” and the “real world.” What I do moving forward will be as my whole self.

What’s next?

Let’s be real: there remains much work to do. March 2020 saw the beginning of the COVID-19 “pandemic”, and May 2023 saw its end. But we all know the true fallout from the last few years is still ongoing, and the crisis we face is far larger than just one of healthcare, or “biodefense”, or any variation of the coronavirus story.

But the reality we’re fighting for will take all of us. All kinds of people. Not just the doctors, or the politicians, or the lawyers, or the truckers, or the philosophers. Not just the police, or the military, or the next U.S. President, or Canadian Prime Minister, or that business magnate, or celebrities in general.

It’s gonna take you and I.

…and all of those other fine folks, too.

This is all to say that my work will continue unabated. Some of that will be on my own, and other parts will continue within the greater Rounding the Earth community, and my family within the Canadian Covid Care Alliance. I’m about to hop on a call with my crew, where we’ll be discussing what comes next for us as a community.

Battles remain in the court of law, and even bigger ones to go in the court of public opinion. I intend to help in both. In fact, I’ve got some rather exciting ideas, which I will share with you very shortly. Needless to say, my passion for “deep dives” like the ones you’ve seen in Rounding the News will continue, likely without interruption. That will continue to be done here on Substack, and likely also on my own platforms on Rumble, Locals, Odysee, and Sovren.

For that reason, if you’ve enjoyed my work so far, then remaining a subscriber to this Substack is a great idea. If you want to, you could even upgrade to a paid subscription to help me weather the short period in which I will be without the income I earned from RTE.

Final thoughts and gratitude

In the meantime, however, I want to express my deepest gratitude to Mathew Crawford for believing in me, and taking me under his wing. It’s been a truly wild 10 months developing the Rounding the Earth podcast with you, and I know you will continue to bring it to even greater heights. And of course, none of that would have been possible without the people who make up the Rounding the Earth community. Whether you tune in to our livestreams to engage in discussions with us, or participated in our Locals community, or caught the shows after the fact, you’re the reason it all worked.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Love and optimism,

Liam

Rounding the Earth

The following article serves as the show notes for the video presentation of the same name released through the Rounding the News series, presented by Rounding the Earth. It is provided to allow RTE listeners to verify my sources and conduct their own due diligence, and is intended as a supplement to the video. As such, I highly encourage readers of this Substack to watch the full episode and support Rounding the Earth, whose founder Mathew Crawford has provided me the platform and resources to conduct this important work. Thank you, Rounding the Earth!

Watch on Rumble

David Boulware

Early life and education

David R. Boulware was born in 1974. He attended Wabash College where he pledged Phi Kappa Psi. His fellow fraternity brothers would later describe him as “intelligent, humble, and well balanced,” and “able to balance academics, fraternity life, and athletics, too, as a member of the cross country team.”1 He graduated in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry.2

He later attended the Indiana University School of Medicine, graduating in 2000.3 He completed an internal medicine-pediatrics residency and an infectious disease fellowship from 2000-2007 at the University of Minnesota, receiving a certificate in tropical medicine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2006. He completed his Masters in Public Health in 2007 in Minnesota.

Career

In 2007, Boulware became an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Disease and International Medicine at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Medicine.

As one of his first projects in his new position, Boulware began working within the university’s Center for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Translational Research (CIDMT) under the leadership of Dr. Paul Bohjanen. Founded in 2005, CIDMT’s stated mission was “to discover mechanisms of pathogenesis that can be translated into new treatments and strategies for prevention of infectious diseases.”4

More specifically, Bohjanen and his team were one half of a long-term collaborative effort between the University of Minnesota and medical researchers in the African nation of Uganda. A 2008 article in MinnPost provides a summary of the origins of the collaboration:5

“The story began in 2003 when Dr. Paul Bohjanen came to Kampala to help train African physicians in the use of HIV medicine. Bohjanen brought the wisdom of experience because he treats HIV/AIDS at the University of Minnesota Medical Center. He also co-directs the university's Center for Infectious Disease and Microbiology Translational Research. …

In Uganda, Bohjanen met the full brutal force of the HIV pandemic. It had killed nearly a million people, one in every 27 Ugandans. A million more were living under its death sentence. Their only hope for a reprieve was in HIV drugs, which were just beginning to trickle into sub-Saharan Africa. …

Back in Minneapolis, Bohjanen recruited a colleague, Dr. David Boulware. The University of Minnesota's Academic Health Center contributed $200,000. More funding came from a philanthropic arm of the company Tibotec and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Boulware and Bohjanen boarded planes for Kampala two or three times a year, staying two to four weeks at a time. Students and fellows from the university's schools of medicine and public health filled gaps between their shifts.

Of note is the fact that the MinnPost article acknowledges that “reporting for this article was supported by the Pulitzer Center On Crisis Reporting in Washington, D.C.” The Pulitzer Center is itself funded by a number of organizations who may find it in their interest to influence the way in which infectious diseases in Africa is covered in the media, including:6

• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

• Meta Journalism Project

• Nuclear Threat Initiative

• Omidyar Network

• Open Society Foundations

• Planned Parenthood

• Population Services International (PSI)

• Rockefeller Brothers Fund

• Rockefeller Foundation

• United Nations Foundation

• William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

…among others. It may be, of course, that the Pulitzer Center had a different, less conflicted set of donors back in 2008.

As described in the above article, Boulware and Bohjanen would travel to Uganda “two or three times a year, staying two to four weeks at a time,” where they would conduct research on the genetics of HIV/AIDS. They would also run clinical trials on various therapeutics on sick patients at the partner hospitals of the Infectious Diseases Institute.

Infectious Diseases Institute

The Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) operates out of Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.

It was “conceived” in 2001 by a group that included noted HIV/AIDS researcher Merle Sande, Makerere University School of Medicine Dean Nelson Sewankambo, and Hank McKinnell, former CEO and Chairman of Pfizer.7 This led to the formation of a non-profit organization called the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa, or simply the “Academic Alliance,” which then set about founding the Infectious Diseases Institute in 2002.8

Initial funding for the project came from Pfizer, distributed through a separate foundation called the Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation.9 Within the span of just a few years, the IDI would develop strong relationships with American institutions including Johns Hopkins University, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and, of course, the University of Minnesota.10

As previously noted, Boulware and Bohjanen’s work with the IDI was funded by the University of Minnesota, the National Institutes of Health and a pharmaceutical company called Tibotec (a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson which would later become Janssen Therapeutics).11 But the IDI would quickly find themselves on the receiving end of a tremendous amount of money for the full range of their activities. Sponsors and financial supporters over the years include:12131415

• Abbott

• Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation

• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

• Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)’s Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP)

• Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

• European Commission

• Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics

• Gilead Sciences

• The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

• Leidos

• Massachusetts General Hospital

• Merck

• Mérieux Foundation

• Microsoft Research

• National Institutes of Health (NIH)

  • National Cancer Institute (NCI)

  • National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

    • Division of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (DAIDS)

• Novartis

• Pfizer

• President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

• President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI)

• RAND Corporation

• Rockefeller Foundation

• UNICEF

• Unitaid

• United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

• United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)

• United States Department of Defense

• University of Washington

• Wellcome Trust

• World Health Organization

Boulware’s focus during his time working with the Infectious Diseases Institute has been “understanding the pathogenesis of HIV immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS), an important complication of HIV therapy that has recently emerged with the roll out of antiretroviral therapy in Africa.” Specifically, he and his team have been “prospectively characterizing the differences in gene expression that occur over time among people who develop IRIS. The objective is to identify the pathophysiology of IRIS, identify biomarkers for the prediction and diagnosis of IRIS, and develop better treatments for and to prevent IRIS.”16

Boulware’s early interest in genetic medicine should not be overlooked. Neither should the fact that his colleagues at the time also took particular interest in mRNA as the mechanism for both cause of HIV-related disease and how to potentially treat it.

Dr. Bojnanen’s profile from January 2009 explains:17

“One mechanism that cells use to turn off gene expression is specific mRNA decay within the cytoplasm. Dr. Bohjanen is working to understand the biochemical mechanisms that regulate mRNA decay and to understand the role of mRNA decay in regulating gene expression in disease states such as malignancy or virus infection.”

Meanwhile, CIDMT Co-Director Mark Schleiss was “engaged in the study of CMV vaccines,” specifically (but not exclusively) “purified protein subunit and DNA vaccines.”18

Boulware’s various publications arising from this work disclose funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.1920 In 2009, he received a research grant from GlaxoSmithKline for a project titled “HIV Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome in Uganda”, lasting until the end of 2015.21

From March 2015-February 2018, Boulware acted as Principal Investigator on a project at the Infectious Diseases Institute titled “Adjunctive Sertraline for the Treatment of HIV-Associated Cryptococcal Meningitis”.22 The resulting study was published in August 2019, and found that the Pfizer-developed antidepressant “did not reduce mortality and should not be used to treat patients with HIV-associated cryptococcal meningitis.”23 It also noted support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which — as I’ve previously noted — hosts former NIAID head Anthony Fauci and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance director Afsaneh Beschloss on its board of trustees.24

Boulware began a second trial in May 2016 titled “Cryptococcal Antigen Screening Plus Sertraline (C-ASSERT)”.25 Originally scheduled to run until April 2023, the trial was cancelled in late 2019 after several Ugandan trial subjects suffered psychotic episodes associated with the sertraline, with one lasting greater than four months.2627

Note that sertraline (also known as Zoloft) is part of a class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) — a class which also includes a drug later explored for its effects on COVID-19, fluvoxamine.

While Boulware has spent years swimming in the pool of HIV/AIDS research, his real focus is on a condition called cryptococcal meningitis. In a 2016 article published in Newsweek, Boulware describes it as “so neglected that it's not even considered a 'neglected disease.’"28 "It just gets lumped with HIV, so no one sees it and no one really cares." The next paragraph points out that so-called neglected diseases have “benefited significantly from product development partnerships” (PDP), for which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides the most funding globally, including to public-private partnerships like PATH, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), the TB Alliance. But somehow, Boulware’s niche disease wasn’t seeing any of that Gates funding. He advocates in particular for a new screening tool called the Cryptococcal Antigen Lateral Flow Assay, or CrAg LFA, developed by a diagnostics company called Immuno-Mycologics, or “IMMY”, which had received the support of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI).

The really interesting part of this article comes right at the end, where Newsweek reveals that it, too, had created the piece with funding from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

One of Boulware's HIV studies at the IDI, published in December 2017, was featured in the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)' August 2018 report titled “Miles to Go”.293031

Relationships with pharmaceutical companies

In a presentation delivered at the 2018 Mycoses Study Group Education & Research Consortium (MSGERC) biennial meeting, Boulware discloses that he has received research funding from none other than Gilead Sciences — the pharmaceutical company responsible for the development of the drug we now know as remdesivir.32

He also discloses serving as an advisor to Viamet and Minnetronix. Viamet Pharmaceuticals was a biotechnology company founded in 2005 by two researchers out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Northwestern University.33 Viamet discovered and developed “small-molecule inhibitors of validated metalloenzymes via an innovative and proprietary metal-binding approach” called “Metallophile™ Technology.”34 Viamet’s investors included Astellas Venture Management, Eli Lilly’s Lilly Ventures and the Novartis Venture Fund.35

On June 3, 2015, Viamet announced it had been awarded a $1.95 million grant from the United States Department of Defense to develop “a novel topical antifungal agent to prevent and treat mold infections as a result of battlefield wounds” — more specifically, the treatment of Valley Fever.36 In April 2016, the company reported co-owning six patents with the United States government through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).37

Of particular interest to David Boulware would be Viamet’s drug called VT-1129, which it had developed for treatment of cryptococcal meningitis. Indeed, Boulware served as senior author on a study published in September 2016 that found “VT-1129 shows potential for use against fluconazole-resistant Cryptococcus,” for which he received funding from Viamet.38

Viamet was acquired by NovaQuest Capital management in January 2018 and renamed Mycovia Pharmaceuticals shortly after.3940

Boulware contributed as a site investigator for the AMBIsome Therapy Induction OptimisatioN clinical trial investigating the use of Gilead’s AmBisome in treating cryptococcal meningitis, published in the journal Trials in November 2018. The trial was sponsored by Gilead, who had also paid the senior author.41

Matinas BioPharma

Returning back to Boulware’s 2018 MSGERC presentation for a moment, we see that he is proposing running clinical trials on a drug called “oral amphotericin”, also to treat cryptococcal meningitis. Luckily for him, he would receive funding for this project from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) in March 2019.42 Phase I of his clinical trial, titled “Encochleated Oral Amphotericin for Cryptococcal Meningitis Trial (EnACT)”, began at the Infectious Diseases Institute in Uganda on October 24, 2019.43

Amphotericin is an antifungal medication developed by a biopharmaceutical company called Matinas BioPharma. Matinas was founded in 2013 by Jerry Jabbour and Abdel Fawzy.444546

On January 10, 2019, Matinas announced it had entered an agreement with an undisclosed pharmaceutical company to “evaluate synergistic effects of Matinas’ lipid-nano-crystal (“LNC”) platform delivery technology with their partner’s nucleic acid polymer technology.”47 CEO Jerome Jabbour said that the collaboration would “provide solutions for companies developing innovative nucleic acid polymers, small molecule drugs, vaccines, proteins and potentially even gene-editing technologies.”

What exactly is a “lipid-nano-crystal”? According to Matinas’ website, their “proprietary intracellular LNC platform is designed to safely deliver a broad range of potent medicines – including small molecules, drugs with blood level-limiting toxicities, nucleic acid polymers, proteins, peptides, vaccines, and gene editing technologies.”48 In other words, the LNC certainly seems very similar in premise and application to the now-familiar lipid nanoparticle (LNP), as used in the COVID-19 genetic vaccine products deployed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. The main difference, at least in terms of sales pitch, appears to be in their “natural, non-toxic and highly efficient spiral crystal… with the unique ability to be administered orally and through various other routes.”

The real shocker comes later down on the same webpage.

In December 2020, Matinas announced it had been tapped by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to evaluate oral formulations of Gilead Sciences’s antiviral drug remdesivir in its potential treatment against COVID-19.

Matinas’ good pandemic fortunes didn’t stop there. On April 11, 2022, Matinas and BioNTech announced a research collaboration “to evaluate a novel delivery technology for mRNA-based vaccines.”49

Then, in January 2023, Matinas and National Resilience “entered into a Material Transfer and Evaluation Agreement focused on exploring the potential for oral delivery of identified nucleic acids.”50

In early 2023, the company sought funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and continued into its third project with Genentech. It’s unclear to me if Genentech was the mystery company first mentioned in 2019, or if that company remains unnamed.

While Boulware was not, to my knowledge, involved in any of the above research collaborations, they all occurred while he was actively running his EnACT clinical trial. Given that he has been on Matinas’ payroll since just prior to the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of these new partnerships would begin to compound the perceived conflicts of interest for anything Boulware might touch related to COVID-19 moving forward. Of course, by 2019, he had already disclosed receiving research funding from Gilead.51

Note, of course, that all of the companies and organizations that Matinas describes are directly involved in the development, manufacturing or deployment of the various COVID-19 genetic vaccine products currently on the market. NIAID co-developed Moderna’s mRNA-1273 and owns the patented coronavirus spike protein used in both Moderna and Pfizer-BioTech’s products.5253 BioNTech needs no elaboration, as the primary developer of the BNT162b2 product marketed by Pfizer. National Resilience is the CIA/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-linked manufacturer of synthetic RNA in the United States and Canada, particularly for Moderna’s product, co-led by former FDA commissioner Scott Gotlieb.54 BARDA kickstarted Moderna with substantial early funding,55 and Genentech did the same with BioNTech.56

The EnACT study is marked as completed on ClinicalTrials.gov as of February 15, 2023.

COVID-19 early treatment

At the outset of the declared COVID-19 pandemic, David Boulware was quick to jump into action. In an NPR article published March 31, 2020, Boulware points out that his “normal research is doing clinical trials in Africa for fungal meningitis of the brain,” but on March 9, chose to get his team together and spin up some clinical trials for repurposed drugs to treat COVID-19.57

And thus, Boulware began his work as the principal investigator for the first randomized clinical trial testing hydroxychloroquine for its use against COVID-19. The trial, titled Post-exposure Prophylaxis or Preemptive Treatment for SARS-Coronavirus-2, kicked off on March 17, 2020.58

Funding for the trial was provided by Jan and David Baszucki, Steve Kirsch, the University of Minnesota Foundation, the Alliance of Minnesota Chinese Organizations and Minnesota Chinese Chamber of Commerce.59

David Baszucki is the creator of Roblox, a video game which saw “dramatic growth during the Covid-19 pandemic as children who were forced to stay home spent more time playing games.”60 It also has a bit of a “sex problem,” as noted in a report from BBC News outlining various instances of sexual content in the game ostensibly made for kids — including a so-called “virtual sexual assault.”61

Steve Kirsch is certainly no stranger to the Rounding the Earth audience. Steve founded the COVID-19 Early Treatment Fund (CETF) in April 2020 in order to fund trials on repurposed drugs, starting with Boulware’s trial on hydroxychloroquine.62 Boulware later told MIT Technology Review that “Kirsch was extremely helpful early on in the pandemic, stepping up to fund early treatment trials when the US government would not fund such studies.”63 Donors to the CETF included the Baszuckis, Elon Musk, Marc Benioff, Vint Cerf (co-inventor of the internet), the Skoll Foundation, and Vanguard Charitable.64

Despite the enthusiasm and name power of the trial funders, on June 3, 2020, Boulware’s team announced that they found that “hydroxychloroquine has no benefit over placebo in preventing COVID-19.”65

However, it is worth noting that the placebo in question was folic acid — a rather strange choice, given that folic acid had its own evidence of clinical benefit in helping patients with COVID-19.6667

A little-discussed point about this first trial was that it also had a Canadian branch, co-led by the University of Alberta, University of Manitoba and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.68 Further funding for the Canadian branch came from:

• Bridge to Health Medical and Dental

• Manitoba Medical Service Foundation

• McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity (MI4)

• McGill University Health Centre (MUHC)

• Northern Alberta Clinical Trials and Research Centre

• Research Institute of St. Joe's Hamilton

• St. Joseph's Hospital Foundation

I’ve spent more time than most of my American friends researching the academic health networks here in Canada, as these were the institutions leading the charge in our COVID-19 response. One of the above funders that I find particularly interesting is the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity (MI4).

MI4 provided a significant amount of research funding towards projects related to COVID-19 through their “MI4 Emergency COVID-19 Research Funding” program. Here are some examples of titles of the funded projects:69

• Development of a new Virus-like Particle (VLP) vaccine against COVID-19

• Real-Time Tracking of COVID-19 Vaccine Development

• Ethical tensions of implementing research during a crisis: Understanding moral experiences of healthcare providers caring for patients who are enrolled in CoViD-19 clinical trials

• Expert and Lay Perceptions of Translation of COVID19 Treatment and Vaccine Development

• Success Rate and Timeline for Development of Vaccines for Emerging and Reemerging Viral Infectious Diseases

• COVID-19 Vaccines - Novel Approaches to Tackle a Novel Disease

• Effect of coronavirus pandemic and health care system response on non-COVID-19-related mortality, post pandemic myocardial infarction and heart failure rates in Quebec; a collateral damage in this war?

• Health Communication, Sociocultural Diversity, and COVID-19

Notably, MI4 announced in December 2020 that it had received a $600,000 gift from Pfizer towards the creation of the Pfizer Early Career Investigator Awards.70

In June 2020, Gilead Sciences announced that their newly-Emergency Use Authorized remdesivir would come at a cost of $3,120 per dose. Asked for comment, Boulware offered that “from the health system perspective, if remdesivir can shorten duration of hospitalization by four days, then the medicine provides a reasonable value.”71

TOGETHER Trial

Hydroxychloroquine wasn’t the end of the line for David Boulware. He also participated as a senior investigator in the TOGETHER Trial, a multinational clinical trial platform launched by researchers in Canada and Brazil.72

True to its name, the TOGETHER Trial really brought everything together under one roof. In addition to its own hydroxychloroquine trial which ran in Brazil,73 the international investigators also tested HIV drugs lopinavir and ritonavir, the antidepressant fluvoxamine, molnupiravir, ivermectin, inhaled corticosteroids, metformin, interferon lambda and doxazosin.74

Boulware participated as an investigator in the ivermectin arm, which “concluded that ivermectin is not useful against the disease.”75 The New York Times quoted Boulware in their coverage of the study as saying “There’s really no sign of any benefit. Now that people can dive into the details and the data, hopefully that will steer the majority of doctors away from ivermectin towards other therapies.”76

The TOGETHER Trial was funded by the likes of the FTX Foundation, as well as Elon Musk, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, LinkedIn co-founder Reed Hoffman, tech entrepreneur Yuri Milner, Google co-founder Eric Schmidt’s Schmidt Ventures and others through Fast Grants.77

ACTIV-6

Finally, Dr. Boulware currently serves as the national co-chair of the trial steering committee for the National Institutes of Health’s ACTIV-6 platform clinical trial.78

ACTIV-6 is part of the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) initiative launched on April 17, 2020.79 In its own words, ACTIV is a public-private partnership whose executive leadership includes/included Anthony Fauci, Peter Marks and Janet Woodcock, along with top representatives from Pfizer, BARDA, and the FDA, among other pharmaceutical companies whose treatments and tests were deployed during the COVID-19 response.80

Its pre-clinical working group includes Ralph Baric from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is stock full of representatives from Pfizer, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gilead Sciences, Merck, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and Janssen.81

Conclusion

In looking over the career of David Boulware, I see a familiar theme: a man of passion and ambition working towards a successful career endpoint. For Boulware, cryptococcal meningitis is what he has always come back to, including during his work on COVID-19 early treatment trials. But just like many others who found themselves in positions of influence since 2020, his own ambition will always assert itself, and thus, it’s understandable why he would make decisions that favour the advancement of his own research.

In this case, recall that Boulware’s work from 2006 onwards has been experimenting on sick people in Uganda under the banner of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, just like Anthony Fauci, Rochelle Walensky, Margaret Hamburg and many others who have sat in the seat of power. There’s a nice way to put that, and a realistic way to put that. Realistically, the facility where he worked — the Infectious Diseases Institute — was quite literally co-founded by a Pfizer CEO, and funded heavily by Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and various branches of the United States government. Those include Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Walensky’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Hamburg’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and even Robert Malone’s colleagues at the Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

Both in the IDI and at home, Boulware’s research funding came from NIAID, from DoD-funded pharmaceutical companies, and from Gilead Sciences itself. The co-directors of his research institution have long focused on genetic aspects of viral infection, and naturally, the genetic medicines to combat it.

It seems to me that through the perceived failure of repurposed drugs to manage the COVID-19 “pandemic,” a wave of new technologies in genetic medicine have now been rolled out to the global population and normalized under the misleading banner of “vaccination”. Boulware’s most recent funder, Matinas BioPharma, has benefited tremendously from this new reality.

While this is simply an exploration and not a firm conclusion, it’s hard to see how David Boulware didn’t walk out of this as a man further along in his career, in large part thanks to his role in quashing hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, et al — rather, and more importantly, the notion that early COVID-19 treatment existed at all. In the presence of such treatment possibilities, companies like Matinas, National Resilience, BioNTech, Gilead Sciences and Moderna would all be in a different place right now.

And if there’s any question as to where Dr. Boulware lands on these genetic medicines, we need only turn to his own words.

There’s this tweet from September 17, 2022:82

And this hot take following news that Moderna’s flu “vaccine” didn’t work:83

Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) on Thursday said its closely watched experimental messenger RNA-based influenza vaccine generated a strong immune response against A strains of the flu but failed to show it was at least as effective as an approved vaccine versus less prevalent influenza B.

The results dashed investor hopes that the company might plug its COVID franchise decline, sending Moderna's shares down more than 6% in after-hours trading.

Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota Medical School, said he was not overly concerned about the immune response versus Influenza B.

Boulware said the immune response against the A strains demonstrated that the vaccine probably worked and Moderna's tweaks to the vaccine are likely to improve the response against the B strains.

"I consider it pretty positive," he said.

Needless to say, Dr. Boulware, I hope you’re right about everything. About the uselessness of the most promising early treatment protocols, about the safety and efficacy of the various COVID-19 vaccine products… about it all.

Sadly, I don’t think you are.

Rounding the Earth

The following article serves as the show notes for the video presentation of the same name released through the Rounding the News series, presented by Rounding the Earth. It is provided to allow RTE listeners to verify my sources and conduct their own due diligence, and is intended as a supplement to the video. As such, I highly encourage readers of this Substack to watch the full episode and support Rounding the Earth, whose founder Mathew Crawford has provided me the platform and resources to conduct this important work. Thank you, Rounding the Earth!

Watch on Rumble

Rochelle Walensky resigns as CDC director

Dr. Rochelle Walensky has announced her resignation as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States.

Her official reason cited was “the nation's progress in coping with COVID-19.”1 The announcement also happened to coincide with the World Health Organization’s declaration that the “global health emergency” related to COVID-19 had ended.2

Walensky was nominated to the directorship by President-elect Joe Biden on December 7, 2020, while she was employed at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.3 She replaced the outgoing Robert Redfield.

As noted by NPR, Walensky’s “career in medicine started during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis.” From 2014-2015, she served as chair of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council, a team within the NIH tasked with advising high-level officials on “the planning, coordination, and evaluation of research and other HIV/AIDS activities conducted or supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH),” including the Director of the Office of AIDS Research (OAR), the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Assistant Secretary for Health, and the Director of NIH.4

Walensky’s profile on the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Prevention Policy Modeling Lab website describes her as being “internationally recognized for motivating US policy toward the promotion of routine HIV screening and for her work on effective and efficient strategies of HIV care in South Africa.”5

She is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and the Association of American Physicians (AAP), and has also served as a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents.6

Prior to taking office in the Biden Administration in 2021, Walensky had already been actively engaged on the question of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She was among the first signatories of the John Snow Memorandum, published in the Lancet in October 2020.7 The memo asserted that “[t]he infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is several-fold higher than that of seasonal influenza and infection can lead to persisting illness, including in young, previously healthy people,” based on the false premise that pre-existing immunity to the “novel” virus did not exist within the population. It called for “clear communication about the risks posed by COVID-19 and effective strategies to combat them” such as physical distancing, face coverings, and “continuing restrictions” which “must be supported by financial and social programmes.”

The memo is worth reading, as it comes across very much like a one-for-one counter to the Great Barrington Declaration published the very same month.8 In fact, that seems to have been exactly the point, as per the GBD's Wikipedia page. Other signatories in the initial crew include the infamous David Fisman (who argued it was dangerous for the “vaccinated” to mix with the “unvaccinated”),9 Isabella Eckerle (a collaborator of the more infamous Christian Drosten),10 and Angela Rasmussen (who piled on doctors spreading “misinformation” with the equally pleasant Timothy Caulfield, while also working at VIDO-InterVac, an institution at the University of Saskatchewan developing their own COVID-19 vaccine).1112

On November 19, 2020, the journal Health Affairs published a study led by Walensky with a rather odd premise. The piece is now hidden behind a paywall but an archived version remains available.

Titled Clinical Outcomes Of A COVID-19 Vaccine: Implementation Over Efficacy, the study argues that “factors related to implementation will contribute more to the success of vaccination programs than a vaccine’s efficacy as determined in clinical trials.”13 Funny - she must have seen the data coming out of the Pfizer-BioNTech clinical trial! I would, of course, direct her to the excellent breakdown series at and .

OpenVAET’s Substack

Pfizer/BioNTech C4591001 Trial - How many mathematical proofs of fraud in this trial do we need, for independent inquiries to finally start ...?

Introduction This article is the product of a joined effort with Josh Guetzkow. Both authors contributed equally to this paper. We covered in a previous article how to identify accurately in the PHMPT documents the 372 exclusions labelled “other important protocol deviations”, and why what could seem like a small detail mattered a lot as far as providing …

Read more

3 years ago · 88 likes · 34 comments · OpenVAET and Josh Guetzkow

Specifically, Walensky and her team warn that things like “manufacturing or deployment delays, significant vaccine hesitancy, or greater epidemic severity” would all make the COVID-19 vaccines work less well, and that therefore, health officials should “invest greater financial resources and attention to vaccine production and distribution programs, to redouble efforts to promote public confidence in COVID-19 vaccines, and to encourage continued adherence to other mitigation approaches, even after a vaccine becomes available.”

In other words, Walensky set the stage for the inevitable COVID-19 vaccine failures to be blamed on any combination of the following unrelated things:

• A rollout that is deemed to be “too slow”

• Any arbitrary number of people who decline to take the shot for any reason

• Any increase in illness that can be blamed on COVID-19

• Not enough money

• People not continuing to do non-vaccine things like locking down, wearing face coverings, working from home, etc.

Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that Walensky then led the charge in declaring the “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated” less than one year later.14

A comment from someone named PaulG sums up quite well why Walensky’s approach has always been completely backwards. The irony, of course, is in the reply from “Eric”, who offers as rebuttal links to the Phase III clinical trial interim reports from Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca — the exact trials Walensky argues are essentially irrelevant.

In the acknowledgements, Walensky discloses funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Massachusetts General Hospital and CNN, of all things.

Conflicts of interest

Beyond the well-covered inconsistencies in her statements regarding COVID-19 and associated vaccine products, Walensky has faced criticism for perceived conflicts of interest. Her husband is Loren Walensky, a “renowned pediatric oncology researcher” at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University.15

As detailed in an article published by RedState in August 2021, Loren co-founded a biotechnology company called Lytica Therapeutics in October 2019, which swiftly received a $16.9 million grant from the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) - the government agency that employs Rochelle.16 The grant was issued February 18, 2020.17

The specific funding program in question, the Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X), is funded by:18

• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

• Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)

• German Federal Ministry of Education and Research

• National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

• United Kingdom Department of Health and Social Care (through the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Innovation Fund)

• Wellcome Trust

CARB-X is a global non-profit partnership accelerating antibacterial products to address drug-resistant bacteria, and the grant it awarded to Lytica is intended to “develop antibacterial peptides with broad activity against multidrug-resistant bacteria.” With this in mind, consider the role that bacterial pneumonia seems to have played in a significant portion of COVID-19 fatalities, as recently highlighted by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.19

Of course, this is not new information. In their October 2021 paper, researchers Denis Rancourt, Marine Baudin and Jérémie Mercier identified efforts across the world to limit the use of antibiotics in patients diagnosed with COVID-19.20 Antibiotic prescriptions dropped significantly in April 2020 and remained low, allowing for secondary bacterial pneumonia to overtake patients who otherwise would have otherwise recovered.2122 They also note that the suppression of the use of ivermectin likely also contributed, given its broad antiviral and antibacterial properties, citing past research on its use against tuberculosis as an example.23

If Walensky’s Lytica Therapeutics is tasked with developing new antibiotic products to treat lung infections (like pneumonia), it stands to reason that the use of the many existing antibiotics and ivermectin (and likely other yet-to-be-identified repurposed drugs) would stand in the way of them fulfilling their CARB-X grant obligations. Hence, conflict of interest.

Then there’s the fact that in May 2022, Lytica was accepted into the Blue Knight program funded by Johnson & Johnson and BARDA — the latter of which sits alongside Walensky’s CDC within the Department of Health and Human Services.24 J&J, of course, developed an adenoviral vector COVID-19 vaccine under its Janssen subsidiary which received hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government funding through Operation Warp Speed.25

Interestingly, the page on Lytica’s website that formerly detailed Walensky’s role as scientific co-founder is no longer available (except by Wayback Machine, of course). He still appears on the front page under the Leadership heading, not far above the Scientific Advisory Board section that includes a former Janssen vice president.26

But Lytica isn’t Loren Walensky’s first rodeo. He also serves as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board and a consultant for Aileron Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company developing treatments against side effects caused by cancer chemotherapy.27

Aileron's investors are a who's who of pharmaceutical industry giants, including Eli Lilly, Novartis, Roche, and SR One (GlaxoSmithKline's venture capital firm).28293031 The first paper published on the news section of Lytica's website, titled Design of stapled antimicrobial peptides that are stable, nontoxic and kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria in mice, discloses a partnership between Aileron and Walensky’s employer, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Incidentally, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has itself been funded by a number of relevant organizations such as Abbott, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, BD, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Biogen, BlackRock, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Takeda — all of whom profited greatly from diagnostics, experimental treatments and novel vaccine candidates for COVID-19. Additional donors of note are Donald and Melania Trump, the Trump Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (whose board of directors includes Anthony Fauci and former FDA commissioner/Gavi director Margaret Hamburg), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Steve and Michele Kirsch Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the World Health Organization.32

Walensky’s lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute acknowledges further research funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.33 The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society received at least two grants from Pfizer in 2021.34

According to NPR, employees at the CDC were unaware of the news of Walensky’s departure until they heard the announcement themselves. She is set to remain in office until June 30, with no replacement named as of today.

Rapid fire stories

• Globe and Mail: Migrants rush across U.S. border in final hours before Title 42 expires

• ZeroHedge: It's Official: Top NBCUni Ad Exec And World Economic Forum Taskforce Chair Is Twitter's New CEO

Rounding the Earth

The following article serves as the show notes for the video presentation of the same name released through the Rounding the News series, presented by Rounding the Earth. It is provided to allow RTE listeners to verify my sources and conduct their own due diligence, and is intended as a supplement to the video. As such, I highly encourage readers of this Substack to watch the full episode and support Rounding the Earth, whose founder Mathew Crawford has provided me the platform and resources to conduct this important work. Thank you, Rounding the Earth!

Watch on Rumble

Federal employees strike continues to shut down Canada

Employees of the Government of Canada remain on strike, effectively shutting down aspects of the country in the process.

On April 7, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) announced that its membership of Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) employees “voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking strike action on behalf of 35,000 workers represented by the Union of Taxation Employees and the Public Service Alliance of Canada.”1 They were joined on April 12 by a second group called the Treasury Board.2

As has been widely noted, the choice to go on strike at this exact moment makes life very difficult for Canadians, given that the deadline to file federal income tax was May 1. For whatever reason, calls to extend the deadline for this year have been entirely dismissed.3 While the Treasury Board staff managed to strike a deal with the government on May 1, the CRA employees were not included and remain on strike.4 As a result, according to Global News:5

The demands set out by PSAC in their strike action began with a 13.5% raise in order to match inflation, as well as “the flexibility to work remotely, the reduction of the government’s use of outside contractors and the implementation of seniority rules in the event of layoffs.”6

Aside from the very real difficulties caused to Canadian citizens by the mere act of the CRA going on strike, the PSAC has celebrated picketers actions to “shut down” critical infrastructure across the country completely unrelated to taxation. In one such thread discussing their various “escalated” strike actions, PSAC boasted that they had shut down the Ports of Vancouver, Montréal and Saint John’s, “blockaded the Treasury Board office in Ottawa and other strategic locations from coast to coast.”7

While the right to go on strike is fundamental to liberal democracy, many incredulous onlookers have pointed out the utter hypocrisy highlighted by this particular action as compared to the violent response to the Freedom Convoy 2022 protest in Ottawa, and related protests across Canada.

Realistically, the takeaway message here is not that the CRA employees on strike are crossing a line. Rather, this serves as a reminder that such actions to disrupt the status quo of the day-to-day of government operations is not at all unexpected in a strike action like this. Let this serve as an opportunity to revisit the unlawful and authoritarian response to the Freedom Convoy protest once again, and remind those around us of the absurdity highlighted by the drastic contrast in institutional treatment of the two.

On the other hand, one can’t help but wonder if there are details not far below the surface that may shed light on matters.

PSAC is partnered with the Canadian Labour Congress and the Association of Public Service Alliance Retirees.8 As it turns out, the CLC is a partner on an initiative called Faster Together, which describes itself as “a voluntary effort of a wide variety of people working together to promote Covid-19 vaccine acceptance and help speed a recovery from this pandemic.”9

Other partners of this COVID-19 vaccine promotion initiative are employers from across Canada. This includes the country’s universities, labour unions, trade associations, sports teams, cities, towns, district municipalities, banks, insurance companies, you name it. Facebook, TikTok and Twitter are all there. The biotechnology industry is well-represented by their own industry association, BIOTECanada, as well as the Pfizer and/or Moderna-funded 19 to Zero, Bioscience Association Manitoba and Life Sciences British Columbia.

Maybe I’m overestimating the impact of the pharmaceutical lobby in an extended network like this. On the other hand, perhaps it is not so surprising after all that one of these groups of federally-regulated employees received better treatment than the other.

National Citizens Inquiry in Vancouver

From Tuesday to Thursday this week, the National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) made its stop in Langley, British Columbia for the Vancouver arm of the tour.

For those unaware, the NCI is a non-governmental, citizen-run and self-funded investigation into Canada’s handling of the declared COVID-19 pandemic, hearing testimony from hundreds of professionals and everyday citizens.

I was personally able to attend Days 1 and 3, hearing firsthand some of the most impressive and impactful stories and presentations that have come out of the last three years.

Some of you may recall that in June 2022, I was invited to participate in an event titled A Citizens’ Hearing in Toronto, Ontario. My flight left Vancouver mere hours after the federal restriction on travel for citizens deemed to be “unvaccinated” was suspended.10

In my role as Secretary, I had the honour of sitting beside Preston Manning, Susan Natsheh and David Ross, who served as the panel for A Citizens’ Hearing. My specific job was to take notes, which I frantically did while listening to the in-person and online testimonies. My fingers have never hurt so much, but it was well worth it.

For those who follow , you may have seen James Corbett’s recent interview with NCI spokesperson Michelle Leduc Catlin. The thumbnail for the video (part of Corbett’s Solutions Watch series) features the NCI in the top two quadrants, and A Citizens’ Hearing in the bottom two. I was proud and ecstatic to see myself in the thumbnail, as it felt like a surefire sign my contributions to this cause have been valuable and valued. And as a Corbett Report community member myself, it was very exciting to be acknowledged even in this passive way. Thank you, James.

This was the first opportunity I had to meet in real life people who had become good friends over the internet since mid-2021, and just as notably, to place myself right in front of people who had suffered the physical consequences of the all-too-common adverse events from the various COVID-19 vaccines they were coerced into taking. It was no longer a matter of numbers as reported by my friends at OpenVAERS and Welcometheeagle88 — it was a matter of eye contact with people who may never return to their former selves.

Of course, the complete inverse is also true. Through their suffering, it was clear to me that these everyday people had become extraordinary by refusing to go gently into that good night. Truthfully, I imagine they always were extraordinary, and it was through this tragic and avoidable suffering that they demonstrated to themselves how powerful they really are. These are victims in one sense, but so too are they the heroes of this story.

So what, then? As A Citizens’ Hearing completed and a Next Steps Task Force went about planning what would become the National Citizens Inquiry, it became clear that no one opportunity to share stories would successfully cement them into history. As newly-minted celebrities like Steve Kirsch, Jessica Rose, Robert Malone, and established names like Jordan Peterson and James Corbett stepped into the spotlight for their NCI testimonies, many others would inevitably not be selected to testify for a second time. It is primarily a matter of logistics; there are only so many hours in a week, and a limited wealth with which to rent conference rooms and audio/visual teams. In some cases, I imaging someone’s story is not deemed “sensational” enough to advance the larger agenda of shocking our friends, family and neighbours to attention. These are reasonable choices that have to be made, and the result will be that some names are lost to time as the rest of the world moves on.

I can’t stop that. But one way I thought I might be able to help minimize this effect is by translating the testimonies presented at A Citizens’ Hearing into a written format which could be more easily handed to friends, family and elected officials who otherwise might decline to visit a website. Furthermore, as I learned from Sonya Anderson and Liza Chan of the Canadian Covid Care Alliance, a book can be submitted to Library and Archives Canada to be included in the nation’s official record.

The official report from A Citizens’ Hearing is now available for all in digital form (for free) as well as in paperback, hardcover and eBook format through Amazon. I know that many people take issue with Amazon, as do I. The reason we went this route is that it was likely the only way we could have physical copies printed without asking for a significant down payment from the Canadian Covid Care Alliance, who had already dispensed tens of thousands of dollars to set up the event in the first place. Amazon allows us to offer the book through “print-on-demand” — a service which does not yet seem to have a more “independent” alternative. There was talk of reaching out to Children’s Health Defense to ask if they would publish the book for us, and perhaps it’s not too late to explore that option, if they’ll have us.

But for now, we’ve accomplished at least part of our mission. Susan Natsheh and David Ross suggested I present the report as evidence for the NCI’s own record, which I did. Here is my entire testimony from Thursday, May 4th, clipped and uploaded by my friend Gabriel at .

Unfortunately, time remains a restriction on us all, and I failed in my attempt to read the names of the brave Canadians who provided testimony at A Citizens’ Hearing. I am proud to share them with you now.

• Chief Hugh Akogi

• Dean Allison, MP

• Beau Bedard

• Kayla Bishop

• Myriam Bohemier

• Louis Browne

• Shawn Buckley

• Colin Carrie, MP

• Dr. Francis Christian

• April Crocker

• Max Daigle

• Arlene Datto

• Gail Davidson

• Annabelle Edge

• Keren Epstein-Gilboa

• Ryan Gassner

• Jenn Gilbert and Jesse

• Richard Girgis

• Leighton Grey

• Maria Gutschi

• Lyndie Hall

• Dan Hartman

• Greg Hill

• Dr. York Hsiang

• Brook Jackson

• Kayla Jones

• James Kitchen

• Karen Kobel

• Brian Krienke

• Janina Krienke

• Henry Lu

• Officer Andrew MacGillivray

• Scarlett Martyn

• Deanna McLeod

• Dr. Chris Milburn

• Nicole Minnikin

• Tanya Minnikin

• Sergio Molina

• Kelly-Sue Oberle

• Dr. Eric Payne

• Dr. Steven Pelech

• Beverly Perley

• Dr. Patrick Phillips

• Gordon Polevoy

• Dr. Julie Ponesse

• Sam Presvelos

• Marjaleena Repo

• Padre Harold Ristau

• Allen Rouben

• Dr. Richard Schabas

• Chris Schaefer

• David Shaw

• Josh Shulman

• Leslie Smith

• Irvin Studin

• Susan van der Rassle

• Audrey Vanderhoek

• Steve VanLeeuwen

• Hayley Weinrauch

• Jaiden Weinrauch

• Nadine Wilson, MLA

• Dr. Chong Wong

All of their individual testimonies can be found at https://citizenshearing.ca/.

Adverse Event Reporting in Canada: a smoking gun

I’d like to turn your attention to the testimony of Dr. Patrick Phillips of Ontario, Canada. As summarized in his presentation at A Citizen’s Inquiry in June 2022 and reiterated during his National Citizen Inquiry testimony, Dr. Phillips has had his medical license suspended on the truly egregious grounds of… doing his job.

Leaving aside the equally important discussions around his ability as a physician to treat patients with Health Canada-approved, highly safe, and by most accounts, highly effective medications, and his right to advocate on behalf of his patients’ right to choose not to wear a face covering, I want to focus on the fact that Dr. Phillips has been sanctioned for reporting adverse events experienced by his patients following receipt of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Quoting from the Citizens’ Hearing book:11

“Phillips testified that there are major issues with Canada’s current vaccine reporting system. He has observed many adverse events coming through his emergency department, including patient profiles that include:

• facial numbness that lasted for 8 days;

• left arm weakness, not able to work and frequently dropping things;

• abdominal pain and vomiting, heart palpitations;

• large rash over entire arm and growing;

• arm numbness and weakness with fatigue, could not work. Stroke and other causes were ruled out;

• progression in dementia, no longer talking and had to be hospitalized;

• severe fever and arm weakness, hospitalized 2 days later;

• severe vertigo and tinnitus, impairing ability to drive.

Dr. Phillips reported all of these cases to public health, which he must do under the law. After the first five submissions, Ontario’s public health officer sent him a letter. The letter, dated April 27, 2021, read: “For your information, all five of the cases do not meet reported criteria for adverse events following immunization (AEFI).” Phillips was surprised that all five were rejected. The PHO then gave him access to a document that went over the criteria for reporting AEFIs.

The single-page document listed anaesthesia and paraesthesia, both of which have to occur within 15 days of the injection or is disqualified. If a patient faints and has an injury, it only counts if it occurs within 30 minutes of taking the shot. This is very limited, and is in stark contrast to Health Canada regulations. They have much broader definitions of adverse events that doctors are obliged to report in order to be able to maintain safety in pharmaceutical products.” …

Phillips reiterated in a Tweet on December 20, 2022 that his medical license was suspended “in part for reporting adverse reactions to the Covid vaccines.”12 But don't feel obligated to take his word for it. As reported by CBC News on May 3, 2022:13

Dr. Phillips is far from the only doctor who faced retribution for reporting suspected COVID-19 vaccine injuries. There are also doctors who presumably have successfully reported adverse events following immunization (AEFI), given the fact that official sources happily admit some people have indeed been injured. Here is a snapshot from the Government of Canada claiming that as of March 3, 2023, there were 54,569 adverse events reported with 10,685 described as “serious.”14

But as is now well known and plain to see, this number represents only a fraction of the true number of adverse events suffered by COVID-19 vaccine recipients — including the most serious injuries.

While the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the United States allows anybody to file a report (assuming they can navigate the clunky and challenging system), Canadians have not been granted such an opportunity throughout the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. This is absurd on its face, but there are a few things that have just come to light that should truly shock anybody with any ounce of conscience and intellect.

It turns out that all the way up until the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines in Canada, consumers could, in fact, file their own adverse event reports directly with the Government of Canada.

The above screenshot was taken from a September 20, 2020 archived version of a Government of Canada web portal, titled “Report a side effect to a vaccine: consumers.”15 At that time, it had last been updated on December 30, 2019.

Note the specific language: “Everyone who witnesses or experiences a side effect (adverse reaction) following immunization is strongly encouraged to report it. You may ask your health care provider (doctor, health care provider, pharmacist) to help you.” Redundancy in language aside, it’s clear that all suspected adverse events following a vaccine are expected to be reported. Furthermore, consumers could seek assistance from a health care professional, but were certainly able to attempt the process on their own. The “Report a side effect” button would take consumers through an online form, with a backup paper option available as well, complete with free postage.

Then, the COVID-19 vaccine rollout came. On December 1, 2020, the page was changed dramatically.

The ability for consumers to file a report was removed entirely along with the option for anybody to file online.16 Now, the page read “Ask your health care provider” to “complete an adverse events following immunization (AEFI) form” and “submit it on your behalf to your local public health unit,” a process exclusively available by mail.

A handy chart was also added, clarifying that the sick or injured vaccine recipient had no direct way to report their adverse event. Their initial report was to be made to their healthcare practitioner, who would then decide whether or not to send it on to the relevant local public health unit. At that point, the unit could themselves choose to either reject or carry the report on to the ambiguous “Federal/Provincial/Territorial Immunization Authorities”, who would serve as the final decision-maker on if the report met the criteria to give to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

I must emphasize that at each of these steps, reports were subject to rejection regardless of what the decision maker at the previous level chose. With no less than four barriers, how could anyone doubt that a significant number of legitimate reports were lost in this arbitrary, bureaucratic nightmare? Furthermore, does anyone believe there were ever a meaningful number of illegitimate reports filed?

And thus, Canadians were left without a way to report their injuries suffered after receiving what was supposed to be a “safe and effective” vaccine against a disease that they were supposed to be at risk from.

Of course, as Deanna McLeod presented during her NCI testimony, the data produced in the Phase III clinical trial for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine demonstrated that the product caused exceedingly more harm than good, a reality which and have shown was covered up through what can only be interpreted as fraudulent practices.

OpenVAET’s Substack

Pfizer/BioNTech C4591001 Trial - How many mathematical proofs of fraud in this trial do we need, for independent inquiries to finally start ...?

Introduction This article is the product of a joined effort with Josh Guetzkow. Both authors contributed equally to this paper. We covered in a previous article how to identify accurately in the PHMPT documents the 372 exclusions labelled “other important protocol deviations”, and why what could seem like a small detail mattered a lot as far as providing …

Read more

3 years ago · 88 likes · 34 comments · OpenVAET and Josh Guetzkow

I’m afraid it gets worse.

A colleague of mine, with whom I work on projects related to Freedom of Information and legal actions, was the first in my circles to draw attention to the fact that the ability for individuals to file an adverse event report was removed immediately prior to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. She brought a number of questions to the Government of Canada, seeking documentation relating to the decision.

The government is required to provide a response to FOI requests in Canada within 30 days. This deadline can be extended by written notification to up to 60 days, and far too many cases, this extension is repeated over and over again. In this case, my colleague simply stopped hearing back. On February 28, 2023, she informed the government that she intended to pursue the disclosure of the requested documents through another process involving Members of Parliament, whose governing rules made it very likely to succeed on a much quicker timeline than the FOI process was likely to allow at this point.

But when she returned to the webpage once more to share it with a Member of Parliament, my colleague was shocked to find it had changed again, and in dramatic fashion.

Back was the button that allowed for direct, online reporting to Health Canada.17 Individuals no longer need to go through a healthcare provider, either. The graph was also updated to really clarify how easy it is to report adverse events:

Vaccine recipients were now able to submit reports to three separate places: the Public Health Agency of Canada via their healthcare provider, the vaccine manufacturer (Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax, etc.) or directly to Health Canada. Interestingly, an additional reporting source titled “hospitals” was added, entirely separately from the similar “Health care provider (HCP)” box.

Speaking of which, notice another small note that was added: “In many provinces and Territories HCPs must report by law”. Exactly like Patrick Phillips did, and was sanctioned for.

The nail in the coffin is that this page was last updated on February 28, 2023 — the same day my colleague informed the government she would be continuing her pursuit through another avenue.

All of this said, it becomes very difficult to care about the following headline, which would have been tremendous news about two years ago. Now, I can’t help but feel this is a completely useless, irrelevant waste of breath from the corrupt, captured enterprise that is the World Health Organization.

There remains much work to do.

Rounding the Earth

The following article serves as the show notes for the video presentation of the same name released through the Rounding the News series, presented by Rounding the Earth. It is provided to allow RTE listeners to verify my sources and conduct their own due diligence, and is intended as a supplement to the video. As such, I highly encourage readers of this Substack to watch the full episode and support Rounding the Earth, whose founder Mathew Crawford has provided me the platform and resources to conduct this important work. Thank you, Rounding the Earth!

Watch on Rumble

Rapidfire news stories this week:

• CSASPP class action hearing resumes in British Columbia

  • https://www.theepochtimes.com/hearings-resume-for-class-action-lawsuit-against-bc-pandemic-health-orders_5217742.html

• Tucker Carslon and his executive producer dismissed from Fox News

  • https://www.zerohedge.com/political/tucker-carlson-out-fox

• Don Lemon fired from CNN

  • https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/cnn-fires-don-lemon-1.6820469

• Matthew Evans-Cockle: Paragons of Ethical Medicine Attacked by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC

  • https://rumble.com/v2kgsgi-paragons-of-ethical-medicine-attacked-by-the-college-of-physicians-and-surg.html

Who is Miles Guo?

Indeed, this is the question of the day. A cursory glance at the top few Google News entries will paint a picture of Miles Guo, a dissident Chinese billionaire in exile, whose efforts to combat the Chinese Communist Party within the United States have led to his arrest on grounds of defrauding his supporters with various “investment opportunities.”

It’s a convenient and well-packaged profile, ripe to be exploited by both sides of a left-right political divide to either rip into his allies in the Trump camp, or elevate Guo as the next figurehead of a societal revolution.

Introduction

In last week’s episode of Rounding the News, we explored the ongoing story surrounding the so-called “secret Chinese police stations” popping up around the world. This culminated in the April 17 arrest of two New York residents, formally accused by state and federal agencies of working on behalf of China’s Ministry of Public Security.

If you haven’t yet read or watched the story, you can do so here:

The crux of my analysis was that all sides of the story are biased in some form, with larger geopolitical machinations leading both the United States and Chinese government to act as “unreliable narrators.” This is especially true of the non-governmental organization (NGO) called Safeguard Defenders, whose September 2022 report was the basis for all the hubbub in the first place, but whose own agenda is thrown into question by its apparent ties to the American intelligence community.

China’s role in the United States and the rest of the Western world is unclear, shrouded by propaganda from both sides. With this in mind, it may be helpful to zoom out slightly and take stock on the other pieces on the game board.

I concluded my previous report with a case study of a New York-based rapped named DVS 7.0, who very recently went semi-viral for his strongly-worded comments to U.S. Representative Adam Schiff and subsequent handcuffing.

Far from an isolated incident of political dissidence, DVS appeared to be attending the New York event — the House Judiciary Committee’s meeting on crime — on behalf of a larger movement under the unifying message of #FreeMilesGuo. DVS had recently released a song under the same name, and his Twitter feed is full of supportive comments from a veritable swarm of users bearing similar characteristics; Chinese characters in their names, allusions to something called the New Federal State of China, and the hashtag #FreeMilesGuo.

On first glance, this seems to be a movement largely aligned with core principles of other groups of likeminded people in the “freedom movement.” There are strong assertions of defeating the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), liberating minority groups from oppression including the Uyghurs, protection of the island nation of Taiwan from Chinese military invasion, corruption of the United States government through the influence of Chinese money, and more generally, the creation of a world where all peoples are free to be who they are without fear of totalitarian backlash. They also loudly question the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and warn that the available COVID-19 genetic vaccines are not safe (to put it mildly).

But as we’ve explored at length in various Rounding the Earth podcasts and articles, anytime a movement of ideal focuses itself around any one individual, there is reason to be very suspicious. That’s clearly the case here; whatever is going on around this particular anti-CCP movement is very much centred on this Miles Guo character. That doesn’t automatically mean that the values articulated by the movement are bad or counterproductive unto themselves. On the contrary, if there were to be an attempt to rally real dissidents under an umbrella for nefarious purposes, a necessary step would be to adopt (perhaps “borrow” or “appropriate”) the flagship cause in order to mask the true intention of an operation.

As I’ve concluded about the COVID-19 crisis, all a bad actor needs to do in order to manipulate large groups of people is to tap into their genuine good nature.

I invite you along a journey of learning.

Many names and a coloured past

Miles Guo is just one name used by the man officially named Guo Wengui. His other names used in various contexts are Ho Wan Kwok, Miles Kwok, Brother Seven, Guo Haoyun and The Principal.1 As summarized by a profile in Business Insider, “[m]uch of his background is still shrouded in mystery and Guo's exact purpose and loyalties are the subject of speculation and conspiracy theories.”2

Guo was born to an impoverished family in China’s Jilin province. He then moved to the farming village of Xicaoying in Shandong province, growing up there with his seven siblings.3 This is allegedly where the name "Brother Seven" came from, being the seventh son born in the family.4

According to the New Yorker, Guo dropped out of school at age 13 to find work selling clothes and electronics.5

First arrest

He was arrested and put in jail in 1989 on grounds that are not entirely clear. According to Guo, this was the result of his support for students participating in “pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square” which occurred at that time.6 This particular version of events is not reflected in court documents, however, with the official story being that Guo was arrested one week before the protests began, on charges of defrauding investors in a "local oil scheme."

Career

After his release, in 1992, Guo took a job with a Hong Kong-based businesswoman named Xia Ping. According to an investigation published in Nikkei Asia:

Through Zhengzhou Yuda Property, Guo oversaw the construction of Zhengzhou’s tallest building, the Yuda International Trade Centre.7

Guo also reportedly ran a company called Big Boss Furniture.8 But in 2002, he relocated to Beijing to further expand his burgeoning real estate empire. He purchased two parcels of land in northern Beijing right beside the then-future site of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

According to Nikkei Asia, “[i]n October 2005, [Beijing]'s land bureau revoked Guo's company's rights to the Olympic Park plot, saying the company failed to pay in full for the property.” This led to Guo attempting to lobby government officials to help rescue his development project for the lucrative property. Specifically, he approached then-vice-mayor Liu Zhihua, who was in charge of projects surrounding the Olympics. He refused to help, selling the plot back to Beijing Capital Group (a state-run real estate firm).

But two weeks later, the vice-mayor was detained alongside BCG chairman Liu Xiaoguang, allegedly based on a report submitted to the Chinese government by Guo accusing the vice-mayor of corruption. The report is said to have contained sexual blackmail material, which was allegedly provided to Guo by a Chinese “spymaster” named Ma Jian. Jian was appointed Vice Minister of State Security in 2006 after having "worked at the spy agency for more than 30 years," and has been described as “one of the mainland's top spy chiefs.”9

With the plot of land safely back in Guo’s hands and with newly-issued building permits, Guo launched construction of Pangu Plaza. The building was crafted in the shape of the Olympic torch.

This incident is cited as one of the first known examples of Guo working directly with Chinese military intelligence agencies to achieve favourable outcomes by unsavoury means.

Building powerful relationships

Guo reportedly travelled several times to meet the Dalai Lama on behalf of China's Ministry of State Security, now led in part by his ally Ma Jian.10 There are several pictures corroborating this fact, with the pair seeming to have a friendly relationship. Of course, given the current capabilities to generate super-realistic images with AI tools, these must be considered with a healthy skepticism.11 On the other hand, it doesn't appear that this relationship is in question in any reporting of Guo's past.

Shortly after the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Guo invited Orville Schell, Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, for a dinner at the Pangu Plaza. He also reportedly had dinners with former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, and met with Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un on a trip to North Korea.12

Another powerful ally Guo courted was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a relationship that first began in 2008 (or possibly earlier, depending on who you ask).13 In 2009, Guo purchased five thousand copies of Cherie Blair's autobiography and donated to Blair's various charities.14

In or around 2013, Guo paid for Blair and himself to fly out to meet members of the Abu Dhabi Royal Family in the United Arab Emirates, including Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. They agreed to give Guo $3 billion to fund an attempt to "take control of China’s second-largest brokerage house, Haitong Securities.15 At some point, Guo was also issued a passport from the UAE which granted him certain diplomatic protections. In December 2014, Guo and the Abu Dhabi Royal Family created the ACA Investment Fund.16

Operation Fox Hunt and Sky Net

In June 2014, the Chinese government launched Operation Fox Hunt, described by CNN as “an international anti-corruption campaign targeting Chinese fugitives - often former officials or rich individuals suspected of economic crimes.”17 They followed up by launching the similar and larger Operation Sky Net in March 2015.18

Defecting from China

In late 2014, Guo accused a rival named Li You of corruption. The conflict escalated into public view, bringing scrutiny onto Guo's relationship with the Chinese government and intelligence apparatus. On January 16, 2015, the Communist Party of China announced that Guo's intelligence colleague Ma Jian was under investigation. News reports emerged in March 2015 alluding to his and Jian’s collaborations in “surveillance, blackmail, and political influence to amass fortunes and evade scrutiny.”

Despite initially denying reports of intelligence ties, Guo later acknowledged that he was affiliated in some form with the Ministry of State Security in China, completing tasks for the agency under the codename “Wu Nan.”

Guo fled to London, England via Hong Kong, eventually landing in New York City.

In the winter of 2015, Guo purchased a $68 million penthouse suite at the Sherry-Netherland tower in the Upper East Side of New York City — in cash, no less. He reportedly provided a reference letter from UBS Bank and a personal recommendation from Tony Blair.19

After moving into the penthouse, he purchased a $43 million yacht named the Lady May. He became a member of Mar-A-Lago, the Florida resort owned by then-candidate Donald Trump. Trump had announced his run for President of the United States just six months prior.20

Engaging U.S. intelligence

No stranger to the game of national intelligence, Guo engaged with both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), offering to provide information on the inner workings of the Chinese government. In the New Yorker’s long profile on Guo, the authors describe the FBI as being more enthusiastic about working with him than was the CIA.

At this point, it is established that Guo has worked on behalf of both Chinese and American intelligence. He is a double agent, but it’s not clear on whose behalf he truly operates. “If you ask ten different F.B.I. and C.I.A. people about Miles, you’re going to get seven different answers,” says a former FBI official in The New Yorker.

Guo reportedly attempted to hire Jeh Johnson, former Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as his lawyer. Johnson considered the offer, but declined.

In 2016, Chinese authorities seized ownership of Guo's Pangu Plaza tower. According to CNN, a court in Beijing later listed it for sale on Alibaba, selling it “for just under 5.19 billion yuan,” equivalent to $734 million USD.21

Activism and propaganda

In January 2017, Guo created an account on Twitter and began conducting interviews in which he accused Chinese leaders of corruption. One target in particular was Wang Qishan, who sued Guo for defamation in response. One such interview was to be conducted with the Mandarin-language arm of Voice of America (VOA).22 Notably, Voice of America is yet another outlet in the network run by the United States Agency for Global Media, an agency of the United States government.23

On April 17, 2017, at the request of the Chinese government, Interpol issued a “red notice,” interpreted by some to be an international warrant for his arrest.24 This led to the Voice of America interview being cancelled due to pressure from China's Foreign Ministry.

Then in May 2017, four agents with China’s Ministry of State Security visited Guo at his penthouse. According to the Wall Street Journal, the several-hour-long meeting saw the agents ask Guo to cease his activism and return back to China.25 ProPublica referenced this incident as an example of the Chinese government’s operations under Operations Fox Hunt and Sky Net.26

Contact with the Trump camp

In June 2017, vice-minister of public security Sun Lijun made contact with Steve Wynn, finance chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Sun asked for assistance in returning Guo to China, and Wynn reportedly agreed to raise the issue with President Trump.

From The New Yorker:

Trump did indeed see the packet, but was dissuaded from pursuing the matter further by H.R. McMaster, who was serving as National Security Advisor.
Also present was chief strategist Steve Bannon, who retrieved the packet and decided he didn’t want Guo to be extradited.

Bannon and Guo

It’s this relationship between Steve Bannon and Guo that start to bring this story closer to home that most might be comfortable with. Let’s look at how this pair started their mini-media empire and all the ways in which it interacts with the larger “medical freedom movement.”

In August 2017, Guo met with Steve Bannon at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C. In August 2018, Bannon signed a year-long deal with Guo Media for consulting services in exchange for $1 million.27

The first archives of the now-defunct Guo Media website date back to January 1st, 2018.28 On April 24, 2018, a patent application was filed for the name GUO.MEDIA,29 subsequently assigned to a new company called Saraca Media Group which itself was formed in May 2018. Guo's son, Qiang Guo, headed up this new company.30

Saraca Media Group went on to found a number of subsidiaries and register further trademarks for ventures, including variations of Guo’s own name:31

• Everything Is Just Beginning

• GLive

• GNews

• GPost

• GTV

• Guo Media

• Guo Wengui

• Guo.Media

• Miles Gwo

• Miles Kwok

Rule of Law Foundation + Society

On November 20, 2018, Guo and Bannon launched the Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Society.32 Bannon served as chair of the Society.33 As for the Foundation, the chairman position was filled by a gentleman named Kyle Bass. Bass’ claims to fame include his successful shorting of the housing market during the 2008 financial crisis (as depicted in “The Big Short”) and his ventures in the business of carbon credits.3435 He also serves alongside Bannon on the Committee on the Present Danger: China, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).3637

GTV Media Group

In April 2020, Guo and Bannon co-founded GTV Media Group.38 Bass served as a board member for this venture, as well.39

New Federal State of China

On June 4, 2020, Guo and Bannon live-streamed an announcement of the launch of the New Federal State of China.40 The pair chose to hold the event on Guo's yacht off the coast of New York City, right in front of the highly symbolic Statue of Liberty.

A glance at NFSC’s Wikipedia page suggests there is some confusion as to what the organization actually is — is it a lobbying group, a political movement, or something else? It describes itself as a government in exile whose stated intention is to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party.41

The organization is supported by the Rule of Law Foundation and the Rule of Law Society, and a separate entity called the Himalaya Supervisory Organization was created in order to govern an associated network of activists called the Himalaya Farms Network.42

In May 2021, a New Zealand-based channel called Counterspin Media launched. It was originally hosted on GTV, and the background of the first video displays the flag of the New Federal State of China.43 Subsequent videos continue the overt promotion of the NFSC. Describing itself as "New Zealand's Media Revolution," Counterspin has been very active in coverage of issues related to COVID-19, particularly the mass-vaccination program and authoritarian public health response in NZ.

GETTR

Guo was an early investor in GETTR through a “family foundation.”44 GETTR went live on July 4, 2021, founded by former Trump aide Jason Miller.45 Notice that GETTR's logo is in the shape of the Olympic torch - the same design of Guo's signature Pangu Plaza building. Notably, the launch of the New Federal State of China was held in front of the Statue of Liberty, which depicts a woman holding a torch nearly identical to the others.

Guo’s influence over GETTR is explored out in an article published by The Washington Post on March 26, 2023.46

Further substantiating Guo’s leading role at GETTR is the fact that the social media company had $2.8 million seized in September 2022 as part of an indictment against Guo and William Je.47

So too did Hamilton Investment Management, Je’s firm located in the Cayman and British Virgin Islands.48 Interestingly, some of the $305 million seized by the government in in September was held at Silvergate Bank; the “crypto-friendly” bank that was recently caught up in the panic following Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, with Silvergate itself announcing it was closing down just under two months ago.49

In November 2021, Guo appeared in a music video promoting Himalaya Coin, the native token of cryptocurrency exchange Himalaya Exchange, with which Guo had a business relationship.5051 He shared a quote from Bannon describing the success of the new coin as “monumental” on GETTR.52

Notably, Himalaya Exchange held its funds (which were also seized) in a Puerto Rico-based bank called FV Bank, whose business is focused on cryptocurrency and blockchain services, with recent activity in the digital identification space.53

Another related business is the Himalaya Federal Reserve, which issued something called “GCoin”.54

Speaking of crypto, GETTR users (of which I am one) will note that the platform is right now promoting something called GETTR Coin, requiring users to either be highly influential on other platforms (20,000+ followers) or provide government issued identification in order to achieve “verification.”

GETTR is also promoting a new feature called GTok, a rather plain clone of the controversial TikTok.

While the naming convention is clearly based on GETTR’s own branding, it continues a line of brands shaped after Guo including G|CLUBS, G|Fashion and G | Music.

The latter of the three appears to be how rapper DVS 7.0 is connected to the empire.55 Guo himself is listed as an artist under the G | Music, which advertises the use of GETTR, GETTR coin, Hcoin, HDO and non-fungible tokens (NFT) to “pursue freedom and equality through music.”56

G|Fashion is a clothing brand and company owned by Guo. It is the “fashion counterpart” to G|CLUBS.57 Sean Bannon, nephew of Steve, is listed as Chief Operating Officer of the venture in a patent filing dated September 10, 2020.58 The firm was initially represented by Rubenstein Public Relations, who has also represented COVID-19 vaccine developer Johnson & Johnson.59

G|CLUBS is purportedly a membership organization based in Puerto Rico.60 According to court documents, it is functionally controlled by Guo and William Je, despite neither man holding a formal position with the company.

A sprawling network

There’s so much to go through with Guo, and I simply must discipline myself at this point in order to get to the most important part for today.

Bannon’s War Room

Steve Bannon’s War Room has been a significant platform for dissident voices over the course of the COVID-19 “pandemic” era. Given Bannon and Miles Guo’s close partnership on a range of ventures, it stands to reason that Guo’s proximity would lead to at least some level of influence over Bannon’s approach to his pandemic coverage. According to Vox, the theme song for War Room is “Take Down The CCP”, performed by Guo.61

It’s not clear to me at this point that War Room is funded by Guo. But with this strange network of organizations, many of which now facing criminal sanctions as Guo sits in jail, it’s tremendously difficult to track what the true intentions are behind such operations. The corporate structure (or lack thereof) reminds me of the way the FTX/Alameda Research empire was set up, with over 100 separate entities obscuring the scope of the companies’ activities worldwide.

Note that Bannon isn’t the only major player operating under the War Room umbrella. Journalist Naomi Wolf of the Daily Clout is partnered with Bannon’s network for their highly-publicized “Pfizer Documents Analysis,” based on the court-ordered disclosures secured by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency.

And thus, once again, I end this week’s episode by urging caution. Just because Guo is in jail does not necessarily mean his is guilty of the crimes he is alleged to have commit. It is notable that at this point, both the United States government and the Chinese government have marked him as a criminal. But what does Guo stand for? Under which flag is he calling on his followers to gather?

And finally, what does it mean to be part of a “movement”?

Rounding the Earth

The following article serves as the show notes for the video presentation of the same name released through the Rounding the News series, presented by Rounding the Earth. It is provided to allow RTE listeners to verify my sources and conduct their own due diligence, and is intended as a supplement to the video. As such, I highly encourage readers of this Substack to watch the full episode and support Rounding the Earth, whose founder Mathew Crawford has provided me the platform and resources to conduct this important work. Thank you, Rounding the Earth!

Watch on Rumble

Alberta Health Services continues to deny organ transplant to “unvaccinated” patient

Alberta Health Services (AHS) continues to discriminate against people they deem “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. Back in September 2021, Lewis was removed from the high-priority transplant waitlist due to her decision not to receive a COVID-19 genetic vaccine. She was second in line at the time.1

Because she is terminally ill, the ongoing enforcement of this policy effectively condemns Lewis to death. This runs entirely counter to any suggestion that the policy is intended to protect the health and wellbeing of Lewis. But it’s even worse than that, given that there at no point existed any scientific or medical basis on which to justify such a policy. As has been well-documented, the clinical trials for both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 genetic vaccines explicitly excluded vulnerable individuals like Lewis, studying the effects of the products only on “healthy individuals.”2

In the case of the Moderna trial, the exclusion criteria explicitly lists people who are “acutely ill or febrile,” in an “immunosuppresive or immunodeficient state,” or has been given any of a variety of drugs for blood or the immune system — all boxes that Mrs. Lewis almost certainly checks.3

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) has been representing Mrs. Lewis throughout her case, the details of which are partially withheld by a publication ban. I am proud to disclose that I participated in the preparation of an expert report with a medical professional from the Canadian Covid Care Alliance (CCCA) over a year ago, and it pains me to learn that Mrs. Lewis continues to have her lifesaving transplant withheld from her.

But her case has gotten even stronger as of her most recent letter to Alberta Health Services, which cites a written report from Dr. Steven Pelech of Kinexus BioInformatics.4 Mrs. Lewis recently participated in Kinexus’ ongoing study on the markers of natural immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus among the general population. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Pelech’s team identified that she had “extremely high levels of antibodies.”5

Despite this robust evidence in support of withdrawing this arbitrary policy, there appears to have been little recognition:

Updates on Mrs. Lewis’ case can be found on the JCCF’s website. I wish her continued health despite her ongoing struggle to be treated, and urge those reading/listening to remember that there are many people still falling victim to harmful and deadly policies such as these.

Two New York residents arrested for running illegal Chinese police station

On Monday, April 17, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York held a press conference to announce they had arrested two New York residents for their role in running an illegal Chinese police station within the city.6

Standing alongside representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and national security officials from the Department of Justice (DOJ), District Attorney Breon Peace described the charges pending against Harry Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, both citizens of the United States. The unsealed filing notes their prosecution was “in connection with opening and operating an illegal overseas police station, located in lower Manhattan, New York, for a provincial branch of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).”7

This story may sound familiar to most Rounding the Earth listeners, but perhaps the details of the case have thus far passed you by. Certainly, there appears to be an escalation in rhetoric and actions between China and the “Collective West” (referring to the broad coalition of North America, Europe and Australasia) 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, the outlet reported that the FBI discovered photographic evidence on Lu Jianwang’s cell phone that showed “the opening of a similar covert station in Canada.”8 It’s not just North America, though:

110 Overseas

In September 2022, a non-governmental organization 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.9

Officially, the government’s campaign was aimed at individuals accused of “telecommunications fraud” and “web crimes” that needed to be prosecuted within China. However, the report argued that “using threats and intimidation to target suspects abroad” amounted to violations of international law while “[eschewing] official bilateral police and judicial cooperation.”

This report by Safeguard Defenders is cited as the basis on which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) began their investigation back in November of last year, given that "the organization’s list of the so-called Chinese police stations includes two in Markham, [Ontario] and one in the Scarborough area of Toronto."10

Safeguard Defenders

The publisher of 110 Overseas, Safeguard Defenders, is a non-profit organization registered in Spain under the name "Fundacion Safeguard Defenders."11

Its origins go back to an organization called the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, founded in 2009 by Michael Caster and Peter Dahlin.12 Called China Action for short, the group operated out of Beijing until 2016. At that point, the Ministry of State Security detained and interrogated Dahlin over the course of 23 days.13 The agency forced China Action to shut down and sent Dahlin fleeing to Madrid.14 After a short period of laying low, the group reorganized into Safeguard Defenders, eventually registering with the Spanish government in 2019.15

U.S. government support

Safeguard Defenders opened an office in Taiwan in May 2022.16 Taiwan, of course, is the focus of much tension between China and the United States.17 Given the organization's self-declared opposition to the Chinese Communist Party (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.

Unfortunately, this information is not readily disclosed. However, as the apparently pro-CCP outlet CGTN reported in April 2021, the organization previously received grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the European Union, which the outlet suggested were signs that China Action and its successor were operating to some degree as agents of the United States government.18 Note that Safeguard Defenders had filed formal complaints against CGTN with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and its European equivalent, the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA), so it is certainly accurate to accuse the article's author, Keith Lamb, of bias. It is not, however, in question that China Action was funded by NED or the EU, as confirmed in reports by the New York Times and others.

It’s also true that the National Endowment for Democracy has been described by both American and Chinese representatives as a surrogate for U.S. intelligence agencies. Allen Weinstein, co-founder of NED, infamously told the Washington Post in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”19

China agrees, big time. A fact sheet published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in May 2022 describes NED as “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.”20 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.”21

The team behind Safeguard Defenders

As I said, Safeguard Defenders does not list its sources of funding, citing safety concerns for its staff and partners. But the list of team members publicly listed offer another look at the network behind the organization.

Of particular interest to me is Chen Yen-ting, a “coordinator” whose biography lists prior journalistic work for Radio Free Asia.

Contrary to what its name suggests, Radio Free Asia is actually part of a network of related media organizations under the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Formerly called the Broadcasting Board of Governors, USAGM is an agency funded and operated entirely by the United States government.22 RFA's board of directors includes Shanthi Kalathil, who formerly served as senior director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy.23

A couple of further points of interest about USAGM:

• USAGM is serviced by an “investigative, intelligence, compliance, staffing, and training” contractor called Computer Evidence Specialists (CES),24 who also work for a range of federal agencies including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS), Justice (DOJ), the Interior (DOI), Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Navy.25

• USAGM is a client of the Poynter Institute, which lists the National Endowment for Democracy as a "major funder" and hosts the infamously dishonest PolitiFact and the International Fact-Checking Network.26

Yen-ting also previously wrote for Intium Media, an outlet backed by a venture capital firm called WI Harper Group.2728 In April 2020, WI 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 pandemic.29 The listed activities included making and distributing ventilators to Italian hospitals and European households;30 an artificial intelligence platform called "Project COVID", described as "a vaccine against misinformation";31 a remote learning company; a food delivery service; a digital ID system for medical credentials; and no less than 9 news websites.

WI Harper Group also appears alongside the World Economic Forum on a 2017 clients/affiliates list for Entertainment Media Ventures, a company “operating at the intersection of entertainment, technology and finance.”3233

What’s really going on with China?

Of course, this “illegal police station” business is not the only ongoing story involving China. In fact, there seem to be an increasing number of strange narrative threads afoot, with decreasing clarity as to what is real and what is propaganda. And if something is propaganda, it’s even less clear who is trying to propagandize who.

Four days ago, a New York rapper named DVS 7.0 boasted on Twitter that he “Schnapped on Schcumbag Schifty Little Adam Schi*%….ft” — referring, of course, to United States representative Adam Schiff from California.34

After exercising his right to criticize his elected official (with perhaps a hint of harassment thrown in) DVS 7.0 was handcuffed and removed from the premises. He had been giving Schiff a hard time throughout his appearance that day at the House Judiciary Committee’s meeting on crime, sending him to such viral heights as being mentioned on the official website for Donald Trump’s 2024 Presidential campaign.35

Standard MAGA 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 to DVS 7.0’s tweet were left by a significant number of accounts with names in Chinese characters.

One such commenter, named wanliu（互粉）, uses his bio to describe himself and an unspecified group of others as “the citizens from the New Federal State of China.”36

Another user goes by the handle “Antscastle1”, and his bio reads simply “#FreeMilesGuo !”37

Both users reference DVS 7.0’s music, with yet another user specifically thanking him for the recent release of a song titled “Free Miles Guo”.38

The song was released on April 8, 2023 and can be heard on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube, for those so inclined.39 An opening monologue in the track alludes to a “new revolution” against the CCP, and once again names the New Federal State of China. And as you can see, the cover art features the face of a man whose name is quickly simmering to the surface: his name is Miles Guo.

…or is it? This is a question we will seek to answer next week, as I believe there’s a very interesting “Miles Guo” 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 are left with.

Whatever is going on, DVS 7.0 is not behaving as a bystander. It seems his interaction with Schiff is part of a larger campaign that DVS has chosen to join up with, for better or for worse. I don’t know DVS and I don’t cast aspersions at him, though I admit this collection of details leaves me faintly alarmed.

I hope this episode has laid out reasons to treat both sides of this story as unreliable narrators, and reminded listeners/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 funnelled in our direction, and only then can one begin to seek the truth somewhere in the middle of it all.

In the meantime, a 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.

Rounding the Earth

The following article serves as the show notes for the video presentation of the same name released through the Rounding the News series, presented by Rounding the Earth. It is provided to allow RTE listeners to verify my sources and conduct their own due diligence, and is intended as a supplement to the video. As such, I highly encourage readers of this Substack to watch the full episode and support Rounding the Earth, whose founder Mathew Crawford has provided me the platform and resources to conduct this important work. Thank you, Rounding the Earth!

Watch on Rumble

Nurse Tiffany Dover reappears

After over two years of silence, a Tennessee nurse named Tiffany Dover appears to have stepped back into the public eye. But instead of settling debate around her story, her reappearance seems to have only muddied the water further.

Dover was one of the first people to receive a COVID-19 genetic vaccine on live TV way back on December 17, 2020. As reported by USA Today six days after the incident:1

After waking up, Dover sat down for a debrief with reporters. She explained that she had an underlying medical condition that predisposed her to fainting episodes. As explained by Jordan Schachtel in The Dossier:2

Then, Dover disappeared from the public eye. Any suggestion that the experimental Pfizer-BioNTech product she had received moments before could have caused the incident were waived off and attacked as “conspiracy theories.”3

But objections to this explanation came almost immediately. Continuing from Schachtel’s article:

Dive into Jordan’s article for the rest of the story up to now.

The Dossier

Nowhere to be found: What really happened to Tiffany Dover?

On December 17, 2020, CHI Memorial Hospital nurse manager Tiffany Dover became one of the first American healthcare workers to receive Pfizer’s novel mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine. With media crews on hand recording the public event, Dover was presented to the public for a post-injection interview with the hopes to promote future uptake in a product that w…

Read more

4 years ago · 469 likes · 210 comments · Jordan Schachtel

Despite Dover’s appearance on the NBC News Exclusive — and setting aside theories that the woman on screen is not, in fact, Dover — it remains suspicious that she was absent from the public eye for so long. It’s not at all surprising that so many people became convinced she was either dead or incapacitated.

As Viva Frei summarized on Twitter, Dover explains during the NBC interview that she initially wanted to speak out, but was told “that absolutely would not happen” because it would cause “irrecoverable damages.”4 To who, exactly? To Dover? To CHI Memorial Hospital? Or to Pfizer and BioNTech, or the United States government bankrolling the massive vaccine rollout?

For further analysis and informed commentary on Dover’s interview and the questions that remain unanswered, I recommend watching this clip from Viva Frei’s recent livestream on the topic.

I wish Tiffany Dover the best, and hope it’s true that she was not meaningfully harmed as many speculate.

Report blames paper size for Maricopa County 2022 election machine failures

On Monday, April 10, a report was released by the Maricopa County Board of Directors summarizing an investigation into widespread ballot problems during the 2022 general election in Maricopa County, Arizona.5

Led by Former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor, the report concluded that “equipment failure” was to blame, rejecting the notion that human error or malicious intent were at play.

Specifically, McGregor focused on the errors produced by the two types of printers used on election day, finding that the paper used was the wrong size. Despite the fact that the errors only occurred as the result of decisions made by people, it was, in fact, the fault of the tech, in her estimation.

There were a couple particularly interesting parts that stood out to me. First, the investigation based its report in large part on interviews with the people responsible for the election, including Scott Jarrett, Co-Director of Elections, and other employees and representatives within the election team and county government. Also providing testimony were employees of the private contractors responsible for the tabulators and voting machines themselves. These are all people specifically accused of mishandling the election.

Kari Lake, the aggrieved gubernatorial candidate currently in court on these very issues, didn’t like the way this was handled either. She posted a statement on Twitter saying, "Maricopa County has released the results of their internal investigation & has SHOCKINGLY found themselves not guilty of any crime. We told you this was a farce. These people don't think your vote or your opinion matters. And anyone who takes the results of this "investigation" seriously is part of the problem."6

Returning to the content of the report itself, my partner Sam pointed out that the timeline provided to explain the change in paper size didn’t add up.

It seems to me that Maricopa County would have ordered their paper sometime in the weeks (or even months) before the date of the election itself, in order to ensure they weren’t cutting it too close. The World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic occurred on March 11, 2020, with Arizona Governor Doug Ducey following suit the same day.7

If supply chain issues are to blame, then how can the dates be reconciled? Even if Maricopa County usually gets their paper from China, are we to believe there were no other countries with functioning supply chains in the first few months of 2020, all the way up until “lockdown” measures began in the western world in mid-March?

I also found it odd that Sharpies continue to be described as the preferred pen type for marking ballots.

It’s the footnote underneath that really gets me:

Really? Sharpie ink dries quicker and transfers less than the ink of ballpoint pens? That doesn’t pass the smell test for me. I don’t think that’s true at all.

Yes, the use of Sharpies alarmed voters at the time as well. The report suggests that even if bleed-through did occur, the votes would still be counted by duplicating the ballot and re-counting it. An article from November 2020 makes the same point, as if it addresses the concerns surrounding the process:8

As we’ve previously covered, Lake’s lawsuit is focused on ballot chain-of-custody issues arising from this exact process. People were not only upset that Sharpies were being used; many voters did not trust that their ballots would be properly counted if deposited into the “secure box” for later duplication and re-count.

I highly recommend reading the report for yourself. Download a copy of the report here:

Maricopa Election Report With Attachments 4

5.54MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

FBI arrest suspect accused of leaking Pentagon Ukraine documents

I have only one question for you, readers: has anyone actually seen these supposedly leaked documents?

Who is Nima Momeni?

Last Friday, I covered the fatal stabbing of tech executive Bob Lee in San Francisco, California. It was unclear who had conducted the attack and what the motive could have been, and authorities seemed suspiciously coy about revealing any details on what leads they may have been chasing down.

But yesterday, an arrest was made. Police have officially accused Nima Momeni of murdering Bob Lee.

It is particularly notable that the 38-year-old Momeni is also a “tech entrepreneur,” and according to police, the attack was neither a mugging nor a random act of violence.9

It only seems right to follow up my previous report, in which we dove into did a deep dive into who Bob Lee was, with another doing the same for Momeni. After all, I am very curious as to what led police to identify him as the killer, and I would love to see if the official story stands up to scrutiny.

What we know about Nima Momeni

According to Momeni’s LinkedIn profile, he attended the University of California, Berkeley.10 Strangely, according to university spokesperson Dan Mogulof, there exists "no record of attendance or graduation."11

He also listed Laney College and Vista College. Laney is a public community college in Oakland, California.12 Vista College, on the other hand, is much more interesting, having been founded in 2006 by a former McKinsey & Company employee, then suddenly going bankrupt in late 2021.1314

Career

Momeni worked at Marfic Technologies from 2005-2007 as a system/network engineer. He then worked at Coast Range Technologies as an IT administrator/consultant from 2006-2012.

On March 17, 2010, Momeni incorporated Expand Information Technology under the name Expand IT Services, LLC.15 Through this company, Momeni claims to have led a group of "local expert enterprise IT professionals dedicated to providing solid, reliable and efficient technology solutions & cost effective support services."

That’s basically all his LinkedIn page has to offer. Except for this little tidbit:

If the murder took place on April 4, and he was arrested on April 13, that means his profile photo was updated in the interim. Unfortunately, no archives exist that I can find of his profile prior to the change, so I can’t see what it used to look like.

Veeeeery interesting.

Expand IT

As the news broke yesterday of Momeni’s arrest, eager readers seeking to learn more about his business by visiting its website were greeted by this error message:16

Rather than having been scrubbed, it appears the website experienced a traffic overload and simply couldn’t handle it, much like what happens as the result of a “denial-of-service” attack. Luckily, the Wayback Machine was on my side.

Navigating back to a snapshot of the website in November 2011 (just over a year after the company was founded), I was able to locate this bio for Momeni:17

Based on this paragraph, it seems there are a good six years of professional experience not accounted for on Momeni’s LinkedIn profile. Also striking is the mention of “his tenure with several venture capital startups,” which are entirely absent from his page.

Neighbours

Several of Momeni’s neighbours were interviewed by the media following his arrest. One anonymously alleged that “Momeni had come to his door the night of the incident, asking for alcohol.” Another neighbour, Chris Donatiello, expressed shock at the arrest and described Momeni as “a super nice guy.” A third neighbour was Sam Singer, who recently opened an office for his public relations firm in the same building as Momeni's live-work space.18

Now, it is rather convenient that Mr. Singer was present at the scene of this promising followup to such an upsetting story. According to the website of Singer Associates, Sam is “one of the nation’s leading communications strategists,” even earning the titles of “The Fixer,” the “Top Gun for Hire” and “one of the most powerful people in the San Francisco Bay Area” due to his “ability to impact the news for his agency’s clients.”19

To be very specific, Singer Associates’ client list includes a number of entities directly involved in the Bob Lee incident.20

San Francisco General Hospital - the facility where Lee was brought before being pronounced dead;

San Francisco Chronicle - the largest newspaper in the city and a significant media outlet covering the story;

…and the San Francisco Examiner, another local paper covering the story.

I draw no conclusions, but observe how wonderfully coincidental this is — especially given that Singer allegedly just set up his new location right before Momeni’s arrest.

Final thoughts

This is an evolving story, and I have more questions than answers at this point. As I was getting ready to go live, I saw this news story (whose headline has changed twice since I saw it first):21

For now, I will leave you with this:

This is an evolving story.

Rounding the Earth

The following article serves as the show notes for the video presentation of the same name released through the Rounding the News series, presented by Rounding the Earth. It is provided to allow RTE listeners to verify my sources and conduct their own due diligence, and is intended as a supplement to the video. As such, I highly encourage readers of this Substack to watch the full episode and support Rounding the Earth, whose founder Mathew Crawford has provided me the platform and resources to conduct this important work. Thank you, Rounding the Earth!

Watch on Rumble

Big tech entrepreneur Bob Lee has died

On Tuesday, April 4, it was announced that tech entrepreneur Bob Lee had been stabbed to death in San Francisco, California. From the BBC:1

My deepest sympathies go out to Lee’s friends and family, and all who are mourning his death.

The news came to my attention after several of my peers sent around a thread discussing the incident on the forum of Y Combinator, a technology startup accelerator based in Mountain View, California.2

A quick glance at the thread reveals that Lee’s death has sparked heated debate about if he is the victim of a larger increase in violent crime in San Francisco, with some accusing others of playing politics at a sensitive time. Some in the latter camp have expressed desire to focus on celebrating who Lee was as a person, and marking his place in history as a highly successful contributor to big tech innovation, changing the way people all around the world interact with their technology and each other.

Who was Bob Lee?

Lee’s early years are not exactly clear to me in my initial research. Wikipedia’s writeup on him cites various sources, including his own personal blog, detailing his early ventures into coding:

From 1997-2000, Lee worked as a web developer for several organizations including Red Rock Consulting, Southeast Missouri State University, and D’Arcy.3 He then took on senior consulting positions at Capgemini; Ajilon Consulting (where he “developed MasterCard's member bank web site”); and OCI (where he built a stock trading system for A.G. Edwards, a defunct and reorganized financial services firm).

Lee worked at AT&T from September 2003 to October 2004, then jumped to a longer-term position at Google as a staff software engineer. There, he “led the core library development for Android,” the company’s mobile operating system.4

Square

In January 2010, Lee was headhunted by e-commerce startup Square, where he went to work as Chief Technology Officer.5

Square is a payment processing platform originally developed in 2009 by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and his friend Jim McKelvey. Four months after Lee was recruited, the first version of the service went live for public use.6

Early investors in Square during Lee’s tenure included Citi Ventures, GGV Capital, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Rizvi Traverse, Sequoia Capital, Starbucks, Tuesday Capital, Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, Visa, and VMware.7

Lee led the development of Square’s Cash App,8 launching in October 2013 under the named Square Cash.9

Notably, Square secured a debt financing agreement in April 2014 with several major banks: Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).10

SV Angel

Lee left Square in May 2014, taking a job the following month as a limited partner at SV Angel, another of Square’s investors.11 SV Angel founder, Ron Conway, went on to serve as co-chair of the COVID-19 Technology Task Force alongside other high-powered American tech executives.12

News reports coming out this week note that during this period, Lee invested in a number of notable startups including Clubhouse, Figma and SpaceX.13 It is not clear to me at this point if these particular investments were made in association with SV Angel, or independently.

Some additional investments he made are Leo, a disappearing message app purchased by Lyft; and Tile, a company that “creates devices connected to a mobile app, helping users locate their personal items.”14

Tile is interesting and alarming for several reasons. The “tiles” can be attached to items, connecting them by Bluetooth to a network that allows them to be tracked and located by their rightful owners. They can also, however, be used by stalkers to track individuals carrying the tags — a very real problem the company has had to address.15 Furthermore, they’re a rather obvious precursor to more widespread connectivity as envisioned by proponents of “Internet of Things” (IoT) systems.16

It’s not just an add-on product, however. Tile’s technology is already being deployed built-in to an array of widely-used devices from brands such as Bose, Dell, FitBit, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lenovo, Skullcandy, and Smile Direct Club — as well as Apple's Siri, Google Home and Amazon Alexa smart home devices.17

Lee’s fellow Tile investors include Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Nicholas Woodman (founder of GoPro), and Tencent Holdings, parent company of TikTok.18

Lee started working as an advisor at real estate services company GoldenKey in March 2015. In April 2015, he became CEO of Present Company, a social media company focused primarily on women.19

In May 2017, Lee became a limited parter at SignalFire, another venture capital firm based in San Francisco. Companies in SignalFire’s portfolio include Clubhouse, along with a number of startups in the sectors of virtual healthcare, driverless trucks, cybersecurity and financial services.20

Patents

According to his now-defunct LinkedIn profile, Lee was the inventor of at least eight patents. The first three are visible on the main page of his profile (which I managed to capture on Wednesday, prior to its deletion).

The first is titled “Card reader emulation for cardless transactions.” The patent was filed on April 17, 2017 by Square Inc. (now renamed to Block Inc.) and issued on September 14, 2017.21 As described in the abstract:

It’s the second patent that really got my attention. Titled “Detecting proximity using Wi-Fi hotspots,” the patent describes:22

Square/Block is once again the holder of the patent.

Recall Lee’s investment in Tile, described earlier on in this article. Just as Tile uses Bluetooth technology to connect devices to the Internet of Things (IoT), this Square/Block-held patent describes a method to accomplish the same outcome using the very familiar technology of Wi-Fi. In both cases, the idea is to be able to use these wireless networks to tag and identify the physical location of an object (or person) based on its interaction with other parts of the network, also allowing for the sending and receiving of data to each device.

The above graphic comes from an article published by the Wi-Fi Alliance, outlining the importance of Wi-Fi in enable the IoT:23

The third patent, titled “Hierarchical data security measures for a mobile device,” covers a cybersecurity system for mobile devices. It is also held by Square/Block, and was published in September 2019.24

Unlike the other two patents, Lee is not the sole inventor. His co-inventors include:

• Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital — the “first digital asset bank to be granted a banking charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).” In a March 2022 article for Fortune, McCauley claims that Anchorage “proactively volunteered to be regulated at the highest level [they] could.”25 He formerly worked as Security Engineering Manager at Square.26

• Sam Quigley, Square’s “first information security hire.”27 Quigley started Emerose Advisory Services in 2010 to work as an "Independent consultant, focusing on security, management, and scaling issues." He volunteered for Joe Biden's presidential campaign in August-November 2020. In March 2021, Quigley founded Kicho Inc., “an organization dedicated to finding therapeutics for people with Dup15q Syndrome.”28 He also serves on the board of directors for the Dup15q Alliance, a non-profit organization partnered with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the pharma-funded National Organization for Rare Diseases (NORD), and the U.S. Government’s Interagency Collaborative to Advance Research in Epilepsy (ICARE) Research Portfolio.29

• Eric Monti, a Security Engineer at Square.30 Monti previously worked as Lead Security Researcher for Trustwave’s SpiderLabs Threat Intelligence Gathering program. Among Trustwave’s partners are Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Crowdstrike, Google Cloud, and Microsoft.31

• Mike Lewis, Head of Engineering and Human Learning at Square (among other former positions).32 Lewis formerly worked as a software engineer at Google and then Uber, focusing on “financial anti-fraud software,” “cloaking detection,” and rewriting “the service that tracks all of the devices people have logged in with.”

COVID-19

While details are scarce, the World Health Organization confirmed that Lee participated in the development of its official COVID-19 app.33 While this is certainly interesting and bears further investigation, what I find even more pertinent is a job he took before the first year of the declared COVID-19 pandemic was up.

In November 2020, Lee joined a company called PreDxion Bio as an advisor and Head of Software. PreDxion Bio was founded in February 2016 by a trio of students at the University of Michigan, winning a $100,000 TiE Boston Angel Investment Prize.34

From U of M's website:35

Sound familiar?

In June 2016, the company received its first pair of grants from the University of Michigan and MedTech Innovator.36 Described as “the largest lifescience accelerator in the world for medical device, digital health, and diagnostic companies,”37 MedTech is funded by COVID-19 vaccine developer Johnson & Johnson, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the pharmaceutical lobbying association, Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed).38

In 2018, the company received $224,944 in funding from the National Institutes of Health's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) small business grant program.39 Further grants and investments for the company came from Y Combinator, Hillsven Capital, SignalFire and Paul Buchheit (inventor of Google’s Gmail).40

But strangely, after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, PreDxion underwent a revision to its history, with the introduction of a brand new flagship product called Refractal.

Instead of their Theranos-like blood testing machine, this new product was specifically focused on testing for COVID-19, alongside flu, strep and RSV “at once, with a single sample.”41 It was during this era of the company that Lee joined on as head of software.

MobileCoin

Lee began advising a cryptocurrency startup called MobileCoin in February 2021, taking on a full time gig as Chief Product Officer (CPO) in November 2021.42

MobileCoin is described as “a cryptocurrency platform that provides anti-fraud services and payment systems for merchants.”43 Its first round of seed funding came from 8 Decimal Capital and INBlockchain,44 the latter of which advertises itself as “the most influential investment group in the Chinese blockchain space,” with its partners being “among the single largest holders of Bitcoin in the world.”45 Its website bears the slogan, "In Blockchain We Trust."

Later rounds of funding brought in investment from Binance Labs, General Catalyst and Future Ventures. Then in August 2021, MobileCoin’s $66 million Series B round of funding brought onboard a number of notable investors including:46

• Alameda Research, one half of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX scheme;

• Coinbase Ventures;

• TIME Ventures, the venture capital firm of Salesforce founder Marc Benioff;

• Vy Capital, whose other recent investments include several Elon Musk ventures such as Neuralink, The Boring Company and Twitter.47

MobileCoin’s development was led by the MobileCoin Foundation, whose mission is “to build a trusted and innovative financial network that empowers people and business around the world.”48

In February 2023, MobileCoin announced it was rolling out its own stablecoin pegged to the US dollar called eUSD.49

In short, MobileCoin is very much involved in the ongoing transformation of the world’s banking system, tying together many pieces of the puzzle including the collapse of both FTX and Silicon Valley Bank, and the subsequent crackdown on cryptocurrencies and crypto-friendly banks.

Bob Lee’s life and career are notable for many reasons, and his contributions to advancing the cryptocurrency and mobile payments ecosystem are not to be understated. His work on and investments in Internet of Things technology and close relationships to the people and organizations behind Twitter (both Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk) are notable as well.

As of this morning, no arrests have been made. An article in The Independent provided an update from San Francisco police, stating:50

This article is not meant to capture the entirety of who Bob Lee was. I can’t possibly do that, nor do I want anyone walking away thinking this is the most important summary of his life. However, after identifying some of his most prominent accomplishments, I feel we are now better informed as we process further news of what led to his murder.

Rest in peace, Mr. Lee.

Don’t forget to sign up as a free member or paid supporter of our Rounding the Earth Locals community!

Watch on Rumble

This morning, I had the pleasure of kicking off a brand new video series by speaking with my new friend Kristin Elizabeth.

Kristin recently published an explosive investigative article on a pseudo-manufactured white nationalist movement in the United States, tying together a number of groups including White Lives Matter (WLM), Rise Against Movement (RAM), Patriot Front and others.

Beyond the Maze

Stoking White Nationalism

Chatham, NY — On a chilly Monday morning in early October, residents of a small, quiet upstate New York town awoke to find what appeared to be white supremacist leaflets on their front lawns. Small zip-lock bags containing flyers with white nationalist messages had been thrown out of a vehicle window in an apparent drive-by action the night before…

Read more

3 years ago · 19 likes · 13 comments · Kristin Elizabeth

Read the article, then join us on Rumble to enjoy our discussion where we go deeper into many aspects of the story, including the shocking and upsetting ties to the protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to the Azov Battallion in Ukraine, and to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Additional video links and other resources are available on the brand new (and still growing) Rounding the Earth website, where you can select your video platform of choice.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Kristin’s Beyond the Maze Substack series, where she has already published a wonderful selection of pieces in and around this same area of discussion!

Rounding the Earth

The following article serves as the show notes for the video presentation of the same name released through the Rounding the News series, presented by Rounding the Earth. It is provided to allow RTE listeners to verify my sources and conduct their own due diligence, and is intended as a supplement to the video. As such, I highly encourage readers of this Substack to watch the full episode and support Rounding the Earth, whose founder Mathew Crawford has provided me the platform and resources to conduct this important work. Thank you, Rounding the Earth!

Watch on Rumble

Open letter calls out UBC’s unethical COVID-19 policies

Dr. Matthew Evans-Cockle, PhD has stepped into the spotlight with an open letter to the University of British Columbia (UBC), published in the Cariboo Journal.1

Dr. Cockle has also launched a new Rumble channel called CurmudgeonsCorner, where he has published three mini-lectures:

• March 17, 2023: Ethical Integrity at the University of British Columbia

• March 18, 2023: Punished for Doing the Right Thing: The Battle for Ethical Medicine in Ontario

• March 25, 2023: Public Health Marketing Slogans: Lessons Learned

Long-time members of the Rounding the Earth community will know Dr. Cockle from his participation in our October 11, 2022 round table discussion alongside our friend Tessa Lena, titled The Red Herring.2

Kari Lake election challenge affirmed by Arizona Supreme Court

Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has had her election integrity concerns affirmed by the judiciary, paving the way for a more in-depth examination of whether the state’s 2022 mid-term elections were conducted according to the law.3

Lake officially lost last November’s race to her opponent, Katie Hobbs, amid “a series of technical glitches” impacting voting machines in key precincts across Arizona, disproportionately affecting Republican voters who turned out to vote on election day.4

This was not, however, the full extent of the problems plaguing the state's voting system, leading to the filing of a formal challenge of the election results in December 2020.5 Court documents list a number of specific concerns, including failure to maintain proper chain of custody for thousands of mail-in ballots; collusion with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Facebook and Twitter to control public discourse in the state using an "Election Disinformation Reporting Portal"; and failure to abide by the state's signature match verification laws.6

After her initial suit and appeal were dismissed, she petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to review the issue.7 The court ordered the issue of signature match verification to be revisited.

Lawsuits against Epstein-tied banks move forward

Similarly, a judge in New York gave the thumbs up for two lawsuits against Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase to move ahead into discovery. The suits allege that both banks knowingly profited from their enabling of the child sex trafficking network run by their client, Jeffrey Epstein.8

While Epstein died in prison in 2019 and his parter Ghislaine Maxwell is in jail, the full extent of the pair’s operations have not yet been fleshed out on the record. In particular, the list of clients benefiting from Epstein and Maxwell’s highly illicit and horrifying operation has remained elusive and — oddly — of little interest to prosecutors and institutional media.9

Documents produced by the two banks during discovery are expected to provide additional details about what they and their executives knew about Epstein’s activities, including possibly their own incriminating actions.

Donald Trump indicted in New York

After nearly two weeks of back-and-forth and uncertainty, former President Donald Trump has been indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alan Bragg.10

As pointed out by the New York Times’ Charlie Savage, the basis of the charges against Trump have not yet been made public.11

This is the first time in the history of the United States that a former President has been criminally indicted, and the first time the leading opposition candidate for the Presidency has faced arrest.

RESTRICT Act is a red herring for mass surveillance and censorship

Amid a flurry of concern over the Chinese Government’s use of social media application TikTok for espionage and social manipulation of American citizens, the U.S. Congress is debating a bill called the RESTRICT Act.

Further reading:

• VICE News: The 'Insanely Broad' RESTRICT Act Could Ban Much More Than Just TikTok

Also of note…

• ActBlue may be laundering political donations

• Toxic waste sent around the country to inappropriate facilities

• Uganda bans being LGBTQ

• Federal Government of Canada Requested Removal of Online Content, Document Shows

The Vulkan Files: Confession through Projection

Well, well, well… it appears we have another addition to our growing “Insert-noun-here Files” collection!

Yesterday, British newspaper The Guardian published an article detailing what they called the “Vulkan Files,” describing the cyber warfare and disinformation tools and techniques developed by a Russian company called NTC Vulkan.12 The story is allegedly based on a leak of thousands of internal documents provided by an anonymous whistleblower.

Despite the implication written into the headline, ‘Vulkan files’ leak reveals Putin’s global and domestic cyberwarfare tactics, the article does not actually assert that these tools are being used by the Russian government, or that there’s any reason in particular to believe they were even developed with guidance from President Vladimir Putin or his office. In short, while the article seems to contain a compelling story, there is not a lot of true value provided (such as the documents themselves, for example.)

To be clear: I have no reason to doubt that Russia has secret, undisclosed cyber warfare and information management programs. I imagine these would be happily deployed on Canadians and Americans at the drop of a hat, and likely are underway. Don’t take this as me dismissing the premise. Still, I’d like to learn a bit more about the people and organizations described here. Especially, of course, given the fact that just like the Twitter Files and the Lockdown Files, the Vulkan Files already has a Wikipedia page!

Let’s see if we can get the story straight.

The investigation

Let’s start off by looking into the organizations responsible for the story itself. According to the article, the anonymous source approached the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung with the leak “days after” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After a delay, the “whistleblower” subsequently went to a company called Paper Trail Media, kickstarting a collaborative investigation that roped in 11 media outlets total, including The Guardian, the Washington Post and Le Monde.

Paper Trail Media

Paper Trail Media is described as a “Munich-based investigative startup.” The company’s website boasts its prior work as “the journalists behind the #PanamaPapers, #ParadisePapers #SuisseSecrets #XinjiangPoliceFiles and #VulkanFiles.” Alongside its partners, the company also claims credit for "the #PegasusProject, #ChinaCables, the #RussianAssetTracker and more."13

Here is what each of these hashtag-bearing titles refers to:

• #PanamaPapers: “The Panama Papers refer to the 11.5 million leaked encrypted confidential documents that were the property of Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The documents were released on April 3, 2016, by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), dubbing them the ‘Panama Papers.’ The document exposed the network of more than 214,000 tax havens involving people and entities from 200 different nations.”14

• #ParadisePapers: “The name refers to a leak of 13.4m files. Most of the documents – 6.8m – relate to a law firm and corporate services provider that operated together in 10 jurisdictions under the name Appleby. Last year, the ‘fiduciary’ arm of the business was the subject of a management buyout and it is now called Estera.”15

• #SuisseSecrets: “A cache of leaked data from a cornerstone of the global banking industry” which “reveals how the rich, the powerful and the corrupt use secret Swiss accounts to move millions — and funnel some of it into Florida real estate.”16

• #XinjiangPoliceFiles: “The Xinjiang Police Files are a major cache of speeches, images, documents and spreadsheets obtained by a third party from confidential internal police networks. They provide a groundbreaking inside view of the nature and scale of Beijing's secretive campaign of interning between 1-2 million Uyghurs and other ethnic citizens in China's northwestern Xinjiang region.”17

• #PegasusProject: “An unprecedented leak of more than 50,000 phone numbers selected for surveillance by the customers of the israeli company NSO Group” which “shows how this technology has been systematically abused for years.”18

• #ChinaCables: “China Cables is an investigation into the surveillance and mass internment without charge or trial of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.”19

• #RussianAssetTracker: “…a project to track down and catalogue the vast wealth held outside Russia by oligarchs and key figures close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.”20

As you can see, this is a wide variety of investigative subjects that revolve around organized corruption within the super wealthy, corporations, hostile nations, banks, and law firms. #VulkanFiles is the next in this multi-year series of investigations.

Paper Trail Media works on some of these projects with partner organizations, with four prominently identified: the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Forbidden Stories and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC).

OCCRP is a project of the U.S.-based Journalism Development Network,21 and its primary funding sources are - get ready - the United States government, through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United States Department of State.22 Other donors from 2012 to the present day include George Soros' Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Ford Foundation, Skoll Foundation, Pierre Omidyar’s Luminate, and Google (through the Google News Initiative and their think tank, Jigsaw).2324252627

Why, look at that! The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is also funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, Open Society Foundations and Ford Foundation.2829 You've also got the Hollywood Foreign Press Association footing the bill.

Forbidden Stories shares many of these same funding sources, including the National Endowment for Democracy, Open Society Foundations, and the Skoll Foundation.3031 Others include the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Pulitzer Center, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Rockefeller Foundation, and the United Nations Foundation.32

Finally, we have the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC), which is funded by Omidyar’s Luminate and Soros’ Open Society Foundations.3334

This is the crowd that Paper Trail Media runs with. While some of these investigations are surely done in earnest, and the resulting revelations have brought international attention to real human rights crises (such as the case with the oppression of the Uyghur Muslims in China), it is vital not to lose sight of who benefits from the selective publication of these exposés.

George Soros is a major player on the international geopolitical stage, and his funding of all four of Paper Trail Media’s closest collaborators suggests his own geopolitical goals are advanced by this investment. It’s not just Mr. Soros, of course. By now, the foundations bearing the names Rockefeller, Ford and Skoll should all be immediately recognizable as powerful influences on whichever story is being sold.

But let’s give those guys the benefit of the doubt for a second, and face the biggest elephant in the room: the fact that the United States government itself is engaged with these groups in an apparently significant and long-term relationship.

Mandiant

In good scientific spirit, the article doesn’t simply say “trust us, we wouldn’t lie to you!” Instead, the authors tapped a cybersecurity firm to review the so-called “leak” and provide their input. The article cites the comments of John Hultquist and Gabby Roncone, both employees at Mandiant.

Mandiant is a subsidiary of Google, having been acquired by the internet giant and fully integrated into Google Cloud in March 2022.35 Its long list(s) of partners includes:3637

• Allianz

• Amazon Web Services

• AT&T

• Bell

• Cloudflare

• CrowdStrike

• IBM

• Microsoft

• Telus

…and many others. With that in mind, are we really supposed to find this company credible on this topic? Google, keep in mind, is perfectly happy in their position as the world’s gatekeeper of cyber infrastructure.

The idea that “Google is spying on us” is ubiquitous, and we treat it as a fact of life. Furthermore, the company has been all too happy working with government, military and intelligence agencies to control the flow of information and target civilians when so desired.38

Rounding the Earth is an educational platform, and Mathew told me when I started this weekly news roundup that each show should teach one key educational tool. With this brief overview, we attempted to evaluate the credibility of the source of this story, in particular as it relates to the topic at hand. Given that — in true “Insert-Noun-Here Files” fashion — the underlying “leaked” documents were not provided in any meaningful form at all, we’re required to rely on the source itself.

For me, I can’t help but see the activities and tools skimmed over in the article as being much more than a mirror image of exactly the same tools and activities used by our own governments and domestic corporations, on us. This, my friends, is confession through projection. Whether it’s Russia or the United States, China or Israel, Uganda or Myanmar, intrusion into privacy and the mass manipulation of public flows of information is always the same degree of problematic. I ask you, the reader/listener: are you happy with this as the status quo?

Rounding the Earth

The following article serves as the show notes for the video presentation of the same name released through the Rounding the News series, presented by Rounding the Earth. It is provided to allow RTE listeners to verify my sources and conduct their own due diligence, and is intended as a supplement to the video. As such, I highly encourage readers of this Substack to watch the full episode and support Rounding the Earth, whose founder Mathew Crawford has provided me the platform and resources to conduct this important work. Thank you, Rounding the Earth!

Watch on Rumble

Sam Bankman-Fried

This is Part VI of the Examining Effective Altruism special investigation series on Rounding the News. Read the previous instalments here:

• Part I - William MacAskill, Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours, Y Combinator, Centre for Effective Altruism, and more...

• Part II - The Social Network, revisionist history, Chris Hughes, LifeLog

• Part III - Dustin Moskovitz, Cari Tuna, Good Ventures, GiveWell, Open Philanthropy

• Part IV - Peter Singer: eugenics, bioethics, gene editing, euthanasia, infanticide. Meet the Godfather of Effective Altruism.

• Part V - Joseph Bankman, Barbara Fried, legacy and utilitarianism, 2020 and 2022 elections

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) should require no introduction at this point. He is the founder of FTX and Alameda Research, two companies that engaged in widespread fraud and other alleged crimes that resulted in their collapse. The ripple effects continue to affect the economy at large.

Early years

SBF was born March 6, 1992 in Stanford, California, into a world informed by the ideologies, people and organizations described at length in the previous chapter of this series.

This is more literal than you might think, given that he was actually born on the campus of Stanford University.

A Yahoo! Finance article published in August 2021 characterizes the Bankman-Fried household as having been permeated by the “branches of moral philosophy” practiced by his parents - specifically, utilitarianism.1

Sound familiar? This is effective altruism. Or rather, a version of the philosophy that predates the modern “effective altruism movement.”

He discovered the work of leading utilitarian Peter Singer — a contemporary, if not straight up colleague, of his mother’s — as a teenager, with Bloomberg describing him as SBF’s “capitalist muse.”2

Education

SBF attended Crystal Springs Uplands School, described as “a top Silicon Valley prep school.34 He registered a profile and engaged on an educational platform called the Art of Problem Solving (AoPS),5 whose first employee was none other than Rounding the Earth’s founder, Mathew Crawford.6

This is where we enter a strange phase of this investigation as I tiptoe into Mathew’s own history. I’ll let him speak to his experiences, failures, successes et al, while I focus on piecing together an understanding of the world of mathematics that spawned SBF.

Art of Problem Solving

As it turns out, AoPS is not an insignificant part of the story. The company was launched in May 2003 by a man named Richard Rusczyk,7 a former Senior Vice President at a multinational investment firm called D.E. Shaw & Co.8

In 2004, the National Security Agency (NSA) approached AoPS to take over the USA Mathematical Talent Search, leading to the formation of the Art of Problem Solving Foundation to run the event. The new organization was later renamed to the Art of Problem Solving Initiative.