The Most Important Part of the English-Speaking Colonial Empire's Control System, Imperial Intelligence, Is Still Needed: The Secret History of the Five Eyes

"The Secret History of the Five Eyes

By Richard Kerbaj

Union Square, 448 pages, $29.99

Not many people outside policy and government circles know about the Five Eyes, the intelligence-sharing network formed by the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand that has existed since World War II. Perhaps that's what justifies the title of Richard Kerbaj's "The Secret History of the Five Eyes," a book that draws largely from public sources, including news articles and interviews with major political figures.

Mr. Kerbaj gives readers a valuable look at the origins and trajectory of the oldest and most successful intelligence network in the world. It's the one that sustained the U.S. and its allies during World War II and the Cold War, and even after 9/11 and during the War on Terror. As the author shows, it's an alliance that's faced its share of internal strife, over the Suez crisis, the Vietnam War and now Donald Trump.

"The Five Eyes" refers to the five intelligence agencies that meet annually to discuss how to share information, including the fruits of signal intelligence, human-intelligence capabilities and law-enforcement activities (among them, those of the FBI), with each member having access to whatever the other four uncover.

The arrangement also involves a geographic division of labor, with the U.S. covering Latin America and the Caribbean as well as major portions of Asia, Russia and the Middle East; the U.K. is responsible for Europe and Africa; Australia watches over South and East Asia and southern China; and New Zealand monitors the south and west Pacific. Canada covers the increasingly important polar regions of Russia and the interior of China.

"On the one hand, the Five Eyes is equivalent to a band of brothers and sisters drawn together by common values, language and cause," Mr. Kerbaj writes, with each member ultimately responsible to its respective government. On the other, "the alliance is a non-binding marriage of convenience riddled with distrust, competing intelligence agendas, and a massive imbalance of power that predominantly favors the United States," with its resources far greater than the other four put together and the global responsibilities to match. Given the asymmetry, it's not surprising that the others can be resentful, even engage in outright pushback.

At first the urgency of the war against Hitler compelled trust and cooperation between the U.K., the U.S. and Canada. As the war expanded into the Pacific, these Atlantic-based partners drew Australia and New Zealand into their orbit.

Cooperation on codebreaking was the group's original focus and strength, first against the Germans, then the Japanese.

Mr. Kerbaj underlines what we've all learned since: that this cooperation proved decisive for victory in both theaters.

During the Cold War, the Five Eyes shared a trove of secret Soviet information decrypted through an operation codenamed the Venona Project. Gene Grabeel, a former American home-economics teacher, took charge of sifting through thousands of old encrypted Soviet communications. Her efforts led to the unmasking of the Soviet spies Klaus Fuchs, Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, among others.

How Venona got started is one of the most interesting and engaging passages of Mr. Kerbaj's book.

America's original codebreaking partner, the U.K., remains the closest of its Five Eyes partners. With the end of the Cold War and the rise of China, however, Australia's importance has been growing.

Mr. Kerbaj describes how Australia's rise has graduated to strategic cooperation in the so-called AUKUS agreement between Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. for building the Australian navy's first nuclear submarines.

New Zealand remains the least represented and, from the American perspective, the least trusted of its Five Eye partners, given its government's serial proclivity for anti-American rhetoric and agendas. But as China expands its influence into the South Pacific, the New Zealand connection, too, will gain value. The same will happen with Canada, the other junior partner, as China and Russia look to dominate new sea routes in the arctic region.

In many ways, Canada's junior status in the Five Eyes arrangement remains a puzzle. Mr. Kerbaj points out that one of the Five Eyes' founders, William Stephenson, was a Canadian; Canada worked closely with both the U.S. and the U.K. on secret atomic research during World War II. But since then Canada and the U.S. have often seemed to be on divergent political trajectories. Canada was a critic of America's Vietnam policy (Australia, by contrast, stood loyally by and sent 60,000 troops to serve alongside American GIs). It also refused to join the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, based on suspicions by Canadian intelligence officials that the claims regarding Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction had been fabricated. "It was, in fact, the first time ever that there was a war that the Brits and the Americans were involved [in] and Canada was not there," Jean Chretien, Canada's prime minister at the time, is quoted as saying.

Mr. Kerbaj's discussion of Mr. Trump's impact on the Five Eyes is perhaps the least satisfactory part of the book. Written in 2021-22, it reflects the disdain and distrust the author's sources held for Mr. Trump, and echoes their narrative that if Mr. Trump wasn't an out-and-out collaborator with Vladimir Putin during the 2016 election, then at the very least he recklessly disregarded the risks of being overly friendly with the Russian dictator.

Today we know considerably more about how the so-called Russian hoax began as a Hillary Clinton campaign ploy, and how the FBI engaged in questionable, if not actually illegal, spying on the Trump team.

This time lag is unfortunate in another way: The book doesn't give us a full picture of what happened to the Five Eyes during the Joe Biden years, while the author's chapter on "The Future of the Five Eyes" falls well short of Mr. Trump's ascent to the White House for a second term. Mr. Trump has proved he is determined to shake up America's international relations, even with its allies. There's no reason to think he won't do the same with the Five Eyes.

---

Mr. Herman is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of "Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II."" [1]

1.  A Select Club Of Spies. Herman, Arthur.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 28 Apr 2025: A15.

 

Medicine Spares Cancer Patients From Grisly Surgeries and Harsh Therapies

 

"For a limited group of cancer patients who have solid tumors in the stomach, rectum, esophagus and other organs, an immunotherapy trial offered stunning results.

When a person develops solid tumors in the stomach or esophagus or rectum, oncologists know how to treat them. But the cures often come with severe effects on quality of life. That can include removal of the stomach or bladder, a permanent colostomy bag, radiation that makes patients infertile and lasting damage from chemotherapy.

So a research group at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, using a drug from the pharmaceutical company GSK, tried something different.

The researchers started with a group of 103 people. The trial participants were among the 2 to 3 percent of cancer patients with tumors that should respond to immunotherapy, a drug that overcomes barriers that prevent the immune system from attacking cancers.

But in clinical trials, immunotherapy is not supposed to replace the standard treatments. The researchers, led by Dr. Luis A. Diaz Jr. and Dr. Andrea Cercek, decided to give dostarlimab, an immunotherapy drug, on its own.

The result was stunning, and could bring hope to the limited cohort of patients contending with these cancers.

In 49 of the patients, who had rectal cancer, the tumors disappeared and, after five years, have not recurred. Cancers also vanished for 35 of 54 patients who had other cancers, including in the stomach, esophagus, liver, endometrium, urinary tract and prostate.

Out of all 103 patients, cancers recurred in only five. Three got additional doses of immunotherapy and one, whose tumor recurred in a lymph node, had the lymph node removed. Those four patients so far have no evidence of disease. The fifth patient had additional immunotherapy that made the tumor shrink.

The investigators reported their results Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research and in a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The results, said Dr. Bert Vogelstein, an oncologist at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, are “groundbreaking.”

Earlier phases of the drug’s development occurred in his lab, and he has watched its progress with amazement.

“Twenty or 30 years ago, the idea that you could take large tumors of many different organs and treat them without doing surgery would seem like science fiction,” he said. But, he added, the discovery did not spring full blown into the minds of researchers. Instead, he noted, it builds on 40 years of research “starting with very basic science.”

The reason immunotherapy even had a chance against these large tumors is because the patients’ tumors had what is known as mismatch repair mutations in their genes that prevented them from fixing DNA damage. As a result, such tumors are studded with unusual proteins that signal the immune system to destroy them. But tumors put up a shield that blocks immune system attacks. Immunotherapy pierces the shield and allows the immune system to destroy the tumors.

For patients like those in the study, said Dr. Michael Overman, a specialist in gastrointestinal cancer at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the results show immunotherapy without chemotherapy, radiation treatments or surgeries is a valid treatment “and it is so logical we should be doing it.”

But, for now, that may not be so easy. The drug costs about $11,000 per dose, and patients need nine infusions over six months.

In order to get insurance coverage, the drug has to be included in clinical guidelines, sets of recommendations for treatments produced by professional organizations.

It is approved as a treatment for uterine cancers with mismatch repair mutations and is included in clinical guidelines for the treatment of rectal cancer, based on an earlier small study.

But patients with other cancers might have trouble getting the drug, Dr. Diaz said. Memorial Sloan Kettering, though, is still recruiting for its clinical trial, so patients who have tumors with mismatched repair mutations and qualify for the study can get the drug free.

For some patients, immunotherapy has been miraculous. It can have side effects — the most common among patients in the study were fatigue, rash and itching. Rarer side effects included lung infections and encephalitis.

Maureen Sideris, 71, of Amenia, N.Y., found out she had cancer after she tried to eat a hamburger.

“It would not go down,” she said. There was some sort of blockage. It turned out to be a tumor at the juncture of her stomach and esophagus.

She went to Sloan Kettering in 2019. Her surgeon told her that she needed surgery, chemotherapy and radiation and that the surgery would be difficult — they might have to take out a piece of her stomach and move her esophagus

But her tumor had a mismatch repair mutation, so she joined the clinical trial. The first infusion was on Oct. 14 of that year. By January, her tumor was gone. 

Ms. Sideris has one side effect from the treatment — she needs to take medication now to improve how her kidneys function. 

But she says it is worth paying that price to avoid the onerous treatment that would have been in store for her.

“It’s been a journey,” she said. But, she added, she reasoned that she had nothing to lose when she agreed to try immunotherapy.

“I still had surgery as a backup if it didn’t work,” she said." [1]

1.  Medicine Spares Cancer Patients From Grisly Surgeries and Harsh Therapies. Kolata, Gina.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Apr 27, 2025.

Vaistai apsaugo, vėžiu sergančius, pacientus nuo šiurpių operacijų ir sunkių gydymo būdų

 

Ribotai grupei, vėžiu sergančių, pacientų, kuriems yra solidiniai navikai skrandyje, tiesiojoje žarnoje, stemplėje ir kituose organuose, imunoterapijos tyrimas pateikė stulbinančių rezultatų.

 

Kai žmogui išsivysto solidiniai navikai skrandyje, stemplėje ar tiesiojoje žarnoje, onkologai žino, kaip juos gydyti. Tačiau gydymas dažnai turi didelį poveikį gyvenimo kokybei. Tai gali būti skrandžio ar šlapimo pūslės pašalinimas, nuolatinis kolostomijos maišelis, spindulinė terapija, dėl kurios pacientai tampa nevaisingi, ir ilgalaikė chemoterapijos žala.

 

Taigi, Memorial Sloan Kettering vėžio centro tyrimų grupė, naudodama farmacijos kompanijos GSK vaistą, išbandė kai ką kita.

 

Tyrėjai pradėjo nuo 103 žmonių grupės. Tyrimo dalyviai buvo tarp 2–3 procentų, vėžiu sergančių, pacientų, turinčių navikų, kurie turėtų reaguoti į imunoterapiją – vaistą, kuris įveikia barjerus, neleidžiančius imuninei sistemai pulti vėžio.

 

Tačiau klinikiniuose tyrimuose imunoterapija neturėtų pakeisti standartinio gydymo. Tyrėjai, vadovaujami dr. Luiso A. Diazo jaunesniojo ir dr. Andreos Cercek, nusprendė skirti tik vieną imunoterapijos vaistą - dostarlimabą.

 

Rezultatas buvo stulbinantis ir galėtų suteikti vilties ribotai pacientų, kovojančių su šiais vėžio tipais, grupei.

 

49 pacientams, sergantiems tiesiosios žarnos vėžiu, navikai išnyko ir po penkerių metų nebeatsinaujino. Vėžys taip pat išnyko 35 iš 54 pacientų, kurie sirgo kitais vėžio tipais, įskaitant skrandžio, stemplės, kepenų, endometriumo, šlapimo takų ir prostatos vėžį.

 

Iš visų 103 pacientų vėžys atsinaujino tik penkiems. Trims buvo skirtos papildomos imunoterapijos dozės, o vienam, kurio navikas atsinaujino limfmazgyje, limfmazgis buvo pašalintas. Šiems keturiems pacientams iki šiol nėra jokių ligos požymių. Penktajam pacientui buvo taikyta papildoma imunoterapija, dėl kurios navikas sumažėjo.

 

Tyrėjai paskelbė savo rezultatus sekmadienį metiniame Amerikos vėžio tyrimų asociacijos susirinkime ir straipsnyje, paskelbtame žurnale „The New England Journal of Medicine“.

 

Pasak dr. Berto Vogelsteino, Baltimorės Johnso Hopkinso ligoninės onkologo, rezultatai yra „novatoriški“.

 

Ankstesni vaisto kūrimo etapai vyko jo laboratorijoje, ir jis su nuostaba stebėjo šį progresą.

 

„Prieš dvidešimt ar trisdešimt metų mintis, kad galima paimti didelius daugelio skirtingų organų navikus ir gydyti juos, neatliekant operacijos, atrodytų, kaip mokslinė fantastika“, – sakė jis. Tačiau pridūrė, kad šis atradimas tyrėjų galvose nebuvo iki galo išgalvotas. Vietoj to, pažymėjo jis, jie remiasi 40 metų tyrimais, „pradedant nuo fundamentalaus mokslo“.

 

Imunoterapija apskritai turėjo galimybę kovoti su šiais dideliais navikais, nes pacientų navikų genuose buvo vadinamosios DNR neatitikimų taisymo mutacijos, kurios neleido jiems ištaisyti DNR pažeidimų. Dėl to tokiuose navikuose gausu neįprastų baltymų, kurie signalizuoja imuninei sistemai juos sunaikinti. Tačiau navikai sukuria skydą, kuris blokuoja imuninės sistemos atakas. Imunoterapija pramuša skydą ir leidžia imuninei sistemai sunaikinti tokius navikus.

 

Tyrime dalyvavusiems pacientams, MD Andersono vėžio centro Hiustone virškinamojo trakto vėžio specialisto dr. Michaelo Overmano teigimu, rezultatai rodo, kad imunoterapija be chemoterapijos, spindulinio gydymo ar operacijų yra tinkamas gydymas, „ir labai logiška, kad turėtume tai daryti“.

 

Tačiau kol kas tai gali būti ne taip paprasta. Vaisto dozė kainuoja apie 11 000 dolerių, o pacientams reikia devynių infuzijų per šešis mėnesius.

 

Norint gauti draudimo apsaugą, vaistas turi būti įtrauktas į klinikines gaires – profesinių organizacijų parengtus gydymo rekomendacijų rinkinius.

 

Jis yra patvirtintas, kaip gimdos vėžio, turinčio DNR neatitikimo taisymo mutacijų, gydymas ir yra įtrauktas į tiesiosios žarnos vėžio gydymo klinikines gaires, remiantis ankstesniu nedideliu tyrimu.

 

Tačiau pacientams, sergantiems kitų rūšių vėžiu, gali būti sunku gauti vaistą, sakė dr. Diazas. Tačiau „Memorial Sloan Kettering“ vis dar ieško dalyvių savo klinikiniam tyrimui, todėl pacientai, turintys navikų su DNR neatitikimo taisymo mutacijomis ir atitinkantys tyrimo reikalavimus, gali gauti vaistą nemokamai.

 

Kai kuriems pacientams imunoterapija buvo stebuklinga.

 

Tai gali turėti šalutinį poveikį – dažniausiai tyrime dalyvavusiems pacientams pasireiškė nuovargis, bėrimas ir niežulys. Retesni šalutiniai poveikiai buvo plaučių infekcijos ir encefalitas.

 

71 metų Maureen Sideris iš Amenijos, Niujorko valstijos, sužinojo, kad serga vėžiu, kai pabandė suvalgyti mėsainį.

 

„Jis nenusileisdavo“, – sakė ji. Buvo kažkoks užsikimšimas. Paaiškėjo, kad tai buvo navikas skrandžio ir stemplės sandūroje.

 

2019 m. ji kreipėsi į Sloan Kettering. Chirurgas pasakė, kad jai reikia operacijos, chemoterapijos ir spindulinės terapijos, ir kad operacija bus sunki – gali tekti pašalinti skrandžio gabalėlį ir perkelti stemplę.

 

Tačiau jos navike buvo DNR neatitikimo taisymo mutacija, todėl ji prisijungė prie klinikinio tyrimo. Pirmoji infuzija buvo atlikta tų pačių metų spalio 14 d. Iki sausio mėnesio jos auglys išnyko.

 

Ponia Sideris patyrė vieną šalutinį gydymo poveikį – jai dabar reikia vartoti vaistus, kad pagerėtų inkstų funkcija.

 

Tačiau ji sako, kad verta sumokėti šią kainą, kad būtų išvengta sunkaus gydymo, kuris jai būtų buvęs skirtas.

 

„Tai buvo kelionė“, – sakė ji. Tačiau ji pridūrė, kad sutikusi išbandyti imunoterapiją, ji samprotavo, jog neturėjo ko prarasti.

 

„Man vis tiek būtų atlikta operacija, kaip atsarginė priemonė, jei imunoterapija nepadėtų“, – sakė ji.“ [1]

 

1.  Medicine Spares Cancer Patients From Grisly Surgeries and Harsh Therapies. Kolata, Gina.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Apr 27, 2025.

Under the guise of unrealistic defense, trying to throw us into the street, taking away our homes

  Prices in Lithuania are the same as in the West and salaries are much lower. By taxing our homes, you continue to raise those taxes, because the dwarf Lithuania has not enough for any reasonable defense. You will actually take our home from us with the help of bailiffs. We do not want to be homeless.  

Where are your hydrogen bombs? Where are your fighter jets? Where are your bombers? Where are your submarines? Without these things there is no defense. You have no chances to buy any of them. Why do you pretend to be a pooping cat here?

Prisidengdami nerealistiška gynyba, bando išmesti mus į gatvę, atimdami mūsų namus

 Lietuvoje kainos tos pačios, kaip Vakaruose, o atlyginimai daug mažesni. Apmokestindami mūsų namus, toliau keliate tuos mokesčius,  nes nykštukei Lietuvėlei jokios gynybos negana. Mūsų namus faktiškai iš mūsų atimsite su antstolių pagalba. Nenorime būti dirbančiais benamiais.

Kur jūsų vandenilinės bombos?

Kur jūsų naikintuvai?

Kur jūsų bombonešiai?

Kur jūsų povandeniniai laivai?

Be visų šių daiktų nėra jokios gynybos. O nusipirkti juos jums nėra jokių šansų.

Kodėl jūs čia šikantį katiną vaizduojate?