Promoters of the Holocaust story inevitably raise eyewitness testimony as “proof” of the genocide of European Jewry during World War II. A pro-Holocaust supporter told me that witnesses such as Elie Wiesel, Simon Wiesenthal and Viktor Frankl are not relied upon by historians to prove the “Holocaust” happened. Instead, testimony from Sonderkommandos who actually worked at the alleged homicidal gas chambers constitutes the most-reliable eyewitness testimony. A Sonderkommando was an inmate who aided the German camp authorities with disposing of the bodies of inmates who had died in the camps. Many of them were Jews, and all the “eyewitness” testimony comes from Jews, some of whom claim that all Sonderkommando members were Jews.
This article discusses the credibility of several prominent Sonderkommandos mentioned frequently in the pro-Holocaust literature.
Henryk Tauber
Henryk Tauber stated in his deposition of May 1945 that he worked in the crematoria at Birkenau from February 1943 to October 1944. Pro-Holocaust researcher Robert Jan van Pelt refers to Sonderkommando Henryk Tauber as “an almost-ideal witness” and states “we do well to attach the highest evidentiary value” to Tauber’s testimony.[1] Jean-Claude Pressac stated: “The testimony by Henryk Tauber is the best that exists on the Birkenau Krematorien. Being 95% historically reliable, it stands head-and-shoulders above the rest.”[2] An analysis of Tauber’s testimony, however, shows that it is utterly dubious.
Tauber said in his deposition: “Generally speaking, we burned four or five corpses at a time in one muffle, but sometimes we charged a greater number of corpses. It was possible to charge up to eight ‘muselmanns’ [Camp slang for emaciated inmates]. Such big charges were incinerated without the knowledge of the head of the crematorium during air-raid warnings in order to attract the attention of airmen by having a bigger fire emerging from the chimney. We imagined that in that way it might be possible to change our fate.”[3]
As is common knowledge and has been pointed out many times, crematorium chimneys do not emit flames. It is also impossible to push eight corpses into a cremation muffle whose door is just two feet wide and two feet high. And apart from that, before Tauber and his co-workers would have been able to push eight corpses into each muffle and get a huge blaze going, any plane of whose approach they claim to have heard would have long since flown away. Such testimonies are, to use Pressac’s words, “nothing but downright lies and pure invention.”[4]
Tauber testified in his deposition: “During the incineration of such [not-emaciated] corpses, we used the coke only to light the fire of the furnace initially, for fatty corpses burned of their own accord thanks to the combustion of the body fat. On occasion, when coke was in short supply, we would put some straw and wood in the ash bins under the muffles, and once the fat of the corpse began to burn the other corpses would catch light themselves… Later on, as cremations succeeded one another, the furnaces burned thanks to the embers produced by the combustion of the corpses. So, during the incineration of fat bodies, the fires were generally extinguished.”[5]
These claims are false. The thousands of crematories around the world consuming large amounts of energy are the best proof that cremation of bare bodies cannot be started, sustained nor completed from the combustion of body fat from the corpses.[6]
Tauber’s testimony becomes even more afactual when he says that the Birkenau crematories were shut down in 1944 because cremation trenches are more-efficient than crematories. Tauber testified: “It was realized that the pits burned the corpses better (than the furnaces), so the Krematorien closed down one after the other after the pits came into operation.”[7] Germar Rudolf comments on Tauber’s testimony: “As for trench burning in comparison to cremation, the energy loss through radiation and convection, along with the problem of incomplete burning, is so gigantic that further commentary is really not needed.”[8]
Tauber also said in his testimony: “Ober Capo August explained to us that, according to the calculations and plans for this crematorium, five to seven minutes was allowed to burn one corpse in a muffle.”[9] This is impossible even today, and using 1940s technology it took at least an hour to incinerate a corpse. No plan for any actual crematorium indicates otherwise.
Tauber also estimated that 4 million people were gassed at Auschwitz/Birkenau: “During my time in Auschwitz, I was able to talk to various prisoners who had worked in the Krematorien and the Bunkers before my arrival. They told me that I was not among the first to do this work, and that before I came another 2 million people had already been gassed in Bunkers 1 and 2 and Krematorium I. Adding up, the total number of people gassed in Auschwitz amounted to about 4 million.”[10] Today no credited historian estimates that 4 million people were gassed at Auschwitz/Birkenau. Tauber was merely repeating the Soviet propaganda extant at the time.
More Incongruities in Tauber’s Testimony
Henryk Tauber said in his deposition: “The people going to be gassed and those in the gas chamber damaged the electrical installations, tearing the cables out and damaging the ventilation equipment.”[11]
Ventilating the alleged homicidal gas chambers would have been prevented after the ventilation equipment had been damaged by the inmates. If Tauber’s statement was true, the Germans would have had to repair the wiring and ventilation ducts in the gas chambers on a regular basis. Tauber and the other Sonderkommandos would not have been able to clear the gas chambers of dead bodies when the ventilation system was not working. Thus, the daily mass gassings in the homicidal gas chambers could not have occurred as Tauber alleged.[12]
Tauber also stated in his deposition that the Sonderkommandos carried the bodies to the crematorium muffles. Tauber makes no mention that the Sonderkommandos used special protection to carry the bodies.[13] A body that has been killed with hydrocyanic acid (HCN) cannot be safely touched by any person without protection. Dr. Robert Faurisson said in regard to HCN poisoning: “Hydrocyanic acid penetrates into the skin, the mucous membranes, and the bodily fluids. The corpse of a man who has just been killed by this powerful poison is itself a dangerous source of poisoning, and cannot be touched with bare hands. In order to enter the HCN-saturated chamber to remove the corpse, special gear is needed, as well as a gas mask with a special filter.”[14] The danger of touching someone killed with Zyklon B gas is confirmed in the scientific literature.[15]
Bill M. Armontrout, the warden of Missouri State Penitentiary, testified at the 1988 Ernst Zündel trial as to the operation of the Missouri homicidal gas chamber:
After the execution, the ammonia was released and the gas expelled out of the chamber. All staff and witnesses were removed from the area. The ventilation fan ran for approximately an hour before two officers equipped with Scott air-packs (self-contained breathing apparatus which firemen use to enter smoke-filled buildings) opened the hatch of the gas chamber and removed the lead bucket containing the cyanide residue. The two officers wore rubberized disposable clothing and long rubber gloves. They hosed down the condemned man’s body in the chair, paying particular attention to the hair and the clothing because of the cyanide residue, then removed him and placed him on a gurney where further decontamination took place. The officers then hosed the entire inside of the gas chamber with regular cold water.[16]
The Sonderkommandos at Auschwitz/Birkenau would have had to wear something similar to Scott air-packs to remove the dead bodies from the homicidal gas chambers. There is simply no way around it. Otherwise, the alleged homicidal gassing operations would not have worked, and Tauber would not have lived to tell his story.
Tauber stated in his deposition concerning the alleged gas chambers: “The roof of the gas chamber was supported by concrete pillars running down the middle of its length. On either side of these pillars there were four others, two on each side. The sides of these pillars, which went up through the roof, were of heavy wire mesh. Inside this grid, there was another of finer mesh and inside that a third of very fine mesh. Inside this last mesh cage there was a removable can that was pulled out with a wire to recover the pellets from which the gas had evaporated.”[17]
Germar Rudolf writes in regard to Tauber’s testimony: “Several hundred people, locked into a cellar with a very small surface area, anticipating death, would panic and attempt to escape, damaging everything that stood in their way… If these columns actually existed, their outer framework would have to have been of solid steel, but certainly not of fragile wire mesh construction.”[18] Tauber’s testimony concerning wire mesh in the gas chambers is simply not credible.
Abraham and Shlomo Dragon
Brothers Abraham and Shlomo Dragon claim to have been Sonderkommandos stationed at Birkenau. Shlomo recalled his first encounter with dead bodies at a cottage known as Bunker 2: “As [SS officer Otto] Moll opened the door of the house, bodies fell out. We smelled gas. We saw corpses of both sexes. The whole place was full of naked people on top of each other falling out.”[19]
Shlomo Dragon said that the cottage was “a little house with a thatched roof” that served as a gas chamber. When asked how the SS threw the gas into the cottage, Shlomo replied: “There was a little window in the side wall.” Dragon stated that he “could sense the sweetish taste of the gas.” According to Dragon, the Sonderkommandos dragged the bodies out of the alleged gas chamber “by the hands,” and then “threw them into the carts, lugged them to the pits, and threw them into the pits.”[20]
Shlomo Dragon’s testimony is phony for many reasons. First, Dragon claims that the sexes were not separated before entering the alleged gas chambers. This is not credible because:
1) This procedure is contrary to the procedures followed during disinfestation, where according to eyewitnesses the sexes were invariably separated.
2) Since there were always two alleged “gas chambers” of each type available in Birkenau (in Crematorium II and III, or IV and V, or Bunkers I and II), there is no apparent reason why the victims could not have been separated by sex.
3) The claims were repeatedly made that the victims were made to believe that they were going to shower or undergo disinfestation. These procedures would have necessarily separated the populace on the basis of sex, if only because of the need for deception.
4) Particularly in the 1940s, large numbers of people could only have been made to disrobe completely with others of the opposite sex if they had been threatened with force and violence. This would, however, have nullified all the other measures of deception.[21]
Dragon’s statement that he could smell the sweetish taste of the gas also is not credible. Hydrogen-cyanide gas actually smells of bitter almonds. There is nothing “sweetish” about it.[22]
As previously stated, it is also not survivable to enter “gas chambers” and then drag and carry the dead bodies with bare hands with only a gas mask as a protective measure. Germar Rudolf states: “It should not be forgotten here that hydrogen cyanide is a contact poison. Transporting corpses, on whose skin huge, possibly lethal amounts of hydrogen cyanide are absorbed, [would have] required that the special commands dealing with these corpses had to wear protective clothes.”[23]
Dragon’s description of Bunker 2 as a little house with a little window in the side wall where gas was introduced is also not credible. Genuine homicidal gas chambers require advanced engineering and construction. Homicidal gas chambers cannot be made out of existing cottages where poison gas is introduced through a little window in a side wall. Furthermore, no documentary evidence has ever been found indicating that Bunker 2 at Birkenau functioned as an extermination facility.[24]
Shlomo and Abraham Dragon claim they lived to tell their stories only because Shlomo got sick. All the other 200 Sonderkommandos in their group allegedly were transferred to Lublin and gassed. So instead of being gassed, Shlomo stayed at Birkenau, received medical treatment, convinced the SS to keep his brother with him, and both brothers lived to tell their story of mass murder at Birkenau. Like many Holocaust survivors, they both claim to have survived Birkenau through a miracle.[25]
Shlomo Venezia
Shlomo Venezia arrived in Auschwitz/Birkenau on April 11, 1944 and soon began work with the Sonderkommandos.[26] Venezia’s work initially involved carrying bodies removed from Bunker 2 to nearby ditches. Venezia said: “The ditches sloped down, so that, as they burned, the bodies discharged a flow of human fat down the ditch to a corner where a sort of basin had been formed to collect it. When it looked as if the fire might go out, the men had to take some of that liquid fat from the basin, and throw it onto the fire to revive the flames. I saw this only in the ditches of Bunker 2.”[27]
Shlomo Venezia’s story is ludicrous. The ignition temperature of human fats is far lower than the ignition temperature of the light hydrocarbons which form as a result of the gasification of the bodies and of the seasoned wood used in the fire. The human fat is the first thing that burns on a corpse located in a fire. The human fat could not possibly have flowed down to a corner of the ditch as Venezia described—it would all have burned away before it could do so. Also, if by some miracle any human fat had flowed to the corner of the ditch, the Sonderkommandos would have had to collect it from within an immense fire raging with a temperature of at least 600° C. No human being could have withstood such intense heat.[28]
Venezia later worked at Crematorium III in Birkenau. He said that it took about 10 to 12 minutes for the people to be killed by the gas, and another 20 minutes to exhaust the poison gas. Venezia described bringing the corpses out of the gas chamber: “A terrible, acrid smell filled the room. We couldn’t distinguish between what came from the specific smell of the gas and what came from the smell of the people and the human excrement.”[29]
Venezia never mentioned that he used a gas mask during his work. Without a gas mask, Venezia and the other Sonderkommandos would have been killed in turn. The ventilators could not have completely exhausted the gas from the alleged gas chambers in only 20 minutes. More important, there would always have been residues of the toxic gas among the bodies that would be released as they were moved. A gas mask would have been required for the Sonderkommandos to remove the corpses from the homicidal gas chambers without being gassed themselves.[30]
Conclusion
This article documents only a small portion of the absurdities, inconsistencies and outright lies of the testimony of self-styled Sonderkommandos. Similar to other eyewitnesses to the so-called Holocaust, the putative surviving Sonderkommandos have failed to provide credible evidence that Germany built and operated homicidal gas chambers to conduct a program of genocide against European Jewry during World War II.
Endnotes
[1] Van Pelt, Robert Jan, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2002, pp. 188, 204-205.
[2] Pressac, Jean-Claude, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, New York: The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989, p. 481. See http://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and-operation/pressac0481.shtml.
[3] http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=82890.
[4] Rudolf, Germar, The Rudolf Report: Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the ‘Gas Chambers’ of Auschwitz, Washington, D.C., The Barnes Review, 2011, pp. 188-189.
[5] http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=82890.
[6] Rudolf, Germar, Lectures on the Holocaust: Controversial Issues Cross-Examined, 3rd edition, Uckfield: Castle Hill Publishers, 2017, p. 456.
[7] http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=82890.
[8] Rudolf, Germar, Lectures on the Holocaust, 2nd edition, Uckfield: Castle Hill Publishers, 2011, p. 387.
[9] http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=82890.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Rudolf, Germar, The Rudolf Report: Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the ‘Gas Chambers’ of Auschwitz, Washington, D.C.: The Barnes Review, 2011, pp. 111-112.
[13] http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=82890.
[14] Rudolf, Germar, The Rudolf Report: Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the ‘Gas Chambers’ of Auschwitz, Washington, D.C.: The Barnes Review, 2011, pp. 217-218. See also http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n4p14_Faurisson.html.
[15] https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/mmg/mmg.asp?id=1141&tid=249.
[16] Kulaszka, Barbara, (ed.), Did Six Million Really Die: Report of Evidence in the Canadian `False News’ Trial of Ernst Zündel, Toronto: Samisdat Publishers Ltd., 1992, p. 352.
[17] http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=82890.
[18] Rudolf, Germar, The Rudolf Report: Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the ‘Gas Chambers’ of Auschwitz, Washington, D.C., The Barnes Review, 2011, p. 111.
[19] Greif, Gideon, We Wept without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005, p. 133.
[20] Ibid., pp. 134-136.
[21] Rudolf, Germar, The Rudolf Report: Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the ‘Gas Chambers’ of Auschwitz, Washington, D.C.: The Barnes Review, 2011, pp. 204-205.
[22] Mattogno, Carlo, The Bunkers of Auschwitz: Black Propaganda versus History, Chicago: Theses and Dissertations Press, 2004, p. 130. See http://vho.org/dl/ENG/tboa.pdf.
[23] Rudolf, Germar, The Rudolf Report: Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the ‘Gas Chambers’ of Auschwitz, Washington, D.C.: The Barnes Review, 2011, p. 218.
[24] Mattogno, Carlo, The Bunkers of Auschwitz: Black Propaganda versus History, Chicago: Theses and Dissertations Press, 2004, p. 48. See http://vho.org/dl/ENG/tboa.pdf.
[25] Greif, Gideon, We Wept without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005, p. 147.
[26] Veneziz, Shlomo, Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz, Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2009, p. xi.
[27] Ibid., pp. 59-60.
[28] Mattogno, Carlo, “The Truth about the Gas Chambers”?, Inconvenient History, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2010.
[29] Veneziz, Shlomo, Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz, Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2009, p. 69.
[30] Mattogno, Carlo, “The Truth about the Gas Chambers”?, Inconvenient History, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2010.
January 30, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular |
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Since the beginning of this false pandemic, I’ve been offering compelling evidence that no one has proved SARS-CoV-2 exists.
Then people ask, “So why are all these people dying?”
I have explained that, many times, and in this article I’ll explain it again.
First of all, the whole notion that COVID-19 is one health condition is a lie. COVID IS NOT ONE THING.
This is both the hardest and simplest point to accept and understand.
Don’t reject the existence of the virus and then say, “So what is THE cause of people dying?” There is no ONE CAUSE. There is no one illness. There is no “it.”
By far, the biggest sources of illness we are dealing with are lung conditions: various kinds of pneumonia; flu and flu-like disease; TB; other unnamed lung/respiratory problems.
THESE ARE BEING RELABELED “COVID.” It’s a repackaging scheme. People are dying for those traditional reasons, and their deaths are being called “COVID.”
Thus, the old is artificially made new. It’s still old.
In this wide-ranging group of people who have traditional lung conditions, by far the largest component is the elderly and frail.
They are dying in nursing homes, in hospitals, in their houses and apartments. In addition to their lung problems, they have been suffering from a whole host of other conditions, for a long time, and they’ve been treated with toxic drugs.
They’re terrified that they might receive a diagnosis of “COVID,” and then they are given that diagnosis. THEN they’re isolated, cut off from friends and family. They give up and die.
This is forced premature death.
Some of these elderly and frail people are heavily sedated and put on breathing ventilators—which is a killing treatment. In a large New York study, it was discovered that patients over the age of 64, who were put on ventilators, died 97.2 % of the time. Staggering.
Some of these elderly and frail patients are now dying from reactions to the COVID vaccine—and of course, their deaths are listed as “COVID.”
Why else are people dying? In many cases, it’s a simple matter of bookkeeping. They die in hospitals for a variety of reasons, and staff write “COVID death” on their files. In the US, states receive federal money based on these statistics.
Let’s say that, in certain places around the world, there are clusters of deaths (being called COVID) that can’t be explained in the ways I’ve just described.
In those situations, you would have to examine EACH situation closely. For example, just prior to an outbreak in Northern Italy, was there a vaccination campaign? What was in the vaccine? A new breed of toxic substances?
You have to consider each cluster independently.
Getting the picture?
None of the “COVID deaths” anywhere in the world requires the existence of a new virus.
For instance, in Wuhan, where the whole business began, the first “COVID” cases of pneumonia occurred in a city whose air is HEAVILY polluted. In China, every year, roughly 300,000 people die from pneumonia. That means millions of cases. None of those deaths need to be explained by invoking a new virus.
Now, add to all this the fact that the PCR test for the virus is irreparably flawed and useless (for a variety of reasons I’ve explained in other articles). The test spits out false-positives like a fire hose. Thus, the high case numbers. If the authorities have to go to such extremes to paint a picture of a spreading viral epidemic…
There is no evidence that an actual germ is traveling around the world felling people. The “evidence” is invented.
The “pandemic” is invented.
The fraud is promoted.
During these fake epidemics (there have been many), someone will say: “But my neighbor’s son, who was very healthy, died suddenly. It must be the virus.”
No. People who appear to be healthy do die. Not just today, but going back in history as far as you want to go. No one has an explanation. They might have an explanation if they looked very closely, but they don’t look closely.
Favoring the “virus explanation” is a bias, a knee-jerk reaction, a response to propaganda.
If you think there must be other major reasons to explain “why all these people are dying,” keep in mind that “lung conditions” is a category that expands all over the globe. For instance, there are about one BILLION cases of flu-like illness EVERY YEAR on planet Earth.
Repackaging/relabeling just a small percentage of those cases alone would account for all official COVID death numbers.
What’s new about COVID is the STORY. That’s what’s being sold: a STORY about a virus.
January 29, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19 |
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With [proclaimed] President Biden’s inauguration many feel that they can finally breathe a deep sigh of relief. At last sanity has been restored and we can all go back to our predictable lives knowing that the future can only get better during these next four years.
Well… not quite.
There still remains the problem that everybody may not be on board with the progressive changes that Biden’s Administration plans to push through. This, of course, is wholly unacceptable.
Disagreement has become an extremely sensitive issue lately; it was once thought that debate was an essential component to a strong and healthy democracy, however, we are now told that it is extremely dangerous, in fact, it may soon be categorised as a form of domestic terrorism.
As early as mid-Nov 2020, Biden was already discussing the need to pass further laws against domestic terrorism. This is interesting since under the 2001 Patriot Act (which was meant to be a temporary enforcement in reaction to 9/11, however, is still in place 19 years later), domestic terrorism is already defined as;
“activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the U.S. or of any state; (B) appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.”
So, the question begs, what else needs to be added to the Patriot Act, which was recognised at the time of its enforcement as something that should only be temporary since it was understood that it infringed upon civil liberties? Come to think of it, why is the Patriot Act still in place, which allows for the indefinite continuation of human rights violations such as warrantless wiretapping; illegal torture, kidnapping, and detention; mass surveillance; government secrecy; Real ID; no-fly list; political spying; abuse of material witness statutes; and attacks on academic freedom?
As Glenn Greenwald wrote in his formidable paper The New Domestic War on Terror is Coming, “what needs to be criminalized that is not already a crime?”, keeping in mind that as of June 2020, the United States has the highest prisoner rate in the world, followed by El Salvador, Turkmenistan, Thailand and Palau.
Well, the answer is apparently simple and as always for our own good. We have come to a point in time where the enemy is not some radicalized ideology, it is not some foreign despot, it is not even the threat of war (whether it be economic, cyber or nuclear), but rather it is ourselves. We, the people, are the new enemies of the State.
You may protest “Not I! I am a model citizen! I pay my taxes on time, I am never late or call in sick for work, I make sure to be up-to-date with the newest ‘woke’ revelations and I don’t engage with anything outside of the mainstream matrix during my free-time.” People such as yourself think, that when the Biden Administration is calling for tougher laws against domestic terrorism, that it is obviously meant for the ‘other guy,’ those uneducated bigots who are screaming at the top of their lungs “Treason!” and inciting what we are told to be forms of ‘insurrection,’ all in the name of the archaic ideas of ‘patriotism’ and the ‘U.S. Constitution.’
You, unlike so many others, have no problem recognising that the U.S. Constitution is actually part of the problem, that by the standards used today, the U.S. Constitution is itself responsible for ‘inciting violence’ and thus guilty of domestic terrorism, and thus needs to be revoked.
But you see… that’s just not good enough.
Though you are well on your way to becoming a model citizen in the 21st century, you still have a little ways to go. It is for this reason that a guide to 21st century Newspeak has been recently released to make sure that well-intentioned citizens like yourself are fully informed of what is required of you in terms of appropriate behaviour, as well as appropriate thoughts, and though this will take a little more time, appropriate instincts.
21st Century Newspeak
The first alteration that will need to take place is freedom of thought. It has been shown through peer-review studies that individual thoughts are susceptible to forming erroneous beliefs and can lead to dangerous behaviours such as refusal to integrate into a community standard.
Once an individual refuses to integrate into its designated community, it is only a matter of time before this individual shows opposition and even antagonism towards said community. Thus failure to integrate is one of the first signs that an individual is on the path to becoming a domestic terrorist.
Because the individual mind is flawed, it can no longer be trusted to be the standard of its own judgement of what is right and wrong. It is for this reason that we are introducing groupthink. This concept is not new, however, the difference is from now on the individual’s environment will only be allowed to reciprocate the values of groupthink, and all other thoughts outside of groupthink are to be banned and punishable under the new laws.
Even if thoughts outside of groupthink appear as harmless to the collective, they are not, for any thought that is not groupthink threatens to lead to a different outcome than that intended by groupthink and thus is a threat to the security of the collective.
In order to ensure commitment to groupthink, it will be mandatory that every individual engage in at least 2 minutes of Hate every hour throughout the day, every day. This can be achieved either by watching 2 minutes of Hate news, or by engaging in a public 2 minutes of Hate with a colleague, a friend or family member via social media.
It is imperative that an individual watch the 15 minute morning and evening “What to Hate” news provided by the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue), in order to be the most up-to-date with what are the ongoing and new subjects of Hate, and what were previous subjects of Hate which are no longer deemed to be subjects of Hate.
It is most important that an individual never refer to a former subject of Hate as such. Any present subject of Hate must be seen as having always been a subject of Hate and any former subject of Hate must be seen as having never been a subject of Hate.
This may appear as an impossible task, but we assure you it is entirely possible with the use of doublethink, which many of you have already been practising. Doublethink requires that one be both conscious and unconscious of the fact that they are telling deliberate lies while genuinely believing them; to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies. This makes up a part of our new Party slogan: FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
Those who excel the most in doublethink will receive the highest stations within our newly organised community, as safe-guards against the renegade, the domestic terrorist.
Another alteration that will need to occur is how we think and refer to the past and the future. With the newly enforced groupthink, the present is what groupthink dictates it to be, which is subject to change, however, must be regarded as having always been.
The past is what the present dictates it to be, if it were not, it could challenge the basis for the present. Thus to preserve the present, the past must serve the present, only justifying why we Hate what we presently Hate and why we Love what we presently Love and can do nothing to contradict these Party lines. There will be permitted no records of an alternative past, there will be no way to prove that the past was ever different from what the present dictates it to be, the only threat to this narrative is the record of the individual mind, and once this ceases to be there will only be the Minitrue record as the recorder of past Truth.
In effect, the model citizen will perceive the past as dead and the future as unimaginable. The future is unimaginable because it is impossible to think of an alternative to the present, in fact, the mere act of thinking of an alternative to the present is considered a challenge to the status quo of the present, and thus is a challenge to groupthink, and thus is a form of domestic terrorism, which we will call from now on thoughtcrime.
Thoughtcrime is essentially any thought pertaining to memory, judgement of right and wrong, thoughts of an alternative reality, and self-reflection, which are now all deemed forms of thoughtcrime. If an individual is to engage in any of these sorts of thoughts, it is only a matter of time before they will come into conflict with groupthink and the Party line, thus private thoughts are banned and punished under the new laws.
It may seem an impossible task at first not to engage in private thoughts, but again, we assure you it is entirely possible using crimestop. Crimestop is the practice of not grasping analogies, failing to perceive logical errors, misunderstanding the simplest arguments, of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop is essentially, protective stupidity.
It is imperative that one practice crimestop during any interaction with another individual, however, it is also imperative that one practice crimestop within their own inner-dialogue, such that even from your own conscience you will be protected from committing a thoughtcrime.
Newspeak will also help dissuade from thoughtcrime. Newspeak is to be the new acceptable vocabulary, anything that references words outside of the most-up-to-date edition of the Newspeak dictionary will be considered Oldspeak and something to be construed as counter to groupthink. It is understood that by reducing the vocabulary to revolve around a few words such as good; which for example can be used as plusgood, doubleplusgood, ungood etc, it will serve to narrow the range of thought an individual is capable of, and thus reduce the capability of committing a thoughtcrime. How wonderful! That in the future we will be unable to commit crime for we will be incapable of its thought! This makes up another part of our new Party slogan: IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
In terms of the new laws, in effect, nothing will change. Unacceptable behaviours and thoughts will not be designated as illegal per se; one reason for this is because we do not plan on having any public trials. Anyone who is in violation of conduct will simply be removed either temporarily into a “re-education facility” or will be vaporised. Any subject that has been vaporised will be removed from the collective memory records and can never be referred to as having ever existed.
The reason why no public trials will be held from now on is because, as we have seen, dissent is infectious. Thus, holding public trials risk further encouragement towards dissent. It is for this reason that dissenters must be removed swiftly and quietly in the middle of the night. Such disappearances will occur relatively regularly and will eventually become the new normal, however, it will not be traumatic for the collective. The subject will simply cease to exist as if it were all just a dream, the structure of our daily routine unaffected.
In order to ensure utmost compliance, the collective will be employing the use of children spies, this has already been occurring abroad, and proves to be very effective.
Purges and vaporizations will be a necessary part of the government mechanics and will become the new normal. We have already discussed the necessity for vaporizations, as for the necessity of purges, it is because the community will be built so as to remain in stasis, however, this can only be accomplished through artificial means, for it is not natural that a thing remain the same but rather that it either improves or deteriorates.
However, in order for the Party to maintain absolute control, there can be no change to the present except for that chosen by the Party, thus any change is a challenge to the Party. In order to facilitate an artificial environment of no change, resources must artificially be kept low, and purges need to occur so that this environment of scarcity is tightly controlled and maintained.
In order for us to achieve this, our economy will have to go through stagnation, we will need to decrease the amount of land used for cultivation, we will no longer add capital equipment needed for industrial growth and great blocks of the population will be prevented from working and will be kept half alive by State charity. The wheels of industry cannot be allowed to turn so as to increase the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed, and in practice the only way of achieving this is by continuous warfare.
War will continue under the Old Cold War doctrine. War will always be present, and yet will never be seen by the majority of our citizens, the reason for this being that war will not be about a real threat to security nor about real conquests but rather will be about maintaining the present status quo by exhausting the surplus of consumable goods, while also helping to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs.
However, real war will be purely an internal affair, the war waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, with the object of the war as to keep the structure of society intact and unchanging.
A peace that is truly permanent under this new ideology is no different than an invisible permanent war. For peace in our new era will equate to stability through no change. This makes up our first Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.
Conclusion
All of these means are necessary if we are to realise that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism, and that oligarchy is the only means to achieving peace, freedom and strength for the collective.
However, we are still very far from this ideal and there is much that threatens its becoming, namely, the masses, or what we call the proles. So long as the masses believe that they are entitled to freedom of thought, our endeavours cannot succeed.
The individual must voluntarily relinquish this. It cannot be taken from them no matter the degree of control and no matter the threat of physical harm. An individual’s mind is theirs and cannot be taken, instead, the individual must be led to believe that it is in their best interest to relinquish their mind.
Let us do our best then to convince the individual that they are no longer fit to use their mind and let us pray that we are successful, for if we fail, our entire system of control fails with it.
“You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity…Reality exists only in the human mind, nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.” – O’Brien in George Orwell’s “1984”
January 29, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, United States |
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After the end of World War II, the U.S. national-security establishment convinced the American people that there existed an international communist conspiracy to take over the United States and the rest of the world. This supposed conspiracy, U.S. officials steadfastly maintained, was based in Moscow, Russia. During the Cold War, the tentacles of this supposed conspiracy spread to China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and other places around the world, including the United States. The Reds, they said, were everywhere and were coming to get us.
This supposed threat of communism, in fact, is what motivated U.S. officials to convert the federal government into a national-security state, a totalitarian type of governmental structure in which officials wield omnipotent powers, such as assassination. It also motivated U.S. officials to intervene in the civil wars in Korea and Vietnam, which killed more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers, many of whom had been conscripted to “serve.” The Pentagon and the CIA maintained that if the communists weren’t stopped over there, they would soon be in the halls of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court, not to mention the public schools, running the country over here.
Thus, for an American few things could be considered worse than to be labeled a communist. People who were suspected of being communists were fired from their jobs, ostracized, and sometimes criminally prosecuted. Recall the McCarthy hearings, when many people’s lives were destroyed simply through the government’s asking the question, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Recall the Hollywood Blacklist and the criminal prosecution of Hollywood writer Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten. Recall the spying on and blackmail of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, who U.S. officials suspected of being a communist.
Immediately after the assassination of President Kennedy, the word went out that he had been killed by a communist, a young former U.S. Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald. The very first organization to begin publicizing Oswald’s communist bona fides was an anti-Castro exile group in New Orleans called the DRE, which immediately sent out a press release announcing that Oswald was a communist. The publicity was highly effective in dissuading people, especially people on the left, from questioning the official narrative of the assassination — that Kennedy had been killed by a communist. People were scared to death that if they questioned the official narrative, they would be labeled communists or communist sympathizers.
What people did not know at the time — and what they would not discover for several decades — was that the DRE was being secretly funded and directed by the CIA. The CIA’s supervising officer for the DRE was a man named George Joannides.
In the late 1990s, former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley uncovered Joannides’ role in the DRE back in 1963 and began requesting the CIA for its files on Joannides. The CIA steadfastly refused to comply with Morley’s request and made it clear that it would never disclose most of Joannides’s secret activities.
Morley filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the CIA, which, owing to the massive resistance of the CIA, lasted for years. The fascinating story of Morley’s battle against CIA secrecy on Joannides is now told in FFF’s newest book, Morley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK Investigation, which is available in Kindle format on Amazon for $1.
In the course of his investigation and litigation, Morley uncovered some fascinating and intriguing facts about Joannides. In the 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reopened the investigation into the Kennedy assassination. When committee attorneys began seeking too many documents relating to Oswald’s trip to Mexico City, the CIA called Joannides out of retirement, ostensibly to serve as a facilitator between the House committee and the CIA.
As it turned out, however, Joannides’s real role was to serve as an obstructor to the efforts by the House committee attorneys to securing JFK-assassination-related information from the CIA, including information relating to Oswald’s trip to Mexico City. In the process, Joannides and the CIA failed to disclose his role with the DRE in the months leading up to the assassination, just as they had failed to disclose it to the Warren Commission back in 1964.
During the term of the Assassination Records Review Board, Joannides and the CIA once again failed to disclose his pre-assassination relationship to the DRE. Former House Select Committee counsel Robert Blakey later accused the CIA of obstruction of justice, which is a felony. Judge John Tunheim, who chaired the ARRB, declared that “the Agency should come completely clean.”
But the CIA refused to come clean on Joannides, as detailed in Morley’s fascinating account of his long judicial fight against the CIA.
Morley is the author of another book published by FFF: CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files. He will be delivering two presentations at FFF’s upcoming online weekly conference series “JFK’s Foreign Policy and the Assassination.”
The conference series will begin on Wednesday, March 3, and continue weekly on Wednesdays through April 21. Registrations will open next month. Admission will be free.
January 29, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | CIA, United States |
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After reading some information at Friends of Science, I got to thinking about how impossible it will be for us to do what so many people are demanding that we do. This is to go to zero CO2 emissions by 2050 by getting off of fossil fuels.
So let’s take a look at the size of the problem. People generally have little idea just how much energy we get from fossil fuels. Figure 1 shows the global annual total and fossil energy consumption from 1880 to 2019, and extensions of both trends to the year 2050. I note that my rough estimate of 2050 total annual energy consumption (241 petawatt-hrs/year) is quite close to the World Energy Organization’s business-as-usual 2050 estimate of 244 PWhr/yr.
Figure 1. Primary energy consumption, 1880-2019 and extrapolation to 2050. A “petawatt-hour” is 1015 watt-hours
So if we are going to zero emissions by 2050, we will need to replace about 193 petawatt-hours (1015 watt-hours) of fossil fuel energy per year. Since there are 8,766 hours in a year, we need to build and install about 193 PWhrs/year divided by 8766 hrs/year ≈ 22 terawatts (TW, or 1012 watts) of energy generating capacity.
Starting from today, January 25, 2021, there are 10,568 days until January 1, 2050. So we need to install, test, commission, and add to the grid about 22 TW / 10568 days ≈ 2.1 gigawatts/day (GW/day, or 109 watts/day) of generating capacity each and every day from now until 2050.
We can do that in a couple of ways. We could go all nuclear. In that case, we’d need to build, commission, and bring on-line a brand-new 2.1 GW nuclear power plant every single day from now until 2050. Easy, right? …
Don’t like nukes? Well, we could use wind power. Now, the wind doesn’t blow all the time. Typical wind “capacity factor”, the percentage of actual energy generated compared to the nameplate capacity, is about 35%. So we’d have to build, install, commission and bring online just under 3,000 medium-sized (2 megawatt, MW = 106 watts) wind turbines every single day from now until 2050. No problemo, right? …
Don’t like wind? Well, we could use solar. Per the NREL, actual delivery from grid-scale solar panel installations on a 24/7/365 basis is on the order of 8.3 watts per square metre depending on location. So we’d have to cover ≈ 96 square miles (250 square kilometres) with solar panels, wire them up, test them, and connect them to the grid every single day from now until 2050. Child’s play, right? …
Of course, if we go with wind or solar, they are highly intermittent sources. So we’d still need somewhere between 50% – 90% of the total generating capacity in nuclear, for the all-too-frequent times when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
To summarize: to get the world to zero emissions by 2050, our options are to build, commission, and bring on-line either:
• One 2.1 gigawatt (GW, 109 watts) nuclear power plant each and every day until 2050, OR
• 3000 two-megawatt (MW, 106 watts) wind turbines each and every day until 2050 plus a 2.1 GW nuclear power plant every day and a half until 2050, assuming there’s not one turbine failure for any reason, OR
• 96 square miles (250 square kilometres) of solar panels each and every day until 2050 plus a 2.1 GW nuclear power plant every day and a half until 2050, assuming not one of the panels fails or is destroyed by hail or wind.
I sincerely hope that everyone can see that any of those alternatives are not just impossible. They are pie-in-the-sky, flying unicorns, bull-goose looney impossible.
Finally, the US consumes about one-sixth of the total global fossil energy. So for the US to get to zero fossil fuel by 2050, just divide all the above figures by six … and they are still flying unicorn, bull-goose looney impossible.
Math. Don’t leave home without it.
My very best wishes to everyone, stay safe in these parlous times,
w.
PS—As always, to avoid misunderstandings I request that when you comment, you quote the exact words that you are discussing so we can all be clear about who and what you are referring to.
Technical Note: These figures are conservative because they do not include the energy required to build the reactors, wind turbines, or solar panels. This is relatively small per GW of generation for nuclear reactors but is much larger for wind and solar.
They also don’t include the fact that wind turbines have about a 20-year lifespan, so after 20 years we’ll have to double the turbine construction per day. And with solar the lifespan is about 25 years, so for the last five years, we’ll have to double the solar construction per day. And then we will have to decommission and dispose of hundreds of thousands of wind turbines and square miles of solar panels …
The figures also don’t include the fact that if we go to an all-electric economy we will have to completely revamp, extend, and upgrade our existing electrical grid, which will require a huge investment of time, money, and energy.
They also don’t include the cost. The nuclear plants alone will cost on the order of US$170 trillion at current prices. And wind or solar plus 75% nuclear will be on the order of US275 trillion, plus decomissioning and disposal costs for wind turbines and solar panels.
So it is even more impossible … speaking of which, is it possible to be more impossible?
Because if it is possible … this is it.
January 28, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular |
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Speaking of the obvious and logical, it somehow badly embarrassed the British government this week that they were ordered to release their calculations of the cost of achieving net zero by 2050. Not because the cost is large, though it certainly is. Nor because the calculations might well have shown the costs vastly to exceed the benefits, had there been any calculations. But because behind all the ponderous fog about ‘experts say’, ‘following the science’ and so forth, it seems it may well have been just a wild guess someone stuffed into an email on the fly.
The starting point to this multi-layered embarrassment is that two years ago a warning from then Chancellor of the Exchequer to then PM Theresa May said net zero by 2050 would cost over a trillion pounds. Which is a lot even for a wealthy society such as Britain, whose pre-pandemic GDP was nearly £3 trillion per year, and also embarrassing, though only because a lot of fools were going about saying fossil fuels really weren’t much good anyway and chucking them would probably make us all richer. We’d all just switch to high-paying, high-tech, high-virtue-signalling jobs in the green energy sector or possibly government PR departments.
People are still making such claims, of course, with as little foundation in economics as in science. And as an aside we think it is not a clever PR strategy because once they are in a position to attempt to implement their plans, which Boris Johnson is, along with Justin Trudeau and now Joe Biden, people will quickly discover that they were fools, rogues or both to say abandoning the energy foundations of our civilization would actually make us richer, and being unmasked as a knave or a dunce is a damaging blow to your credibility.
Speaking of dunces, the looming embarrassment in the UK now is that the calculations themselves were apparently done on a napkin or a Post-it… if even that. We have yet to acquire the actual scrap of paper, digital or otherwise. But evidently the Treasury initially refused to release them on the grounds that they were “internal communications”, which sounds like an evasion since it is very hard to understand what else a discussion within a government branch might be. And it has now been backed into confessing that “communications” wasn’t quite the right word since there was just one email. Not a big long study or discussions back and forth. Someone just guessed and fired it off.
This happy-go-lucky approach is especially awkward because governments in the free world have a habit of justifying any policy or reversal of same, and shaming dissenters into the bargain, by insisting that they were following the science, a variant of the “experts say” meme news organizations now plaster on anything they want you to swallow whole. These politicians don’t tell you what the science said or which science said it, and in many cases their high school transcript would not justify faith in their capacity to understand anything science did say. They rarely even tell you who the scientists are beyond one convenient figurehead gifted with charisma or incomprehensibility.
We don’t only mean on climate, or the pandemic. When it comes to “economic science” their general tone is that a laboratory full of people running a computer that makes Deep Thought look like an abacus did a simulation you chumps couldn’t begin to understand that proves that whatever we were planning to do anyway is a brilliant idea.
Government budgets typically now run to hundreds of pages, full of charts and projections as well as electioneering prose, all of it designed to dazzle and intimidate. You are meant to think it was all done with careful attention to counterfactuals, margins of error, limitations on data, uncertainty about external shocks and so on. But it wasn’t. They had the verdict in hand before they began the trial. No government ever went to the boffins and said analyze our plan and were told it’s no good and put that verdict in the document. And on climate economics, the British government apparently deep-sixed the vital “Social Cost of Carbon” because it was too low to justify going nuts on emissions which, characteristically, the government had decided to do before looking at the science, so it then demanded science to justify a decision that, if it is not based on science, is very hard to see what it is based on.
So there’s something fishy about the expertise even when it’s real. But what if it’s not? What if there was no science or in this case no economic science? If it turns out the UK gambled its future on a few scribbles instead of a massive, dense wall of functions, it will cause red faces.
Of course no such thing could happen here in Canada. But only because no government would ever be forced to disclose the basis of its calculations, on the off chance there even were any.
January 28, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Canada, UK |
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James (he gives his last name in the video) is a CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant), and he recorded this video as a whistleblower because he could not keep silent any longer.
James reports that in 2020 very few residents in the nursing home where he works got sick with COVID, and none of them died during the entire year of 2020.
However, shortly after administering the Pfizer experimental mRNA injections, 14 died within two weeks, and he reports that many others are near death.
The video is long (47 minutes), and it is clear that James is suffering from emotional stress, and he admits that he has nothing to gain from going public, and that he will probably lose his job for doing so.
But he makes it very clear that these were patients he knew and cared for (he is also a “lay pastor”), and that after being injected with the mRNA shot, residents who used to walk on their own can no longer walk. Residents who used to carry on an intelligent conversation with him could no longer talk.
And now they are dying. “They’re dropping like flies.”
His superiors are explaining the deaths as being caused by a COVID19 “super-spreader.”
However, the residents who refused to take the injections, are not sick, according to James.
James makes it very clear that as a Christian, he cannot live with his conscience anymore, and that he can no longer remain silent.
He is not anti-vaccine, but just sharing what he knows is true, regarding the people he has cared for in his profession for over 10 years now.
This is a very clear pattern now. Inject the elderly with the mRNA injections, then blame their illnesses and deaths on the COVID virus.
The only reason Big Pharma and their sponsored corporate media are getting away with this, is because more healthcare workers like James are not coming forward to speak up for the helpless.
Even many in the Alternative Media are guilty for not covering this genocide against our seniors, as James states, because people are more concerned with Donald Trump and Joe Biden political news, while people’s grandmother, grandfather, and others are being killed by these injections.
James calls upon other CNAs, nurses, and family members to go public and tell the world what is going on with these experimental mRNA COVID injections:
How many more lives need to be lost before we say something?
If you know what is happening, but are not speaking out, then you are part of the problem.
And shame on you in the Alternative Media who are more concerned about which tyrant should be president than you are about covering the greatest crime of genocide this country has ever seen.
See Also:
Nurses in Kansas Refuse to Give Experimental COVID Injections – They Value Life Over their Jobs
Wisconsin Nursing Home Believed to be First in U.S. to Fire Staff for Refusing Experimental COVID Injections
Up to 60% of U.S. Healthcare Workers Refusing Experimental COVID mRNA Vaccine – “Don’t Want To Be A Guinea Pig”
Doctors Around the World Issue Dire WARNING: DO NOT GET THE COVID VACCINE!!
January 27, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular, Video | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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An Iraqi legislator has warned against the Unites States’ attempts to disrupt peace and security in the Middle East through supporting terrorism, saying Washington is even ready to set entire Iraq on fire so it can keep its military forces in the Arab country.
Karim Alaiwi, a legislator from the Fatah (Conquest) alliance and a member of the Security and Defense Committee in the Iraqi legislature, told Arabic-language Baghdad Today warned against the policies of new US President Joe Biden towards Iraq, reminding the government that Daesh terrorists started their activities during the reign of Democrats.
“The Daesh terror group became active during the former and current presidencies of the [US] Democratic Party. Washington’s policy is to disrupt security and stability in the Middle East, especially in Iraq,” Alaiwi said.
He added, “The United States has supported and financially sponsored most of terrorist operations in Iraq, and has protected leaders of the Daesh terrorist group in many parts of the country.”
The Iraqi lawmaker highlighted that there are areas in Iraq where Daesh is still active, saying Washington is preventing military flights over those regions.
Washington, he said, is ready to “burn” all of Iraq so it will have a pretext to prolong its military presence in the Arab country.
Daesh has claimed responsibility for a rare twin bombing attack that tore through a busy area of central Baghdad on January 21, killing at least 32 people and wounding 110 others.
Yahya Rasool, the spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, said one of the two bombers lured a crowd of people towards him in a market in the central Tayaran Square by feigning illness, only to detonate his explosives.
The second bomber struck as people helped victims of the first attack, Rasool added.
Iraq declared victory over Daesh in December 2017 after a three-year counter-terrorism military campaign.
The terror outfit’s remnants, though, keep staging sporadic attacks across Iraq, attempting to regroup and unleash a new era of violence.
Daesh has intensified its terrorist attacks in Iraq since January 2020, when the United States assassinated top Iranian anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), along with their companions in a drone strike authorized by former US president Donald Trump near Baghdad International Airport.
Following the assassinations, the Iraqi parliament approved a bill demanding the withdrawal of all foreign military forces led by the United States from the country.
The US began the drawdown under the administration of ex-president Donald Trump, but it has said a number of troops will remain in the Arab country.
January 26, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Iraq, ISIS, Joe Biden, Middle East, United States |
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Since it has become increasingly evident that a vast extension of the Patriot Act will soon be unveiled that threatens to re-define “the war on terror” to include essentially anyone who disagrees with the governing neoliberal agenda, it is probably a good time to evaluate how and why terrorism – domestic or otherwise – has tended to arise over the past century.
If, in the course of conducting this evaluation, we find that terrorism is truly a “naturally occurring phenomenon”, then perhaps we might conclude alongside many eminent figures of the intelligence community and Big Tech, that new pre-emptive legislation targeting the rise of a new conservative-minded domestic terrorist movement is somehow necessary. Maybe the censoring of free speech, and the surveillance of millions of Americans by the Five Eyes is a necessary evil for the sake of the greater good.
However, if it is revealed that the thing we call “terrorism”, is something other than a naturally occurring, self-organized phenomenon, but rather something which only exists due to vast support from western political agencies, then a very different conclusion must be arrived at which may be disturbing for some.
But how to proceed?
Before it was revealed that ISIS was being supported by a network of Anglo-American intelligence agencies and their allies in a failed effort to overthrow Bashar al Assad, an exhaustive 2012 study was conducted by the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School. This study provides a convenient entry point to our inquiry.
In this course of its investigation, researchers at Fordham discovered that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 138 terrorist incidents recorded in the USA between 2001-2012 involved FBI informants who played leading roles in planning out, supplying weapons, instructions and even recruiting Islamic terrorists to carry out terrorist acts on U.S. soil. Reporting on the Fordham study, The Nation reported on this scandal stating:
“Nearly every major post-9/11 terrorism-related prosecution has involved a sting operation, at the center of which is a government informant. In these cases, the informants—who work for money or are seeking leniency on criminal charges of their own—have crossed the line from merely observing potential criminal behavior to encouraging and assisting people to participate in plots that are largely scripted by the FBI itself. Under the FBI’s guiding hand, the informants provide the weapons, suggest the targets and even initiate the inflammatory political rhetoric that later elevates the charges to the level of terrorism.”
Of course, this trend preceded 9/11 itself as we see in the case of FBI informant Emad Salem (formerly associated with the Egyptian Military) who recorded hundreds of hours of conversation between himself and his FBI handlers which were reported publicly by the New York Times on October 28, 1993. Why is this important? Because Emad Salem was the figure who rented the van, hotel rooms, provided bomb-making instruction, tested out explosives on behalf of Mohammed Salamah and 15 other terrorists who carried out the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing which injured 1000 and killed 6 people.
Even though several large-scale military war game scenarios were conducted between October 2000 and July 2001 featuring planes flying into both the World Trade Center buildings and Pentagon, the incoming Neocon administration were somehow caught with their pants down when the events of 9/11 finally took place (conveniently at a moment that NORAD had suffered a total breakdown of their continental warning and response systems). When all flights were grounded over the coming several days, Cheney and his PNAC cohorts ensured that the only flights permitted to leave the USA was crammed with high level Saudi royals- including the Bin Laden family.
Why was this done?
As the declassified 28 pages from the 9/11 Commission report went far to demonstrate, the Saudis- largely coordinated by Prince Bandar Bin Sultan (Saudi Ambassador to the USA from 1983-2005 and Bush family insider) had provided the foundation for a cover story that was carefully scripted to justify the 9/11 incident.
Whether the plot was hatched by CIA-Saudi sponsored terrorists as some assume, or whether it was a controlled demolition as hundreds of architects and engineers have testified to (or whether it was a combination of both stories), one thing is certain: The official narrative is a lie and no matter how you try to explain it, two airplanes cannot cause the collapse of three WTC buildings.
Another thing is certain: Biden was happy.
Not only did Joe Biden act as one of the most aggressive voices for the invasion of Iraq in the days following 9/11, but he even bragged publicly that John Ashcroft’s 2001 Patriot Act was modelled nearly verbatim on his own failed 1994 Omnibus domestic surveillance legislation drafted in response to the first 9/11 attack and 1994 Oklahoma City bombing.
Another important outcome of 9/11 involved the re-organization of the FBI with a focus on domestic terrorist surveillance, prevention, disruption and entrapment.
In 2001, MI5’s Chief came to the USA where then-FBI director Robert Mueller was assigned the task of carrying out this new remix of U.S. intelligence that involved re-activating many of the worst characteristics of the FBI’s earlier COINTEL PRO operations that were made public during the 1974 Church Committee hearings.
A Christian Science Monitor report from May 19, 2004 cited the changes in the following terms:
“They have done a number of things to move them in the direction of an MI5,” says a person close to the changes. “They’ve created agents who are trained to have an intelligence function. They’re monitoring organizations within the U.S. that pose threats to national security … not with an eye toward prosecuting, but toward collecting and analyzing that information.”
An incredible report by investigative Journalist Edward Spannaus included a short list of some of the most extreme cases of FBI entrapment between 2001-2013 in the USA:
“One of the most egregious of these cases is the so-called “Newburgh Four” in New York State, in which an informant in 2008-09 offered the defendants $250,000, as well as weapons, to carry out a terrorist plot. The New York University Center for Human Rights and Justice reviewed this case and two others, and concluded: “The government’s informants introduced and aggressively pushed ideas about violent jihad and, moreover, actually encouraged the defendants to believe it was their duty to take action against the United States.”
The Federal judge presiding over the Newburgh case, Colleen McMahon, declared that it was “beyond question that the government created the crime here,” and criticized the Bureau for sending informants “trolling among the citizens of a troubled community, offering very poor people money if they will play some role—any role—in criminal activity.”
In Portland, Ore., it was disclosed during the trial of the “Christmas Tree bomber” earlier this year, that the FBI had actually produced its own terrorist training video, which was shown to the defendant, depicting men with covered faces shooting guns and setting off bombs using a cell phone as a detonator. The FBI operative also traveled with the target to a remote location where they detonated an actual bomb concealed in a backpack as a trial run for the planned attack.
In Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2012, an FBI agent posing as an al-Qaeda operative supplied a target with fake explosives for a 1,000-pound bomb, which the FBI’s victim then attempted to detonate outside the Federal Reserve building in Manhattan.
In Irvine, Calif., in 2007, an FBI informant was so blatant in attempting to entrap members of the local Islamic Center into violent jihadi actions, that the mosque went to court and got a restraining order against the informant.
In Pittsburgh, Khalifa Ali al-Akili became so suspicious of two “jihadi” FBI informants who were trying to recruit him to buy a gun and to go to Pakistan for training, that he contacted both the London Guardian and the Washington-based National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, and told them that he feared the FBI was trying to entrap him. The National Coalition scheduled a press conference for March 16, 2012, at which al-Akili was to speak and identify the informants, but the day before the scheduled press conference, the FBI arrested al-Akili, charging him not with terrorism, but with illegal possession of a firearm.
The chief informant trying to entrap al-Akili turned out to be Shaden Hussain, a longtime FBI informant who had set up two earlier terrorism cases: the above-cited Newburgh, N.Y., case for which he was paid $100,000, and another in Albany, N.Y., for which his payments are not known.”
Not Only the USA
This post 9/11 practice was not isolated to the USA, as a Canadian appeals court overruled guilty sentences handed down to an idiotic couple who were caught by the RCMP before their July 2016 jihadi plot to bomb a public venue on Canada Day could occur. Why did the appeals judge overrule their sentence? Because it became clear that every single member of the operation which radicalized the young couple, trained them to make bombs and even scripted their attack were RCMP informants!
Earlier cases of controlled domestic terrorist movements in Canada saw CSIS (Canada’s Security and Intelligence Service) erase thousands of hours of wiretaps of Sikh terrorists that detonated bombs in 1984 which lead to 329 dead in the worst act of aviation terrorism until 9/11. Despite this destruction of evidence, CSIS was absolved of its sins in 2005 by the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC). It was also this same organization that was revealed to have co-founded the white supremacist Heritage Front in 1988, and continued to finance it with tax payer funds using CSIS agent Grant Bristol as the conduit and Heritage Front controller until at least 1994.
Anglo-Canadian intelligence controls of domestic terrorism actually go as far back as the bomb-loving Front de Liberation Quebec (FLQ) of the 1960s that set dozens of mailbox bombs across the province. Not only did the RCMP Security Services get caught red handed managing FLQ cells, spreading FLQ graffiti on buildings and even supplying explosives to the group itself, but the FLQ’s “intellectual leader” (Pierre Vallieres) was also the Editor-in-Chief of the very same magazine (Cite Libre) which was run for a decade by none other than Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau!
When major press agencies blew the whistle on the federal intelligence agencies behind the FLQ which justified months of Martial Law in Quebec in 1970, Trudeau’s right hand man (and fellow Cite Libre writer) Michael Pitfield created a new organization called the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in 1983 as a branch of the Privy Council Office in order to continue psychological operations going under a new name.
If anyone wishes to look through the voluminous RCMP/CSIS files accumulated on Pierre Trudeau’s strange connections with the FLQ and broader Fabian Society networks during the Cold War, they would be out of luck as historians were informed in 2019 that the entire Trudeau record archive were secretly destroyed by CSIS in 1989 simply because they “weren’t interesting”.
It is important to keep in mind that the RCMP’s techniques were not specifically Canadian, but were innovated by the FBI’s Counter-intelligence Program (COINTEL PRO) which J. Edgar Hoover launched in 1956 in order to subvert “dangerous civil rights groups” then emerging under the leadership of Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King Jr. From the program’s inception until its nominal death in 1975, not only did the FBI infiltrate every anti-establishment grouping from the U.S. Communist Party (CPUSA), to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), NAACP to the Black nationalist movements throughout the 1960s, but ensured that its informants played leading roles in instilling internal conflict, radicalized groups towards violence and even set up leaders like Fred Hampton for assassination.
The strange case of Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers who enjoyed vast institutional support and protection after their time running domestic terrorism as leaders of the Weather Underground is something that should also be investigated. The fact that both domestic terrorists not only became affluent Soros-tied education reformers, and early sponsors of Barack Obama’s political career is more than just a tiny anomaly which can simply be dismissed. (1)
Where did Hoover’s FBI generate COINTEL PRO tactics?
To answer this question, we need to look further back to British Intelligence’s Camp X, established in December 1941 in Canada with the mandate to train American and Canadian spies under the control of spymaster William Stephenson (station chief for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in New York).
The motive for Camp X had two interconnected components:
1) Prepare the groundwork for a deeper integration of U.S.-British Intelligence in preparation for the purge of patriotic U.S. intelligence officers allied to FDR’s vision of the post-war age, and
2) Train U.S. spies in the art of “secret warfare” which included counterfeiting, psychological warfare, propaganda, counter insurgency, assassination, and infiltration of target groups.
The integration of “full spectrum” alternative warfare tactics such as MK Ultra (modelled and steered by Britain’s earlier Tavis stock clinic), media propaganda (see: Project Mockingbird) and cultural war (see: the rise of modern art and atonalism promoted by the Congress For Cultural Freedom) were but a few of the tactics that were integrated during this process, and which continue virulently to this day.
Under Stephenson’s direction and staffed with Canadian RCMP operatives, the first generation of OSS spymasters were trained; including leading figures of the FBI’s Division 5 who went onto reformulate their WWII Camp X training in the form of assassination operations such as Permindex (operated by Camp X’s Major General Louis Mortimer Bloomfield).
In Conclusion
While I could have said more about the origins of America’s Secret Police which arose under Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, or the earlier deployment of domestic terrorism by Freemasonic lodges affiliated with Albert Pike (founder of the Ku Klux Klan) in an effort to undo Lincoln’s vision for industrial restoration of the South, these stories will have to be left for another time.
For now, it is enough to state that the “war on terror” set into motion by the World Trade Center attacks of 1993 and 2001, is now expanding to target a broad spectrum of the American population who would be morally resistant to the sorts of anti-human policies demanded by Great Reset Technocrats. This dishonest effort must be exposed and rejected before those actual controllers of terrorism attain their objectives: The destruction of nation states, the imposition of a new ethical paradigm premised on depopulation and entropy.
January 26, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Canada, CIA, FBI, United States |
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The history of medical interventions tells us that often the accepted way of doing things turns out to be dreadfully wrong. I fear this is going to be the case with this so-called Covid ‘cure’.
“Paradoxically, human beings, when compelled to act, learn to justify a chosen course with an assurance unwarranted by the evidence for the course chosen.” – Bernard Lown.
I have studied the history of medicine, and medical interventions, for many years. The most extreme disasters have always followed a fairly distinct pattern. A series of steps, if you like.
Step one: We have a serious disease that is killing lots of people.
Step two: It creates great fear, and the medical profession has nothing much in place to deal with it.
Step three: A charismatic leader emerges to decree that he (almost always a ‘he’ up to now) knows how to treat it/control it, etc. This is ‘the idea’.
Step four: The ‘idea’ is enthusiastically taken up around the world and becomes mainstream thinking.
Step five: The ‘idea’ becomes standard practice.
Step six: The ‘idea’ is taught to medics and becomes accepted truth, a fact.
Step seven: Anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked.
There is always, of course, the possibility that the ‘idea’ is the best thing to do. This happens from time to time. However, there seems to be little or no correlation between the enthusiasm – and speed – with which ideas are taken up, and the likelihood that they are correct.
The problem, as I came to recognise, lies between step two and step four. By which I mean that a charismatic figure convinces everyone that they have the answer, before there is any evidence to support it. The person may not be charismatic, rather simply someone who has the ability to grab attention and push the ‘idea’ forward. Such as the Chinese premier.
Another thing that leads to disaster, which is of perhaps even greater importance, is that the ‘idea’ must sound like the most obvious common sense. It should trigger a response along the lines of “Yes, of course, that sounds perfectly reasonable.” Once that’s been achieved, the ‘idea’ drops neatly into people’s minds, settles down, and grows roots, creating not a ripple of cognitive dissonance.
At which point it cements itself in, and becomes difficult – even painful – to remove.
To quote the film ‘Inception’: “What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere.”
We love ideas; they make us who we are. We defend them, sometimes with our very lives.
“Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions with such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?” – JG Farrell.
So, yes, I have no illusions about the strength of ideas. They are so powerful, and so dangerous, that you must be very careful where you aim them. Because ideas also have a God-like power, which is that they are immortal.
The damage inflicted by medical ideas
You can kill a person who holds an idea. You can kill thousands of people who hold the same idea – but you cannot kill that idea. Unless you kill every single person who believes in it, then wipe it from the historical record, so that no-one can ever think it again. See ‘1984’.
I will give you a couple of examples of horribly damaging medical ideas. The first is the radical mastectomy. An idea first driven by William Halsted, a US surgeon from the end of the nineteenth century. He believed, as did almost everyone else at the time, that breast cancer spread locally – as did all cancers. Therefore, anything located anywhere near the cancer had to be cut away in case it had already been polluted.
With a radical mastectomy the entire breast, the other breast, muscles on the chest wall, lymph nodes, more muscles were cut out. Almost anything that could be removed without actually killing the women in the process.
The mutilated women were immensely grateful, and the surgeons proud of their expertise. They were doing a good thing, because the idea was considered to be inarguably correct. Questioning it was to be met with the response like, ‘Do you want these women to die – you heartless swine?’
Except that it wasn’t correct. Breast cancer does not spread locally. At least, when it does, it does so very slowly. The spread that causes problems, and kills women, is not local. Cancer cells get into the lymphatic system, and the bloodstream, and spread widely around the body, very early on. Often, long before the primary cancer can be detected.
Those who questioned the radical mastectomy, were attacked. Geoffrey Keynes, brother of John Maynard, tried less radical surgery in the 1920s. It did not go down well:
“Halsted’s followers in America ridiculed this approach, and came up with the name ‘lumpectomy’ to call the local surgery. In their minds, the surgeon was simply removing ‘just’ a lump, and this did not make much sense. They were aligning themselves with the paradigm of Radical Mastectomy. In fact, some of the surgeons even went further to come up with ‘superradical’ and ‘ultraradical’ procedures that were morbidly disfiguring procedures where the breast, underlying muscles, axillary nodes, the chest wall, and occasionally the ribs, part of the sternum, the clavicle and the lymph nodes inside the chest were removed. The idea of ‘more was better’ became prevalent.”
More is better… this is another of the deadly repeating themes of ‘the idea’. The idea can never be wrong, it is just that people are not doing it with sufficient vigour. If women are still dying from metastatic breast cancer, even after radical mastectomies (and they were), the answer could not possibly be that the procedure doesn’t work. The answer is that we are not being radical enough: “Hack away more, and then more.”
‘I was greeted with hands stretched out in a Nazi salute’
Another big medical idea is that of bed rest following a heart attack. It was thought, at one time, that all heart attacks were fatal. James Herrick, another US doctor, described the first non-fatal heart attack in 1912, then suggested that following such an attack, strict bed rest was important. This would take pressure off the heart and allow it a chance to heal. Again, this sounds perfectly reasonable. As described by Dr Bernard Lown, a professor of cardiology and the developer of the defibrillator:
“To a medical novice like me, the justification for enforced bed rest was persuasive. It was based on a sacrosanct therapeutic principle, the need to rest a diseased body part, be it a fractured limb or a tuberculosis-affected lung. Unlike a broken bone, which could be immobilized in a cast, or a lung lobe, which could be collapsed by inflating the chest cavity with air, the heart could not be cradled into quietude. The only approximation for a diseased heart was to diminish its workload. It was long known that during recumbency the heart rate slows and blood pressure drops, both indices of less oxygen usage and therefore of decreased cardiac work. Heart rest was therefore equated with bed rest.”
And so it became standard practice. It was simply what you did:
“Patients were confined to strict bed rest for four to six weeks. Sitting in a chair was prohibited. They were not allowed to turn from side to side without assistance. During the first week, they were fed. Moving their bowels and urinating required a bedpan. For the constipated, which included nearly every patient, precariously balancing on a bedpan was agonizing as well as embarrassing.
“Because world events might provoke unease, some physicians prohibited their patients from listening to the radio or reading a newspaper. Visits by family members were limited. Since recumbency provoked much restiveness and anxiety, patients required heavy sedation, which contributed to a pervasive sense of hopelessness and depression. Around one in three patients died.”
Bed rest started as a relatively mild thing. However, as it is with almost all things, it became increasingly ‘radical’. Lown, along with his mentor Dr Samuel Levine, tried to change this. He became involved in trying to get patients up out of bed to sit in a chair:
“Little did I realize that violating firmly held traditions can raise a tsunami of opposition. The idea of moving critically ill patients into a chair was regarded as off‑the‑wall. Initially the house staff refused to cooperate and strenuously resisted getting patients out of bed. They accused me of planning to commit crimes not unlike those of the heinous Nazi experimentations in concentration camps. Arriving on the medical ward one morning I was greeted by interns and residents lined up with hands stretched out in a Nazi salute and a ‘Heil Hitler!’ shouted in unison.”
Step six: Anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked.
No evidence, no problem
Then, among all the other problems with ‘the idea’, between steps two and three, is one that I have not yet mentioned. It is that no study is ever done to find out whether or not the idea works. It is just conceived to be so obviously beneficial, such common sense, that there would be no point in wasting time and resources trying to prove that it worked.
No-one ever did a study to find out if the radical mastectomy improved survival. No-one ever did a study to prove that bed rest saved lives. They were both introduced on the back of absolutely nothing. In time, eventually, the folly of both was finally recognised. It took 70 years for radical mastectomy, 50 for bed rest.
Which takes us to lockdowns. The most expensive, invasive, and potentially destructive medical intervention ever attempted by humanity. Was there any evidence from anywhere, before we embarked upon them, that lockdowns would work? No, there was none. But we have the six steps on full display here.
Step one: We have a serious disease that is killing lots of people – check.
Step two: It creates great fear, and the medical profession has nothing in place to deal with it – check.
Step three: A charismatic leader emerges to decree that he (almost always a ‘he’ up to now) knows how to treat it/control it etc. This is the ‘idea’ – check.
Step four: The ‘idea’ is enthusiastically taken up around the world and becomes ‘mainstream thinking’ – check.
Step five: The ‘idea’ becomes standard practice – check.
Step six: The ‘idea’ is taught to medics and becomes accepted truth, a fact – check.
Step seven: Anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked – check.
Does it work? Have lockdowns worked? You can pick and choose countries to support the case that it does and dismiss any evidence you don’t much like. Unfortunately, once you introduce a medical intervention that affects everyone, everywhere, you have lost the possibility of carrying out a controlled experiment of any sort.
Despite the lack of any randomised evidence, most people are absolutely convinced that lockdowns work to control the spread of Covid-19. They point to various countries, e.g. New Zealand, Norway, Australia and Taiwan, to prove their case. They always have a ready explanation as to why countries that underwent lockdown still have high death rates and vice-versa.
The ‘idea’ has become the truth. Its proponents now demand that those who doubt the efficacy of lockdowns prove that they don’t work. It is not the job of those suggesting lockdowns don’t work to prove that they don’t, it is the job of those promoting them to prove that they do.
The starting point for any scientific hypothesis is for the proponents to disprove the null hypothesis. Demanding that those who believe something may not work prove that it doesn’t is to turn the scientific method upside down. You can never prove a negative.
The null hypothesis, by the way, is that there is no difference between two things. Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) in medicine are designed to prove, statistically, that there is an actual difference between doing A and B. This is how science is done, how research is done.
We must look carefully at the death rates
Unfortunately, it is not possible to do a controlled trial with Covid-19. The possibility of doing any randomised study was lost very early on. Which means that we are instead forced to rely on observational studies. We can look at country X, that did Y, and see how it compares with country Z that did not do Y.
Or we can look at two countries that did Y, to see how they compare. Or two countries that did not do Y. With Covid, of course, no two countries did exactly the same thing. Not even the four ‘countries’ within the UK. So any observations become more difficult to rely on due to this ‘confounding variable’.
In some UK countries, six people could meet up, while in others it was eight, or two households, or only one household etc. In some, restaurants were open, in others they were shut – at varying times. From a scientific perspective, it’s a mess.
Anyway, to simplify things, let’s look at the 10 countries around the world with the highest death rate from Covid. That is, deaths per million population (I have left out countries with a population of less than one million, such as Monaco, or Liechtenstein, because a few deaths here or there can distort the death rate considerably)
What did they do differently, and what did they do the same? These countries all locked down, relaxed them, then brought in tighter lockdowns at various times. Looking only at first lockdown dates:
Belgium first locked down on March 18, 2020.
Slovenia first locked down on March 20, 2020.
Czechia first locked down on March 16, 2020.
The UK first locked down March 23, 2020.
Bosnia-Herzegovina first locked down March 16, 2020.
Italy first locked down March 9, 2020.
North Macedonia first locked down March 18, 2020.
The USA is highly federal and different states took different approaches – seven states did not issue lockdown orders: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. In those seven states, the death rate from Covid averaged at 1,280 per million, versus 1,254 as the US average.
In comparison, New Jersey first locked down on March 21, 2020, and its current death rate is 2,310 per million. New York locked down on March 12 – its current death rate is 2,130 per million. These states have the highest Covid related deaths in the US.
Bulgaria first locked down on March 13, 2020.
Hungary first locked down on March 28, 2020.
All countries locked down, Italy first, Hungary last. As you can see, the date of first lockdown is unrelated to the death rate. The other stand-out facts are that these are all countries with majority Caucasian populations. They are all in the northern hemisphere.
People will say, ah, but what about variables, such as population density, age distribution, number of tests done… etc, etc (there are dozens to choose from)? In the end, you can only rely on two things – did a country lock down and what is the death rate from Covid? These are the inescapable facts, everything else can be twisted to suit any argument.
If I were thinking of running a clinical trial where the hypothesis was that a lockdown was the best way to prevent deaths from Covid, then I would start by looking at observational data such as this.
I would find that the 10 countries in the world with the highest death rates all locked down.
I would look at the US, where the death rates in states that locked down, and those that did not, were almost the same rate (or vastly higher in the cases of New Jersey and New York), and I would conclude that the observational studies had – thus far – failed to disprove the null hypothesis. In fact, the evidence up to this point could suggest that lockdowns may actually increase the death rate.
In short, I would look for another idea.
Malcolm Kendrick, doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. His blog can be read here and his book, ‘Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,’ is available here.
January 26, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, United States |
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Louise Lagendijk | January 22, 2021
Dr. Louise Lagendijk, who specializes in molecular genetics at AMC and Harvard with some interesting information about the #mrnavaccine. Everyone would want to know this in order to make a good decision.
https://www.womencareinc.nl/
January 24, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | COVID-19 Vaccine |
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A year or two ago, I saw the much-touted science fiction film Interstellar, and although the plot wasn’t any good, one early scene was quite amusing. For various reasons, the American government of the future claimed that our Moon Landings of the late 1960s had been faked, a trick aimed at winning the Cold War by bankrupting Russia into fruitless space efforts of its own. This inversion of historical reality was accepted as true by nearly everyone, and those few people who claimed that Neil Armstrong had indeed set foot on the Moon were universally ridiculed as “crazy conspiracy theorists.” This seems a realistic portrayal of human nature to me.
Obviously, a large fraction of everything described by our government leaders or presented in the pages of our most respectable newspapers—from the 9/11 attacks to the most insignificant local case of petty urban corruption—could objectively be categorized as a “conspiracy theory” but such words are never applied. Instead, use of that highly loaded phrase is reserved for those theories, whether plausible or fanciful, that do not possess the endorsement stamp of establishmentarian approval.
Put another way, there are good “conspiracy theories” and bad “conspiracy theories,” with the former being the ones promoted by pundits on mainstream television shows and hence never described as such. I’ve sometimes joked with people that if ownership and control of our television stations and other major media outlets suddenly changed, the new information regime would require only a few weeks of concerted effort to totally invert all of our most famous “conspiracy theories” in the minds of the gullible American public. The notion that nineteen Arabs armed with box-cutters hijacked several jetliners, easily evaded our NORAD air defenses, and reduced several landmark buildings to rubble would soon be universally ridiculed as the most preposterous “conspiracy theory” ever to have gone straight from the comic books into the minds of the mentally ill, easily surpassing the absurd “lone gunman” theory of the JFK assassination.
Even without such changes in media control, huge shifts in American public beliefs have frequently occurred in the recent past, merely on the basis of implied association. In the initial weeks and months following the 2001 attacks, every American media organ was enlisted to denounce and vilify Osama Bin Laden, the purported Islamicist master-mind, as our greatest national enemy, with his bearded visage endlessly appearing on television and in print, soon becoming one of the most recognizable faces in the world. But as the Bush Administration and its key media allies prepared a war against Iraq, the images of the Burning Towers were instead regularly juxtaposed with mustachioed photos of dictator Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden’s arch-enemy. As a consequence, by the time we attacked Iraq in 2003, polls revealed that some 70% of the American public believed that Saddam was personally involved in the destruction of our World Trade Center. By that date I don’t doubt that many millions of patriotic but low-information Americans would have angrily denounced and vilified as a “crazy conspiracy theorist” anyone with the temerity to suggest that Saddam had not been behind 9/11, despite almost no one in authority having ever explicitly made such a fallacious claim.
These factors of media manipulation were very much in my mind a couple of years ago when I stumbled across a short but fascinating book published by the University of Texas academic press. The author of Conspiracy Theory in America was Prof. Lance deHaven-Smith, a former president of the Florida Political Science Association.
Based on an important FOIA disclosure, the book’s headline revelation was that the CIA was very likely responsible for the widespread introduction of “conspiracy theory” as a term of political abuse, having orchestrated that development as a deliberate means of influencing public opinion.
During the mid-1960s there had been increasing public skepticism about the Warren Commission findings that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been solely responsible for President Kennedy’s assassination, and growing suspicions that top-ranking American leaders had also been involved. So as a means of damage control, the CIA distributed a secret memo to all its field offices requesting that they enlist their media assets in efforts to ridicule and attack such critics as irrational supporters of “conspiracy theories.” Soon afterward, there suddenly appeared statements in the media making those exact points, with some of the wording, arguments, and patterns of usage closely matching those CIA guidelines. The result was a huge spike in the pejorative use of the phrase, which spread throughout the American media, with the residual impact continuing right down to the present day. Thus, there is considerable evidence in support of this particular “conspiracy theory” explaining the widespread appearance of attacks on “conspiracy theories” in the public media.
But although the CIA appears to have effectively manipulated public opinion in order to transform the phrase “conspiracy theory” into a powerful weapon of ideological combat, the author also describes how the necessary philosophical ground had actually been prepared a couple of decades earlier. Around the time of the Second World War, an important shift in political theory caused a huge decline in the respectability of any “conspiratorial” explanation of historical events.
For decades prior to that conflict, one of our most prominent scholars and public intellectuals had been historian Charles Beard, whose influential writings had heavily focused on the harmful role of various elite conspiracies in shaping American policy for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, with his examples ranging from the earliest history of the United States down to the nation’s entry into WWI. Obviously, researchers never claimed that all major historical events had hidden causes, but it was widely accepted that some of them did, and attempting to investigate those possibilities was deemed a perfectly acceptable academic enterprise.
However, Beard was a strong opponent of American entry into the Second World War, and he was marginalized in the years that followed, even prior to his death in 1948. Many younger public intellectuals of a similar bent also suffered the same fate, or were even purged from respectability and denied any access to the mainstream media. At the same time, the totally contrary perspectives of two European political philosophers, Karl Popper and Leo Strauss, gradually gained ascendancy in American intellectual circles, and their ideas became dominant in public life.
Popper, the more widely influential, presented broad, largely theoretical objections to the very possibility of important conspiracies ever existing, suggesting that these would be implausibly difficult to implement given the fallibility of human agents; what might appear a conspiracy actually amounted to individual actors pursuing their narrow aims. Even more importantly, he regarded “conspiratorial beliefs” as an extremely dangerous social malady, a major contributing factor to the rise of Nazism and other deadly totalitarian ideologies. His own background as an individual of Jewish ancestry who had fled Austria in 1937 surely contributed to the depth of his feelings on these philosophical matters.
Meanwhile, Strauss, a founding figure in modern neo-conservative thought, was equally harsh in his attacks upon conspiracy analysis, but for polar-opposite reasons. In his mind, elite conspiracies were absolutely necessary and beneficial, a crucial social defense against anarchy or totalitarianism, but their effectiveness obviously depended upon keeping them hidden from the prying eyes of the ignorant masses. His main problem with “conspiracy theories” was not that they were always false, but they might often be true, and therefore their spread was potentially disruptive to the smooth functioning of society. So as a matter of self-defense, elites needed to actively suppress or otherwise undercut the unauthorized investigation of suspected conspiracies.
Even for most educated Americans, theorists such as Beard, Popper, and Strauss are probably no more than vague names mentioned in textbooks, and that was certainly true in my own case. But while the influence of Beard seems to have largely disappeared in elite circles, the same is hardly true of his rivals. Popper probably ranks as one of the founders of modern liberal thought, with an individual as politically influential as left-liberal financier George Soros claiming to be his intellectual disciple. Meanwhile, the neo-conservative thinkers who have totally dominated the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement for the last couple of decades often proudly trace their ideas back to Strauss.
So, through a mixture of Popperian and Straussian thinking, the traditional American tendency to regard elite conspiracies as a real but harmful aspect of our society was gradually stigmatized as either paranoid or politically dangerous, laying the conditions for its exclusion from respectable discourse.
By 1964, this intellectual revolution had largely been completed, as indicated by the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the famous article by political scientist Richard Hofstadter critiquing the so-called “paranoid style” in American politics, which he denounced as the underlying cause of widespread popular belief in implausible conspiracy theories. To a considerable extent, he seemed to be attacking straw men, recounting and ridiculing the most outlandish conspiratorial beliefs, while seeming to ignore the ones that had been proven correct. For example, he described how some of the more hysterical anti-Communists claimed that tens of thousands of Red Chinese troops were hidden in Mexico, preparing an attack on San Diego, while he failed to even acknowledge that for years Communist spies had indeed served near the very top of the U.S. government. Not even the most conspiratorially minded individual suggests that all alleged conspiracies are true, merely that some of them might be.
Most of these shifts in public sentiment occurred before I was born or when I was a very young child, and my own views were shaped by the rather conventional media narratives that I absorbed. Hence, for nearly my entire life, I always automatically dismissed all of the so-called “conspiracy theories” as ridiculous, never once even considering that any of them might possibly be true.
To the extent that I ever thought about the matter, my reasoning was simple and based on what seemed like good, solid common sense. Any conspiracy responsible for some important public event must surely have many separate “moving parts” to it, whether actors or actions taken, let us say numbering at least 100 or more. Now given the imperfect nature of all attempts at concealment, it would surely be impossible for all of these to be kept entirely hidden. So even if a conspiracy were initially 95% successful in remaining undetected, five major clues would still be left in plain sight for investigators to find. And once the buzzing cloud of journalists noticed these, such blatant evidence of conspiracy would certainly attract an additional swarm of energetic investigators, tracing those items back to their origins, with more pieces gradually being uncovered until the entire cover-up likely collapsed. Even if not all the crucial facts were ever determined, at least the simple conclusion that there had indeed been some sort of conspiracy would quickly become established.
However, there was a tacit assumption in my reasoning, one that I have since decided was entirely false. Obviously, many potential conspiracies either involve powerful governmental officials or situations in which their disclosure would represent a source of considerable embarrassment to such individuals. But I had always assumed that even if government failed in its investigatory role, the dedicated bloodhounds of the Fourth Estate would invariably come through, tirelessly seeking truth, ratings, and Pulitzers. However, once I gradually began realizing that the media was merely “Our American Pravda” and perhaps had been so for decades, I suddenly recognized the flaw in my logic. If those five—or ten or twenty or fifty—initial clues were simply ignored by the media, whether through laziness, incompetence, or much less venial sins, then there would be absolutely nothing to prevent successful conspiracies from taking place and remaining undetected, perhaps even the most blatant and careless ones.
In fact, I would extend this notion to a general principle. Substantial control of the media is almost always an absolute prerequisite for any successful conspiracy, the greater the degree of control the better. So when weighing the plausibility of any conspiracy, the first matter to investigate is who controls the local media and to what extent.
Let us consider a simple thought-experiment. For various reasons these days, the entire American media is extraordinarily hostile to Russia, certainly much more so than it ever was toward the Communist Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s. Hence I would argue that the likelihood of any large-scale Russian conspiracy taking place within the operative zone of those media organs is virtually nil. Indeed, we are constantly bombarded with stories of alleged Russian conspiracies that appear to be “false positives,” dire allegations seemingly having little factual basis or actually being totally ridiculous. Meanwhile, even the crudest sort of anti-Russian conspiracy might easily occur without receiving any serious mainstream media notice or investigation.
This argument may be more than purely hypothetical. A crucial turning point in America’s renewed Cold War against Russia was the passage of the 2012 Magnitsky Act by Congress, punitively targeting various supposedly corrupt Russian officials for their alleged involvement in the illegal persecution and death of an employee of Bill Browder, an American hedge-fund manager with large Russian holdings. However, there’s actually quite a bit of evidence that it was Browder himself who was actually the mastermind and beneficiary of the gigantic corruption scheme, while his employee was planning to testify against him and was therefore fearful of his life for that reason. Naturally, the American media has provided scarcely a single mention of these remarkable revelations regarding what might amount to a gigantic Magnitsky Hoax of geopolitical significance.
To some extent the creation of the Internet and the vast proliferation of alternative media outlets, including my own small webzine, have somewhat altered this depressing picture. So it is hardly surprising that a very substantial fraction of the discussion dominating these Samizdat-like publications concerns exactly those subjects regularly condemned as “crazy conspiracy theories” by our mainstream media organs. Such unfiltered speculation must surely be a source of considerable irritation and worry to government officials who have long relied upon the complicity of their tame media organs to allow their serious misdeeds to pass unnoticed and unpunished. Indeed, several years ago a senior Obama Administration official argued that the free discussion of various “conspiracy theories” on the Internet was so potentially harmful that government agents should be recruited to “cognitively infiltrate” and disrupt them, essentially proposing a high-tech version of the highly controversial Cointelpro operations undertaken by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.
Until just a few years ago I’d scarcely even heard of Charles Beard, once ranked among the towering figures of 20th century American intellectual life. But the more I’ve discovered the number of serious crimes and disasters that have completely escaped substantial media scrutiny, the more I wonder what other matters may still remain hidden. So perhaps Beard was correct all along in recognizing the respectability of “conspiracy theories,” and we should return to his traditional American way of thinking, notwithstanding endless conspiratorial propaganda campaigns by the CIA and others to persuade us that we should dismiss such notions without any serious consideration.
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January 24, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | CIA, United States |
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In the late 1990s, former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley uncovered Joannides’ role in the DRE back in 1963 and began requesting the CIA for its files on Joannides. The CIA steadfastly refused to comply with Morley’s request and made it clear that it would never disclose most of Joannides’s secret activities.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
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