The essay below was originally published in early July 2022. Version 1.0 of #TheMotherOfAllProxyArmies in Ukraine had been severely attrited, and Version 2.0 would not appear until later in the summer.
Nevertheless, it had already become very apparent that the Russian strategy and doctrine for this war was not at all what the vast majority of western military “experts” expected it to be. And consequently they lacked the capacity to understand what was happening.
For the most part, they still don’t get it.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million Ukrainians (and a few thousand NATO-affiliated “volunteers”) have been sacrificed on the altar of western hubris and military ineptitude. Vast quantities of western equipment and ammunition has been expended — to the point of near-exhaustion in European NATO countries, and acute depletion of American stockpiles.
And yet the doctrine and tactics described in this mid-2022 article have changed only in the sense that the Russians have consistently refined and improved them along the way, even as the US/NATO have effectively learned nothing.
I’ve watched a LOT of drone footage from this war. I’ve seen, from a bird’s eye view, as it were, the design of the field fortifications Ukraine constructed, with NATO guidance, over the course of eight years.
The logic of these miles and miles of fortifications harkens back to the 1864-65 Battle of Petersburg (US Civil War), with a few World War I innovations thrown in for good measure.
It is a logic where victory largely depends on you not running out of men, heavy weaponry, and ammunition — and the enemy being comparatively stupid.
In many ways, the revealed logic of Ukraine’s long-prepared strategy for this war is a reflection of American military delusions and vanities, which multiplied and solidified over the course of the brief and fleeting “unipolar moment”.
Despite not having won a war since 1945, the US military is consumed with the vanity that it has always dominated opposing forces in every conflict.
There is a measure of truth in this perspective. But it is irrelevant. Because, since no later than the Korean War, the US has not faced a peer or near-peer adversary in a high-intensity conflict. The US military has not been, for almost three-quarters of a century, truly tested “under-fire”.
The US has measured its battlefield mettle, for decades, against brave sandal-shod men with AK-47s, RPGs, and a certain savoir faire for constructing IEDs.
But they have never faced anything like Russian artillery or missiles – not even in Hollywood movies or video games.
Consequently, the Pentagon’s self-perception of unquestioned supremacy has served to disinform and corrupt its doctrinal and procurement decisions for multiple generations of its officer corps. For most US generals and admirals, all potential opponents are underestimated.
That said, I believe a great many have now been awakened from their intellectual slumber by the manner in which the Russian armed forces quickly assessed the Ukrainian order of battle, and then professionally adapted their strengths and tactics to decisively defeat it.
The Battle of the Donbass
Here is a brief summation of the Russian tactical approach to the Battle of the Donbass:
Step #1: Advance reconnaissance units (often in force, with dozens or hundreds of drones overhead) to assess the situation; draw fire; relay to commanders raw video and geo-coordinates.
Step #2: With target-correcting drone swarms overhead, relaying real-time strike video, proceed to savage the fortifications with towed and mobile artillery, Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (in gradations of strength and precision), and even horrific thermobaric munitions for particularly suitable targets.
Let smoke clear.
Repeat Step #1.
Still something moving there?
Repeat Step #2.
Repeat Step #1.
Dead bodies everywhere?
Step #3: Send in tanks and infantry to mop up.
Move to next series of fortifications.
And so on and so forth …
This is why Ukraine now suffers hundreds of battle deaths every single day. And why, for months, the Russians have suffered very few casualties — likely as low as a 1:8 ratio, and quite possibly even lower.
Artillery, airstrikes, and precision guided munitions are doing almost all the fighting.
The Fatal Hubris of NATO War Strategy in Ukraine
But back to Ukraine’s apparent strategy for this war, and the apparent US influence on that strategy.
I will preface my commentary on this issue by stating that Ukraine’s fatal blunder was buying into NATO’s over-confident delusion that they (the Armed Forces of Ukraine) actually had a reasonable opportunity to defeat the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in a high-intensity conflict.
I initially believed NATO military leaders must have had a sober view, far in advance, that their half-million-strong, well-armed, trained-to-NATO-standards Ukrainian proxy army had almost no chance of prevailing on the field of battle against Russia.
But watching drone video of Ukrainian fortifications has convinced me the US military brain trust, in the course of their eight-year-long preparation of the eastern Ukrainian battlefield, effectively disdained the Russian military and its commanders.
Their vanity persuaded them the Russians would mindlessly smash themselves to pieces against an entrenched well-armed force.
Indeed, they were so confident of the genius of their plan that they persuasively encouraged many hundreds of now-killed or captured NATO veterans to “share in the glory” of humiliating the Russians and bringing down the Putin regime once and for all.
They deluded themselves into believing the Russians lacked strategic and logistical acumen, a sufficiently well-trained force, and – arguably the biggest miscalculation of all – sufficient stockpiles of ammo to conduct a protracted high-intensity conflict.
In short, I have come to believe US/NATO commanders actually persuaded themselves that this “Mother of All Proxy Armies” had an excellent chance to soundly whip the Russians in a battle situated in their own back yard.
In other words, they disregarded centuries of European history that they somehow convinced themselves had no relevance to their 21st century aspirations to defeat Russia militarily and take a great spoil of its resources.
But, as is now readily apparent to all objective, knowledgeable military analysts around the globe, the Ukrainian proxy army has been pulverized by a patient, methodical, and significantly outnumbered Russian force, using long-established Russian doctrines and tactics.
Even more revealing is that once-vaunted and universally feared US/UK weaponry – almost all of it actually rather antiquated – has proven to be far less “game-changing” than the pea-brained strategists in Washington and Whitehall mistakenly believed.
Javelins, NLAWs, and Stingers have been exposed as mostly ineffective against their intended targets (tanks, helicopters, and low-flying jets). M-777 howitzers break down after just a few fires. GPS-guided “precision” munitions are routinely jammed by Russian electronic warfare counter-measures.
Worse yet, the inculcation of NATO field doctrines in the minds of the Ukrainian officer cadre has resulted in pervasively inflexible responses to battlefield events that develop contrary to expectations. Consequently, discipline has disintegrated, and improvisation has been paralyzed.
To be sure, if one were to go by the laughable assessments of western think-tank propagandists and their dutiful lackeys in the media, “Ukraine is winning” and “the inept Russian military has been humiliated”.
But more discerning observers around the world know better.
Sober military men in potential adversary countries across the globe see with clarity that Russia has, with one hand tied behind its back, eviscerated the massive, relatively well-armed and well-trained Ukrainian military.
The US/NATO intimidation factor has been forever compromised.
More geopolitically significant, at least in the near future, is that European NATO members can also read the scorecard of this war: they now understand as they never could previously that standing on the NATO side of the field is hardly a guarantee of security.
I am convinced NATO will not survive the results of this war in Ukraine. Sure, they’ll “keep up appearances” for the time being, but there can be no doubt most now understand that siding with a rapidly declining empire is fraught with great risk and minimal gain.
More concerningly, the Chinese have been watching all of these developments with great interest. They are almost certain to be emboldened to act decisively to secure their sphere of influence in the emerging multipolar world.
In a shocking turn, mainstream voices who censored and suppressed conversation around vaccine injury have reversed course, even calling for a “9/11-style tribunal.” Yet they’re “limited hangout” falls short of full accountability or vindication for the injured. Del has a message for Chris Cuomo.
Can pediatricians afford to run their medical practices without the generous kickbacks they receive for vaccinating every child?
Dr. Paul Thomas, a Dartmouth-trained pediatrician, discussed this dilemma during an April 16 interview with Polly Tommey on Children’s Health Defense’s “Vax-Unvax: The People’s Study” bus tour.
“You cannot stay in business if you’re not giving pretty close to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] [childhood vaccine] schedule,” said Thomas, who ran a general pediatrics practice with 15,000 patients and 33 staff members.
Thomas also addressed the risks and harms of vaccines — including COVID-19 mRNA vaccines — and the importance of boosting our immune systems naturally.
‘We were losing … over a million dollars’
Thomas, author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health-from Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Year,” gave parents in his practice a choice: vaccinate their children on the CDC schedule, vaccinate more slowly by waiting for the child’s immune system to develop or not vaccinate at all.
As more patients refused vaccines, Thomas began to notice the financial impact on his practice.
He and his staff conducted a thorough analysis of their billing records, examining the income generated from vaccine administration fees, markups and quality bonuses tied to vaccination rates.
The results shocked him. “We were losing … over a million dollars in vaccines that were refused.”
He explained that pediatric practices heavily rely on vaccine income to stay afloat, with overhead costs running as high as 80%.
“It is very expensive to run a pediatric office,” he told Tommey. “You need multiple nurses, multiple receptionists, multiple billing people and medical records — it’s a huge operation.”
Three financial incentives for giving vaccines
Pediatricians receive several types of financial incentives for administering vaccines.
The first is the administration fee, which Thomas described as a “Thank you for giving the shot.” He estimated that pediatricians typically receive about $40 for the first antigen and $20 for each subsequent antigen.
“Let’s just say a two-month well-baby visit, there’s a DPT — that’s three shots, three antigens,” he told Tommey, plus “Hib [Haemophilus influenzae type b], Prevnar [pneumococcal], Hep B [hepatitis B], polio, rota [rotavirus] — [that’s] about $240.”
The second way pediatricians profit from vaccines is through a small markup on the cost of the vaccines themselves, though Thomas noted that this is not a significant source of income.
The third and most substantial financial incentive is quality bonuses tied to vaccination rates. Insurance companies offer pediatricians bonus payments for meeting certain benchmarks, typically around 80% of patients being fully vaccinated by age 2.
“I get dinged maybe 10-15% off of those RVUs — relative value units — that are ascribed,” he said, describing the points system used to calculate physician reimbursements.
With his practice’s vaccination rate a mere 1%, Thomas was at risk of losing up to 15% of his overall revenue.
“Really, it effectively means a pediatric practice cannot survive using insurance without doing most of the vaccines, if not all of them,” he said. “And I think that explains the blinders — [why doctors] just won’t go there and look at the fact that these vaccines are causing a lot of harm.”
Neurodevelopmental issues ‘clearly linked to vaccines’
“When you hear the word syndrome, it means we don’t know what it is … [or] what causes it,” Thomas said. “But we actually have a pretty good clue.”
Thomas said six studies examined the correlation between SIDS cases and vaccines. “In one data set, 97% were in the first 10 days after the vaccine. Only 3% were in the subsequent 10 days,” he said.
Other studies showed similar patterns, with 75-90% of SIDS deaths occurring within the first week after vaccination, he said.
“We know without a doubt that things like neurodevelopmental concerns, learning disabilities, ADD, ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder], autism [are] clearly linked to vaccines,” he stated. “The more you vaccinate, the more likely you are to have these problems.”
Vaccinated children are more prone to infections and illness compared to their unvaccinated peers, according to Thomas, who published a study comparing the health outcomes of each group.
“It’s the vaccinated who get more ear infections, more sinus infections, more lung infections,” he said. “Any kind of infection you look at, the vaccinated get more.”
‘Healthy adults just “Boom!” — dropping dead’
The risks associated with vaccines extend beyond childhood. Thomas drew attention to the recent phenomenon of “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome” (SADS) following the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
“We see it on the news, we see it on the ball fields: healthy adults just ‘Boom!’ — dropping dead,” he said. “And that’s all happened since the COVID jabs.”
Thomas expressed particular concern about the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccine development. He pointed out that despite decades of research, mRNA vaccines have never been proven safe or effective.
“When they got to the animal trials, they would vaccinate the rats,” he said. “When they re-exposed those rats, in one study, 100% of them died.”
The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines’ narrow focus on the spike protein is also problematic because it causes the immune system to become “focused on just one thing,” Thomas said.
“When the [viral] organism mutates, those who are vaccinated can’t recognize this new mutation,” he said, recalling how at a family gathering during the pandemic, it was mostly the vaccinated who contracted COVID-19.
Thomas shared a personal story about his mother’s experience with pulmonary fibrosis after receiving three COVID-19 vaccines.
“After her third COVID shot, she started really running out of energy and then getting short of breath,” he said. “Within a month, her lungs [had a] ground-glass appearance.”
“Shedding seems to be happening, and it’s been documented in studies,” he said, explaining that vaccinated individuals can expose others to spike proteins through body fluids and secretions.
‘We can no longer go to our doctors and say, “Fix me”’
Thomas discussed the likelihood of new pandemics being declared in the future, driven by the immense financial gains pharmaceutical companies reaped from the COVID-19 vaccines.
“They made too much money — Pfizer alone made over $100 billion,” he said. “So the power that the public health machinery got to themselves with COVID has to be intoxicating to them.”
In light of this, Thomas stressed the importance of personal health and natural immunity.
“We can no longer go to our doctors and say, ‘Fix me,’ after we’ve trashed our own health,” he said. “So we’ve got to take responsibility for eating right, avoiding stress, getting adequate sleep … [and] boosting our immune system naturally with organic produce.”
Thomas also encouraged people to question public health authorities and make informed decisions about their health.
“I can no longer trust the CDC, the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], the NIH [National Institutes of Health],” he said. “Some good people work in these institutions, but the institutions themselves are captured.”
Thomas said that when it comes to vaccines or a new pandemic illness, “They’re the last people you want to trust.”
‘Vax Facts’ book coming soon
Thomas shared information about his upcoming book, “Vax Facts,” co-authored with his partner DeeDee Hoover. He said the book provides an easy-to-read, comprehensive guide to understanding the vaccine issue, regardless of one’s current stance.
“This is going to … allow you to really understand it in an organized, reasonable way why it makes sense now to pause” taking vaccines, Thomas said.
Tommey reminded viewers of Thomas’ weekly show on CHD.TV, “Pediatric Perspectives,” where he interviews pediatricians and doctors who focus on children’s health.
Thomas encouraged viewers to visit his website, Kids First 4 Ever, to learn more about his work and to access coaching services for childhood vaccines and wellness.
John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A class action lawsuit against YouTube’s censorship of Covid-era speech on the platform has been allowed to proceed in Canada.
The primary plaintiff in the case which has now been greenlit by the Quebec Superior Court is YouTuber Éloïse Boies, while the filing accuses the Google video platform of censoring information about vaccines, the pandemic, and the virus itself.
Boies, who runs the “Élo Wants to Know” channel, states in the lawsuit that three of her videos got removed by YouTube (one of the censored videos was about – censorship) for allegedly violating the site’s policies around medical disinformation and contradicting WHO and local health authorities’ Covid narratives of the time.
However, the content creator claims that the decisions represented unlawful and intentional suppression of free expression. In February, Boies revealed that in addition to having videos deleted, the censorship also branded her an “antivaxxer” and a “conspiracy theorist,” causing her to lose contracts.
The filing cites the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms as the document YouTube violated, while the class-action status of the lawsuit stems from it including any individual or legal entity in Quebec whose videos dealing with Covid got censored, or who were prevented from watching such videos, starting in mid-March 2020 and onward.
Google, on the other hand, argues that it is under no obligation to respect the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, and can therefore not be held accountable for decisions to censor content it doesn’t approve of – or as the giant phrased it, provide space for videos “regardless of their content.”
But when Superior Court Judge Lukasz Granosik announced his decision, he noted that freedom of expression “does not only mean freedom of speech, but also freedom of publication and freedom of creation.”
Stressing the importance that Canada’s Supreme Court assigns to guaranteed freedom of expression as a key building block in a democratic society, the judge concluded that “If (Google) carries out censorship by preventing certain people from posting videos and prevents other people from viewing these same videos, it thus hinders the free circulation of ideas and exposes itself to having to defend its ways of doing things.”
Google was ordered to stop censoring content because it contradicts health authorities, WHO, or governments, pay $1,000 in compensation and $1,000 in punitive damages to each of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, an well as “additional compensation provided for by law since the filing of the request for authorization to take collective action, as per the court’s decision.”
As for those who were prevented from accessing content, the decision on damages will be the subject of a future hearing.
Of all the interviews I have done so far, with so many amazing people, this is the most personal and significant.
In the darkest of the dark days, the people that I relied on the most to triangulate my sanity were Paul Collits, Michael Yeadon, Malcolm Kendrick, and Jeffrey Tucker.
Paul was different in two ways.
Firstly, he is Australian; there were very few sane people writing anything useful left in this country, and secondly, because of the sheer breadth and depth of his knowledge and insight, as you will soon see.
He helped me with far more than just navigating Covid insanity.
Having the opportunity to do this interview is an absolute honour, and truth be told, I was quite emotional when I first read it.
With thanks and gratitude to Paul Collits, for everything.
1. Paul, could you please start by giving readers a brief overview of your background and journey up to this point
First, many thanks to you for arranging the interview. I am very happy to be involved. I am in my late sixties, now well and truly retired. I live in northern New South Wales, close to the Queensland border. Brisbane is the closest large city. We live in a large rural town of about 30,000 people. I have had a pretty varied career, but mainly I have worked as a civil servant (policy professional) and an academic. In the former role, I have worked for a State Government and for the Feds. In the latter role, I have been both a researcher and a teacher. I have also done a short stint working for a Senator (when I was much younger) and briefly as a local economic development practitioner, in both Australian and New Zealand. So I have had had pretty good exposure to all levels of government. Much of my career was spent in regional economic development, and much of my academic writing was in this area. My initial training was in political science (International relations, political theory, public policy, Australian politics) and my PhD was in urban planning. In “retirement”, I have written on a range of topics related to politics, philosophy, economics, policy, education, religion and public health. I have published in The Spectator Australia, Politicom, Quadrant, The Conservative Woman (UK), The Daily Sceptic, News Weekly and A Sense of Place Magazine. I am the Senior Political Commentator at Politicom. And I have a substack. Briefly, I wrote for The Freedoms Project, a pro-life, Christian-inclined blog.
2. In your writing, you often discuss the concept of “convergent opportunism”. Could you explain what this means and how it relates to the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic?
I think this phrase came from the British Covid hero and former Big Pharma executive, Mike Yeadon. I love Mike’s writing, sincerity, compassion, fierce independence and clear thinking. I think he landed on “convergent opportunism’ as his preferred explanation for the policy debacle over Covid. It is a middle position between the Hanlon’s Razor view – the decision makers were stupid – and the conspiracy theorists who think, probably correctly, that the Covid policy response was born of malfeasance and tyranny. For a political scientist like me, the convergent opportunism thesis had some appeal. It goes to the old Rahm Emmanuel dictum, don’t ever let a crisis go to waste. And to the public choice theory that public officials get captured by powerful interests and have their own private interests separate from the “public good”. Many actors had an interest in erecting the Covid State. And they did. There were the public health officials who discovered their fifteen minutes of glory and power. There were the pharmaceutical companies who spied profits. There were the globalists who saw opportunities for control. There were the petit fascists who luxuriated in the opportunity for social control and virtue signalling. There were the captured legacy media. There were the academics who got their grants from the Bill Gates class. There were many opportunists who saw Covid as chance to advance various agendas, all at the expense of the people. And subsequent events lend credence to the theory. Like the pandemic preparedness industry that has emerged. Interests converged. And they cashed in. Mind you, Mike Yeadon came to reject his earlier theory, and who now believes it was all planned, known and executed. Not merely convergent opportunism. There is much evidence to support his new position. Pretty much everything that the conspiracy theorists said of Covid has been proven to be correct. None of this, of course, has been admitted by the guilty parties. The powers that be cling, at best, to the position that “mistakes were made”. We still await Nuremberg Two.
3. You’ve been critical of the “pandemic preparedness” movement. Why do you believe this movement has been detrimental to society, and how has it influenced government policies during the COVID-19 crisis?
Everyone knows (now) about Big Pharma. Less well known are the global public health tsars, housed in national bureaucracies, international governance institutions, research centres, universities, NGOs, corporates, the media, thinktanks, Big Philanthropy, and governments themselves. Klaus Schwab famously said that the World Economic Forum had “penetrated ze cabinets”. It certainly has. Just as Big Pharma has an interest in creating pandemics in order to find uses for their dangerous and ineffective drugs, governments and their puppet masters have an interest in control, in depopulation and in power. Back in the day, the Rockefellers determined that global control can be gained through crises, preferably crises at global scale that are said to “demand” global action in response. In the 1950s, the Rockefellers came up with financial crisis, climate crises and pandemics the perfect means of gaining global control of populations and pesky governments. One of the core means of assuring that governments played ball was to create globalist institutions, like the World Health Organisation, that could take over the functions of national governments. Another is to shape popular responses to global crises through fear-based propaganda. Create an expectation of crisis, create fear of the coming plagues, recruit hyper-connected actors to the cause, and use “science” or its illusion to suggest that “experts” and not elected governments should run things, and centrally plan responses. Vaccine nutters and global controllers like Gates provided big money to a global network of closely connected players, in the academy, in research institutes, in global institutions, and bought off the media, created narratives, and set up “events” to “plan” for the “inevitable” crises. He did this before Covid, in late 2019, and it worked. (See below). Since Covid, and despite all of the manifest failures and catastrophes of government public health policy, they are still at it, even more so, in planning future pandemic policy. From WHO to Davos and the WEF to the United Nations…
4. In your opinion, why did Australia seem to “fracture” into separate states during the pandemic, ultimately being ruled by what can be described as a collection of would-be dictators?
It turned out that the States still retain a lot of power, after all, despite the centralisation of much power in Canberra over the past century. The States still run the hospitals, the schools, the police, and their own borders. The Government of Scott Morrison surrendered authority to the States during Covid. This was spineless and based on fear of the already scared voters. He abandoned statesmanship and left the rule to thugs in State Government. He opted for a model of shared responsibility so as to avoid electoral pain. He created a National Cabinet to achieve this consensus model. This was a cop out and a disaster. The states pushed the boundaries of what they could do, and found compliant populations willing to give up their freedom for the “goodies”, like JobKeeper and JobSeeker, and the assurance of salvation from the coming vaccines. Australians, like other nationalities, bought the Covid lies and obeyed out of fear. They signed up for the track-and-trace technology, they suspected not the signs of coming tyranny, being large of supine disposition and clustered most in the most compliant quadrant of conformism. They became militant in their denunciation of covid dissidents, abusing vaccine doubters and lockdown laughers. They were cultural maskists, too. And dobbers. So, it was a lack of national leadership, cowed politicians fearful of backlash if they went “soft” on the virus – despite all of the science against lockdowns and in support of letting the virus run itself out, while protecting the vulnerable – a compliant population that simply didn’t question the elites’ lies, and State politician-tyrants who enjoyed the daily press conferences and the appearance of power, and who discovered, perhaps to their surprise, that the States can still be very powerful.
5. Some have compared Australia’s relationship with the United States to that of an invisible star on the American flag, or a Sub-Imperial State. How do you view Australia’s position within the context of the American Empire?
The Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard (1996-2007) was in Washington DC on the day of 9/11, due to address Congress. He was, not unexpectedly for a staunch American ally who happened to be almost on site for the attack, deeply shocked by the events. He stated that this was not the time for Australia to be an “eighty per cent ally” of the USA. And so, Australia went to war in the Middle East in what as to turn out a costly disaster for all concerned, with Iraq an unholy mess and Afghanistan returned to the Taliban twenty years on. Howard was criticized at the time by the left, and subsequently by some on the right who may have been queasy about the Iraq War (in particular), but went along with Bush 43 because we are a one hundred per cent ally. Howard was derided as Bush’s “deputy sheriff”. Now, while Howard’s Liberal Party remains a firm US ally, others on the right in Australia are not quite so friendly these days. And with reason. They see America as a political and judicial basket case, Washington DC as a swamp that is perhaps undrainable, they are embarrassed that Trump caved in to the Deep State over Covid, and has not apologised, they simply cannot understand how a crook like Biden can occupy the White House, and, especially with Ukraine, they see US foreign policy run by a weird concoction of neocons and the military industrial complex. They are also convinced that the democrat machine will again rig the election, and that Trump will fail again, irrespective of whether he is likely to make the nation great again. In summary, from my perspective, the alliance with the USA is far more nuanced than before, despite the elites’ continued embrace of the alliance, seen through defence agreements and initiatives such as AUKUS. It is hard to say whether the left still hates America in the way it used to. Our current Prime Minister sucks up to Biden, but, as a leftist, probably because Biden’s regime is far left as well rather than because of any deeply held labor Party love for the USA.
6. The concept of “the long march through the institutions” is a recurring theme in your writing. Could you explain what this means and how it has manifested in Australia and other Western nations?
The long march is a Marxist strategy for capturing power by infiltrating the key institutions of society and embedding revolutionary ideologies to effect permanent social change. They target and seek to undermine the key institutions of social power – the family, the Church, the bureaucracy, the universities, the media. It was born of the Italian Marxist Gramsci and perfected by 1960s radicals in the USA and Europe. Marxists came to believe that the working class was useless in advancing the communist revolution, and that the real action was not in the economy but in the culture. Especially after the collapse of Stalinism and the USSR in the 1980s, they realised that the workers didn’t want socialism but had aspirations to middle class comforts. The Marxist pivot was secured by then. The post-Gramsci strategy was firmly in place. The fruits of the strategy are plentiful. The bureaucracy is captured, as are the universities, the NGOs, the churches, and even right-of-centre political parties. It has been a brilliant and successful strategy. The modern Marxists now hate the working class and their (perceived) racist, homophobic, xenophobic attitudes. The beauty of the long march strategy has been that no one knew it was happening, until it was too late. The capture of the public imagination has been comprehensive. The leftists could never have imagined, for example, that their ideology would so totally capture the corporations, who now embrace woke ideology and are that ideology’s chief champions. Complete victory. And vindication of the Gramsci plan.
7. Jane Halton, a key figure in Australia’s pandemic preparedness efforts, might be described as a “smoking gun”. Could you explain her role in laying the legal groundwork for what ultimately happened in Australia during the pandemic?
Jane Halton is a “retired” senior health bureaucrat from Australia. She is also impeccably connected to the establishment here, being married to a very senior public sector statistician who happens to be the brother of Brett Sutton, Victoria’s former Chief Health officer responsible for enforcing the Western world’s toughest and most brutal lockdown. Halton left the Australian public service for international roles in public health, including at the World Health Organisation. I have previously termed her Bill Gates’ girl down under, for her role in the CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) , Gates’ funded Event 201 in October 2019, which conducted simulations of a coronavirus-type pandemic mere months before the Wuhan outbreak. Astonishingly, and with much lobbying of governments by Gates and others in the “family” – see Fauci, Daszak, Baric, Jeremy Farrar, Neil Ferguson, Tedros, Schwab, Deborah Birx, Walensky and friends – CEPI’s simulation turned into global pandemic policy. Halton was therefore front and centre in the push to enforce lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine rollouts and the defenestration of democracy and economic strength across the world. She is the international health bureaucrat’s international health bureaucrat, and continues to be closely involved with the organisation of the next global public health panic. She chairs the OECD’s health committee and numerous other international bodies. She is an enemy of freedom and human rights to health autonomy. She has escaped punishment, has not apologised, and must be outed. Inevitably, she did a review of aspects of Covid vaccine policy for the Australian Government, avoiding the real issues, like excess deaths, vaccine harms, the failure of lockdowns, and the rest of the existential harms done to our nation by covid policy. An unelected member of the administrative state, Halton would be utterly unknown to most Australians. Hence her extreme “covert power”. Halton’s continued presence at the global health policy table will ensure she will have a central role in future pretend health crises.
8. Collectivist ideologies seem to have a strong hold on popular narratives. What strategies do you think conservatives and libertarians can employ to create a compelling, unifying narrative of their own?
First, I think there is now a large, growing and distinct third group of dissenters from the collectivist mindset and policy drive. These are the outsiders who cherish freedom, recognise that it has been taken from them, and hate the privileged insider class and all of its works. They aren’t necessarily conservatives or libertarians in the traditional sense, but they are dismayed and disillusioned. They want governments to keep their promises, safeguard the interests of the dispossessed, stop being crooked, disengage from corporate power, stop giving jobs to their mates, and to take elections seriously again. Covid radicalised them. They are nationalists, and reject globalism. They possibly read Compact magazine if they are intellectually inclined, rather than Reason or National Review. The new divide is insiders versus outsiders, and the rejection of executive power and the deep state. So the hew hybrid, call it social conservatism + social democracy, isn’t the same as the old enemies of collectivism, and the new enemy isn’t just collectivism either. So I would recast the question a little. Which isn’t to say that collectivism isn’t a problem. t just now has several new faces, like the nanny state, the administrative state, the post-Covid state, the military fact-checker complex, the cancel culture, the woke establishment. It is a hydra-headed beast. What are the push-back alternatives? Conventional party politics is out as a solution in the age if the UniParty, where the two major parties in each polity are often in agreement on the big issues, and often the only difference between them is the speed at which we are hurtling towards the cliff. So it is a must to support minor freedom parties and build coalitions that will hopefully win seats in legislatures and hold to account whichever of the major parties holds power. Electoral systems work against this and against minor parties. Outside of electoral politics, there are two possible strategies. One is to abandon the system altogether, to retreat to the cave. The American writer Rod Dreher calls this the Benedict Option. Perhaps the “cave” is a foreign country like Hungary (at present). Since all of the Western institutions have been captured, there is little hope (in our lifetimes) of a reversal of direction in the bureaucracy, the NGOs, the corporates, the universities and the legacy media. The other option, which a number of thinkers have suggested, is to form “parallel societies” and operate outside the system. Shop local. Use cash. Have large families. Home school them. Form online and other communities of shared interests. Avoid paying tax. Get offline where possible. Shun social media. Avoid digital ID if you can. But still engage with civil society. Attend peaceful protests against tyranny. Conventional politics and ideologies are legacy tools. Most politicians are chancers, bought up or ineffectual and spineless. Playing those games is a waste of time, when the enemy is at the gate already.
9. Climate change is another topic you’ve written about extensively. Could you walk us through the “five stages of descent into climate madness” that you’ve identified?
I once asked the doyen of Australian climate realists, Ian Plimer, why he still bothered to fight the good fight on climate change. My view is that this war is over, and no amount of rational, evidence based argument against the net zero nutters will persuade them to change their minds. Ian agreed up to a point, but said that he and others on the side of climate truth had a duty to place on the record the real picture, for future generations and future historians. Hence his continued crusade. I largely stopped writing about climate change a decade ago, since rational debate is now impossible with climate emoters, and, in any case, the private equity funds that run the world had put their chips on renewables. Nevertheless, the deceptions over climate policy are real, disastrous and ongoing, so one does have that duty. Especially when clowns like Michael Mann win court cases against the likes of Mark Steyn. The “climate madness” consists of a series of highly dubious propositions linked by a false logic path, and the acceptance of this nonsense by policy-makers and the public, or at least enough of the public for politicians to fear the electoral consequences of climate “inaction”. These propositions are as follows. The earth’s temperature is rising. It is rising substantially. The rise is caused by man. Governments of the world can do something about this. Governments of the world should do something about this. None of these propositions is true. Yet we have global action on climate, action that will impoverish the world’s economies, kill countless people, destroy freedom and blast us all back to the stone age. So, what are the five stages of descent into climate madness? First, there was the greenhouse gases theory of the Swede Arrhenius, and others, and the linking of rising emissions to the industrial revolution. Next came the realization by early generation green radicals that climate could be the big global threat they could use to garner support for their extremist anti-capitalist crusade. Third came the end of the Cold War and the eclipse of traditional Soviet style Marxism, and the emergence of cultural Marxism and post-modernism as drivers of leftist thought. The pivot away from the working class and towards alleged victims of oppression came with a green tinge, and the acceptance of “sustainability” as the new unifying ideology of radicals. Fourth came the leftists’ capture of science and scientists only too eager to harvest the research funding that the new world promised. This has been called academic “grant troughing”. Finally, the last stage has been the capture of both governments and corporates by the watermelon ideology, as James Delingpole has called it. It is all another example of convergent opportunism, you might say. Everyone in the establishment is a winner. Greenies win. Academics get their grants. Politicians salve their consciences. Bankers and other capitalists get their profits through green-washing and ponzi schemes, their green investments typically paid for by the taxpayer. Bureaucrats have new jobs for life. Yes, it turns out that the case for taking up the fight, seemingly hopeless, remains strong.
10. You’ve been critical of Australian feminism. Do you believe there are unique aspects to feminism in Australia that set it apart from feminist movements in other parts of the world?
I can’t really comment on feminism in other countries, but will focus instead on some of the harmful consequences of feminism and especially me-tooism as they have emerged in Australia. I suspect that Australian feminism isn’t that different from the practices and views of the sisterhood in other places. Some of the worst consequences of feminism as it emerged in the 1960s have been the trashing of the traditional family, the raising of children by childcare workers, the lies told to women that persuaded several generations to assume they have to be wage slaves, making taxpayers pay for the raising of children in childcare centres, at great and growing cost, massive house price inflation resulting from the emergence of two income families as the norm, and the hounding of innocent men wrongly accused – either through the courts or in the court of public opinion – of sexual assault. It isn’t just feminism on its own, of course. It is leftist feminism typically part of an ideological package that also includes socialism, multiculturalism and environmentalism. Few radical feminists are not also rabid socialists, greenies, anti-Israel and supporters of mass immigration. They often support the suppression of free speech, create moral panics over rape and sex abuse, and especially go after the churches and churchmen. We saw the destruction of Cardinal George Pell’s reputation and his imprisonment on false charges, and the attack on him was led by radical feminists in the Victorian legal system, the police, the publishing industry and the media. I have written upwards of 50,000 words on the Pell case, and was threatened by The Age newspaper with contempt of court over one of the articles I wrote.
11. The World Economic Forum (WEF) and its annual meeting in Davos have been the subject of much controversy. What are your thoughts on the role of the WEF in shaping global policies and narratives?
As I have noted, the WEF has “penetrated ze cabinets”. It isn’t just some country club for rich, greenie wankers, who meet in the snow once a year. It isn’t simply a fantasy made up by “conspiracy theorists”. Yes, thousands of gas guzzling private jets ferrying oligarchs into a Swiss village do make for good copy and a charge of hypocrisy. Their use of $3000-a-time sex workers, the same. These people are not clowns. They make a difference to the world. Money talks. So does proximity to power. It has become clear who really has that power, and it isn’t the puppet politicians. Establishment types like the Spectator’s Toby Young like to mock those who see the world run by Bond villains. They are so unawake it isn’t funny. As many others have pointed out, Klaus Schwab, initially a messenger boy for Henry Kissinger, writes books on his and the WEF’s vision for the world, and he means business. They are not secretive, not like the Bilderbergs, the Trilateral Commission, the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Club of Rome and the other world-dominator types, with whom the WEF share fraternal bonds and overlapping membership. The WEF puts it all out there, and hides nothing. They are confident that half the world will agree with them, and the other half will shrug them off. They win. The things they are pushing, with real resources and lethal intent, include the destruction of farming, global digital vaccine passports, WHO control of national public health policy, digital currencies, the end of cash, programmable spending by individuals, social credit, depopulation, eugenics, abortion, socialism for the peasants, the end of global travel for the masses, and censorship. Oh, and the much-adored Chinese model. The penetration of ze cabinets has included Australia. The Health Minister during Covid was a former employee of the WEF. Many other Australians, like the American born Julie Inman Grant, our eSafety Commissar, who is a Davos girl, are regulars. Former participants in the WEF’s Young Global Leaders Program are scattered across the world’s governments. And the merest casual observer of world politics these days will have noticed the utter alignment of the policies of all the major parties, of whichever hue, with the tripe coming out of Geneva. No coincidence, that.
12. In your article “Demography and Replacement Down Under”, you discuss the challenges posed by Australia’s current immigration policies. What do you see as the long-term consequences of these policies for Australian society and culture?
Mass immigration is a blight on Australian culture and a ponzi scheme for the economy. We now have, post-Covid and under a far-left Government, upwards of half a million migrants arriving every year. This was never agreed to by voters in any election. A referendum on the subject would end in catastrophic defeat for supporters of huge migrant numbers. The arrivals put upward pressure on infrastructure costs, housing prices and the cost of living. They lead to the apartment booms in our cities, where often the jerry-built structures simply fall down after a few years. The apartment boom has become a form of urban blight, especially in middle ring suburbs traditionally the homes of the middle classes and older people and families. These are now under threat from the vertical expansion said to be needed because of the exploding population. (The trendy new urbanism embraced by most town planners is, of course, a cause as well as bloated in-migrant populations. Mass immigration has also led to the formation of enclaves. We don’t have multiculturalism so much as multi mono-culturalism. Half of Australia’s people now have at least one parent born overseas. About one third were born overseas themselves. And the mix is by no means conducive to social harmony, as many Jews here are now finding out. One commentator has noted that “they hate us before they get here”. Many new Australians do not accept our values, yet we keep on bringing more in, in increasing numbers. It is a recipe for disaster. Some have called it “replacement theory”. If you don’t like the population, and its racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic values, well change the population. Leftists call this theory a nasty conspiracy theory. To me it is simple reality, and it is utterly plausible that replacement is the aim, as well as the effect, of the policy. And the economic impact? Neutral, at best, many economists agree. Businesses love mass migration – cheap labour to do the nasty jobs many Australians won’t do. Governments keep inviting more migrants in order to cover up their own economic mismanagement.
13. Many of your articles touch on the theme of elite control and manipulation. How do you think the average person can resist these influences and maintain a sense of autonomy in their lives?
See also the answer to Q 8. Many people have traded freedom for convenience, and boredom for wall-to-wall entertainment, since the arrival of smartphones. A retired Australian judge, in explaining the willingness of our people to follow Covid tyrannical instructions, once said Australians were content so long as they had Netflix, full bellies and a warm place to defaecate. He had that pretty right. In other words, many are in the passive conformist quadrant in the quadrant of conformity. They don’t see, for example, digital IDs as anything to be remotely worried about. How the active dissidents and non-conformists can change the attitudes of the former group is a question to which I have no real answers. For those who do wish to resist, as I have said, do all of the things that the elites don’t want you to do. Use cash, form parallel communities, ditch the search engines that lie and track you, live off-line, shop local, ditch the big corporates, throw away the newspaper subscriptions, avoid tax, scrub social media. Elite control is worsening, so the task will only get harder. Bringing the dangers of elite control, even the existence of it, to the attention of the unawake will get harder over time, but also it will become more urgent. Some observers have argued that using rational counter-arguments is pointless, at least at the beginning of a process of educating others. Data comes later. First try emotive counter-arguments, exaggerate, get their attention, find personal examples of general phenomena. Tell people how many people YOU know who have had vaccine injuries, rather that quoting the latest study by (for example) Denis Rancourt or Steve Kirsch or Bret Weinstein, brilliant and necessary though their work is. In other words, there are two issues with resistance. There is your own resistance as an individual or family. Then there is influencing the broader debates and the behaviour of others.
14. You’ve written about the importance of community and the dangers of social atomization. In an age of increasing digital connectivity and globalization, how can individuals and communities maintain a sense of rootedness and belonging?
This question is linked to my answers to Questions 8 and 13. There is a crisis of meaninglessness in the West, a crisis of alienation, a crisis of addiction and a crisis of loneliness. The evidence for these trends is everywhere, and their relevance to the collapse of community is equally clear. Robert Putnam in his famous book, Bowling Alone, cottoned on to it, well before the advent of the Web 2.0 and social media arrived and took over so many lives. And way before Covid lockdowns crushed the whole notion of “community”. Other observers have picked up on aspects of the crises. Like Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt, Australia’s former Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, the late Roger Scruton, and the writers at Compact magazine. What is the evidence? Friendship has given way to fake friends online, half of marriages break up, children are lonely and suffer from depression and anxiety, suicides are increasing, JD Vance and others have highlighted the opioid crisis, huge numbers of people are medicated for mental health ailments, violence is increasing, identity hatreds now trump civilised debates and friendships across the aisle are far fewer. The sense of place is diminished, belonging now means belonging to victim groups rather than real communities, and globalization and mass migration are killing nationhood and patriotism. Working from home and online learning are destroying real work and real study, respectively. These are existential threats to the traditional order, an order thoroughly upended by the class of 68 and the post-modernist ideas they transmitted. Again, as in answers to Questions 8 and 13, the choice is retreat to the cave, live and operate in parallel societies, build real as opposed to online communities, speak out on the ills that befall us. Or simply go with the trends and watch our societies sink into the mire. One solution sometimes floated is localism, and this sums up much of the thinking of those who argue for “parallel societies”. There are many who do not see any of these things as problems to be addressed or even lamented. This, above all, is our biggest problem. And I don’t just speak of the enemies of freedom and community, but also of those who simply shrug their shoulders. Those who appeal for world peace normally say – start at home, be people of peace yourselves. This strikes one as pretty lame, but what else is there?
15. Finally, what projects or topics are you currently focused on, and how can interested readers stay informed about your work and engage with your ideas?
With the world as insane as it is, with democracies trashed, with individual rights removed, with government out of control, with traditional families and their values under constant siege, with world war a real possibility, and with education systems failing, the world of a political commentator is “target rich”. As a political scientist, I tend to focus on government failure and on the changing nature of ideology. Australian politics are always in view, with both major parties abandoning their roots and their base and an election coming in a year’s time. I write less on conservatism than I used to, less on climate change and less on US politics. The 2020 presidential election took away a lot of my interest in taking American politics seriously, the system is so flawed. Trump’s performance during Covid disillusioned me. Covid provided a rich vein of commentary, such was the sheer madness and evil on display as well as the abandonment of all pretence at following medical science and good practice. The absence of any apologies by anyone means that there is still work to be done in outing the Covid criminals. And the ramping up of post-Covid totalitarianism, seen in the war on cash, digital IDs and the institutionalisation of cancel culture, as merely three example deserves ongoing exposure and critique. The changing dynamics of ideologies and new, hybrid ideological forms are of increasing interest to me, especially the increasing convergence of social leftism (and globalism) with belief in the virtues of economic freedom on the one hand, and the emergence of social democrat/social conservatives on the other. The former has solidified into a distinct class, with progressive, green, pro-Covid-state, woke, globalist worldviews emerging across the political spectrum and solidifying. This is likely to be a history of ideas project. I am still interested in classical liberalism, from my Master of Arts thesis days in the 1980s. In that project, I examined the crossovers in libertarian thought exemplified by FA Hayek and Robert Nozick. Finally, because of my writing gig at Britain’s Conservative Woman (TCW), I have spent an increasing amount of time studying British politics.
It’s not been a good week for the Censorship Industrial Complex.
The machine has been built and put into action over nearly a decade but largely in secret. Its way of doing business has been via surreptitious contacts with media and tech companies, intelligence carve-outs in “fact-checking” organizations, payoffs, and various other clever strategies, all directed toward boosting some sources of information and suppressing others. The goal has always been to advance regime narratives and curate the public mind.
And yet, based on its operations and insofar as we can tell, it had every intention of remaining secret. This is for a reason. A systematic effort by government to bully private sector companies into a particular narrative while suppressing dissent contradicts American law and tradition. It also violates human rights as understood since the Enlightenment. It was a consensus, until very recently, that free speech was essential to the functioning of the good society.
Four years ago, many of us suspected censorship was going on, that the throttling and banning was not merely a mistake or the result of zealous employees stepping out of line. Three years ago, the proof started to arrive. Two years ago, it became a flood. With the Twitter files from a year ago, we had all the proof we needed that the censorship was systematic, directed, and highly effective. But even then, we only knew a fraction of it.
Thanks to discovery from court cases, FOIA requests, whistleblowers, Congressional inquiries thanks to the very narrow Republican control, and some industrial upheavals such as what happened at Twitter, we are overwhelmed with tens of thousands of pages all pointing to the same reality.
The censors developed a belief at the highest levels of control in government that it was their job to govern what information the American people would and would not see, regardless of the truth. The actions became truly tribal: our side favors banning gatherings, closing schools, says the Hunter Biden laptop is a fake, favors masking, mass vaccination, and mail-in voting, and denies the import of voter fraud and vaccine injury, whereas their side takes the opposite approach.
It was a war over information, undertaken in total disregard for the First Amendment, as if it doesn’t even exist. Moreover, the operation was not only political. It clearly involved intelligence agencies that were already hip deep in the “all-of-society” pandemic response.
“All of Society” means all, including the information you receive and are allowed to distribute.
A vast swath of unelected bureaucrats took it upon themselves to manage all knowledge flows in the age of the Internet, with the ambition to turn the main source of news and sharing into a giant American version of Pravda. All of this occurred right under our noses – and is still going on today.
Indeed, censorship is a full-on industry now, with hundreds and thousands of cut-outs, universities, media companies, government agencies, and even young people in school studying to be disinformation specialists, and bragging about it on social media. We are just one step away from a New York Times article – as follow-ups to their recent praise of the Deep State and also government surveillance – with a headline like “The Good Society Needs Censors.”
Incredibly, the censorship is so pervasive now that it is not even reported. All these revelations should have been front page news. But so captured is the news media today that there are very few outlets that even bother to report the fullness of the problem.
Not receiving nearly enough attention is the new report from the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government of the US House of Representatives.
Running nearly 1,000 pages including documentation (however many pages are purposely blank), we have here an overwhelming amount of evidence of a systematic, aggressive, and deeply entrenched effort on the part of the federal government, including the Biden White House and many agencies including the World Health Organization, to tear out the guts of the Internet and social media culture and replace them with propaganda.
Among the well-documented facts are that the White House directly intervened in Amazon’s own marketing methods to deprecate books that raised doubts about the Covid vaccine and all vaccines. Amazon responded reluctantly but did what it could to satisfy the censors. All these companies – Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon – became acquiescent to Biden administration priorities, even to the point of running algorithmic changes by the White House before implementation.
When YouTube announced that it would take down any content that contradicted the World Health Organization, it was because the White House instructed them to do so.
As for Amazon, which is like every publisher in wanting full freedom to distribute, they faced intense pressure from government.
These are just a few of thousands of pieces of evidence of routine interference from government against social media companies, either directly or through various government-funded cut-outs, all designed to enforce a certain way of thinking on the American public.
What’s amazing is that this industry was allowed to metastasize to such an extent over 4-8 years or so, with no legal oversight and very little knowledge on the part of the public. It’s as if there is no such thing as the First Amendment. It’s a dead letter. Even now, the Supreme Court seems confused, based on our reading of the oral arguments over this whole case (Murthy v. Missouri).
One gets the sense when reading through all this correspondence that the companies were more than a bit rattled by the pressure. They must have wondered a few things: 1) is this normal? 2) do we really have to go along? 3) what happens to us if we just say no?
Probably every corner grocery store in any neighborhood run by a crime syndicate in history has asked these questions. The best answer is to do what you can in order to make them go away. This is precisely what they did time after time. After a while, the protocol probably begins to feel normal and no one asks anymore the basic questions: is this right? Is this freedom? Is this legal? Is this just the way things go in the US?
No matter how many high officials were involved, how many in the C-suites of big companies participated, however many editors and technicians of the best credentials played along, there can be no question that what took place was an absolute violation of speech rights that very likely exceeds anything we’ve seen in US history.
Keep in mind that we only know what we know, and that is severely truncated by the force of the machinery. We can safely assume that the truth actually is far worse than we know. And further consider that this censorship is keeping us from knowing the full story about the suppression of dissidents, whether medical, scientific, political, or otherwise.
There might be millions in many professions who are suffering right now, in silence. Or think of the vaccine-injured or those who have lost loved ones who were forced to get the shot. There are no headlines. There are no investigations. There is almost no public attention at all. Most of the venues that we once thought would police such outrages have been compromised.
To top it off, the censors are still not backing down. If you sense a lessening of the grip for now, there is every reason to believe it is temporary. This industry wants the entire Internet as we once conceived of it completely shut down. That’s the goal.
At this point, the best means of defeating this plan is widespread public outrage. That is made more difficult because the censorship itself is being censored.
This is why this report from the US House of Representatives needs to be widely shared so long as doing so is possible. It could be that such reports in the future will themselves be censored. It could also be the last such report you will ever see before the curtain falls on freedom completely.
I was listening to a close friend recently talk about his regular visits to his Dermatologist to remove basal cell carcinomas, it was in connection to the stench of the burning skin.
I’d just read AMD’s long essay on the subject. At some point I’ll have to tell him about the Dermatology racket.
In a recent conversation with a different friend, I found myself explaining “meta ideas” that multiple industries rely on to make their living.
I explained it as a wall that is required to push against. Without that wall, you cannot generate enough force to go in your desired direction.
One of the biggest meta ideas within Cartel Medicine is Cancer, the big C.
Cancer and Virus have been competing for the top spot of Meta Ideas, with Virus I think now winning in that race, but for most of the last 50-70 years Cancer has been the biggest Meta Idea and the source of most fear and the source of most industrial profit for a wide variety of Interdependent Cartels.
This stack is about the Dermatology Cartel, that has relied on the Cancer “wall” and the demonization of the Sun; to generate all the force and energy it needs progress towards its profit goals.
I have created a list of Q&As relying on the wonderful and important work of AMD, Yoho and Mercola. Without these guys doing the heavy lifting on these subjects it would be impossible for people like me to come along and synthesize this material.
But before we look at the Q&As, here are 15 of the most material statistics from the three texts.
Statistics
Chemotherapy added only 2.1% to the 5-year survival for US adults treated for cancer, according to a literature search by Drs. Graeme Morgan and colleagues published in Clinical Oncology in 2004.
By 2013, 65 to 70 percent of oncologists’ income was drug charges.
New chemotherapy medications can be 300 times (not 300 percent) more expensive than old ones.
Twenty percent of all Mohs surgeries are performed on people over 85 years old, many in the last year or weeks of life.
Only 22% of melanomas occur in regions of the body with significant sunlight exposure, compared to 87% of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cases and 82.5% of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) cases.
Outdoor workers have a lower incidence of melanoma and half the risk compared to indoor workers, despite receiving 3-10 times the annual UV dose.
A 1997 meta-analysis found workers with significant occupational sunlight exposure were 14% less likely to get melanoma.
A 1982 study found fluorescent light exposure at work increased women’s risk of developing malignant melanoma by 2.1 times, with risk increasing based on exposure duration and intensity.
In a survey of 115 dermatopathologists, 68% believed overdiagnosis was a public health issue for atypical nevi, 47% for melanoma in situ, and 35% for invasive melanoma.
Dermatologists freeze millions of actinic keratoses (AKs) with liquid nitrogen, but studies show over half of AKs disappear on their own, with only 1% changing to skin cancer after a year and 4% after four years.
The ideal blood level of vitamin D for disease prevention is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL, while 40 ng/mL is considered the low end of sufficiency, and 30 ng/mL is the minimum to prevent disease.
In 2014, the average annual treatment cost for skin cancer was $8.1 billion for 4.9 million adults, a 44% increase in people diagnosed and a 125% increase in cost compared to 2002-2006.
Curaderm, a topical cream containing eggplant extract, has a success rate of 66-78% in treating basal cell carcinoma.
Valisure tested 294 sunscreen products and found 27% contained benzene, a known carcinogen, at levels at least three times higher than the FDA allows under special circumstances.
The 2019 and 2020 JAMA studies found that certain sunscreen ingredients (avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, homosalate, octisalate, and octinoxate) may build up in the body at unhealthy levels after just one day of use and can persist in the body.
Questions and Answers
Question 1: What did the American Academy of Dermatology do in the 1980s to raise public awareness about skin cancer?
Answer: In the early 1980s, the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) hired a prominent New York advertising agency for over 2 million dollars to raise the public’s appreciation of dermatology. The agency recommended “educating” the public that dermatologists are skin cancer experts, not just pimple poppers, and established free National Skin Cancer Screening Day.
Skin cancers are by far the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States, so to prevent them, the public is constantly told to avoid the sun. However, while the relatively benign skin cancers are caused by sun exposure, the ones responsible for most skin cancer deaths are due to a lack of sunlight. – AMD
Question 2: What are actinic keratoses (AKs), and how do dermatologists typically treat them?
Answer: Actinic keratoses (AKs) are skin bumps that dermatologists call precancerous. Many seniors have dozens, if not hundreds of these. Dermatologists treat millions of AKs with liquid nitrogen devices resembling tiny blow-torches, billing Medicare for each treatment.
Question 3: What percentage of actinic keratoses (AKs) disappear on their own, and what proportion develop into skin cancer?
Answer: Studies show that over half of all actinic keratoses (AKs) disappear on their own. Only one percent change to skin cancer after a year, and four percent after four years. These skin cancers are virtually all slow-growing and easily treatable.
Question 4: What is Mohs surgery, and how does it differ from older methods of treating skin cancer?
Answer: Mohs surgery is a procedure where dermatologists remove skin cancer layer by layer, examining each layer under a microscope until all diseased tissue is removed. Patients may spend a full day in an operating room, and dermatologists bill for each cut, slide preparation, and microscopic examination. Older methods involved scratching, burning, or cutting away skin cancers and following up for recurrence.
Question 5: According to Robert Stern, a Harvard dermatologist, what factors influence the decision to utilize Mohs surgery?
Answer: According to Robert Stern, a Harvard dermatologist, “The decision to utilize [Mohs] is likely to reflect the economic advantage to the provider rather than a substantial clinical advantage for the patient.” He reported wide variations in usage by practice and region.
Question 6: What percentage of Mohs surgeries are performed on people over 85 years old, and under what circumstances?
Answer: Twenty percent of all Mohs surgeries are performed on people over 85 years old. Many are performed in the last year of life, and even in the last weeks before death. Demented people in nursing homes get frozen, biopsied, and operated on.
Question 7: How do dermatologists typically handle cases of melanoma, the only skin cancer that routinely metastasizes and kills people?
Answer: Dermatologists almost universally refer melanoma cases to plastic surgeons for removal and then to oncologists for chemotherapy. Few skin doctors want to get involved with a fatal disease.
Question 8: What pattern is observed when comparing melanoma diagnosis rates and mortality rates?
Answer: While melanoma diagnosis rates have increased dramatically, the total deaths from melanoma have not increased. The disease-specific mortality for melanoma has remained unchanged despite the extra procedures performed to treat them.
Question 9: What did the survey of 115 dermatopathologists reveal about their beliefs regarding the overdiagnosis of various skin conditions?
Answer: The survey of 115 dermatopathologists showed that 68% believed overdiagnosis was a public health issue for atypical nevi, 47% thought melanoma in situ was overdiagnosed, and 35% thought invasive melanoma was overdiagnosed.
Question 10: What did lead researcher Kathleen Kerr say about the disparity between increasing melanoma diagnoses and stable death rates?
Answer: Lead researcher Kathleen Kerr said, “Melanoma diagnoses have been rising in the U.S. If there were truly an epidemic of melanoma, we would expect deaths from melanoma to show a corresponding rise, since there hasn’t been a major breakthrough in treatment during this time. Yet melanoma deaths have been remarkably constant. This suggests that the rise in melanoma diagnoses is largely due to overdiagnosis.”
Question 11: What are the three primary risk factors for basal cell carcinoma (BCC)?
Answer: The three primary risk factors for basal cell carcinoma (BCC) are excessive sun exposure, fair skin (which makes you more susceptible to excessive sunlight penetrating your skin), and a family history of skin cancer.
Question 12: What percentage of basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) recur after removal, and what is the typical fatality rate?
Answer: The recurrence rate for basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) after removal ranges from 65% to 95%, depending on the source. Most sources say BCC has a 0% fatality rate.
Question 13: How does the metastasis and survival rate of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) compare to that of basal cell carcinoma (BCC)?
Answer: Unlike basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) can metastasize. If SCC is removed prior to metastasizing, it has a 99% survival rate, but if removed after metastasis, the survival rate drops to 56%. The average survival rate for SCC is around 95%.
Question 14: What percentage of melanomas occur in regions of the body with significant sun exposure, compared to squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC)?
Answer: Only 22% of melanomas occur in regions of the body with significant sunlight exposure, such as the face. In contrast, 87% of all SCC cases and 82.5% of BCC cases occur in these regions.
Question 15: How does the incidence of melanoma in outdoor workers compare to that of indoor workers, despite higher UV exposure?
Answer: Outdoor workers get 3-10 times the annual UV dose that indoor workers get, yet they have lower incidences of cutaneous malignant melanoma and an odds ratio (risk) that is half that of their indoor colleagues.
Question 16: What did a 1997 meta-analysis reveal about the risk of melanoma in workers with significant occupational sunlight exposure?
Answer: A 1997 meta-analysis of the available literature found workers with significant occupational sunlight exposure were 14% less likely to get melanoma.
Note: the success of sunbathing was the original inspiration for ultraviolet blood irradiation.
Question 17: How does sunscreen use affect the rates of malignant melanoma, according to existing research?
Answer: Existing research has found using sunscreen either has no effect on the rates of malignant melanoma or increases it.
Question 18: What did a 1982 study find regarding the relationship between fluorescent light exposure at work and the risk of developing malignant melanoma in women?
Answer: A 1982 study of 274 women found that fluorescent light exposure at work caused a 2.1 times increase in their risk of developing malignant melanoma, with this risk increasing with more fluorescent light exposure, either due to the exposure at their job (1.8X with moderate exposure jobs, 2.6X with high exposure jobs) or the time spent working at it (i.e., 2.4X more likely for 1-9 years of work, 2.8X for 10-19 years, and 4.1X for over 20 years).
Question 19: What did the 1987 study comparing fatty acids in the tissue of melanoma patients and healthy controls find?
Answer: The 1987 study, which analyzed samples of fat tissue from 100 melanoma patients and 100 people without melanoma, found an increase in linoleic acid in the tissue of all subjects. However, the percentage of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) was significantly higher in the melanoma patients’ tissue. The researchers suggested that increased consumption of dietary polyunsaturates may have a contributory effect in the etiology of melanoma.
Question 20: What type of fatty acid is linoleic acid, and in what foods is it commonly found?
Answer: Linoleic acid is the primary fat found in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, including vegetable/seed oils, and accounts for about 80% of the fat composition of vegetable oils. It is found in virtually every processed food, including restaurant foods, sauces, salad dressings, and “healthy” foods like chicken, pork, and some olive oil.
Question 21: What percentage of sunscreen products tested by Valisure were found to contain benzene, and what is benzene?
Answer: Valisure tested 294 sunscreen products and found that 27% contained benzene, a known human carcinogen, at levels at least three times higher than the FDA allows under special circumstances.
Question 22: What sunscreen ingredient, found in 70% of products, is known to be an endocrine disruptor?
Answer: Oxybenzone, found in an estimated 70% of sunscreens, is a known endocrine disruptor linked to reduced sperm count in men and endometriosis in women.
Question 23: According to a Danish study, how many sunscreen chemicals allowed in the US may reduce male fertility?
Answer: According to a Danish study, 8 out of 29 sunscreen chemicals allowed in the US and/or European Union can reduce male fertility by affecting calcium signaling in the sperm, in part by exerting a progesterone-like effect.
Question 24: What did the 2019 and 2020 JAMA studies find regarding the absorption and persistence of certain sunscreen ingredients in the body?
Answer: The 2019 and 2020 JAMA studies found that certain sunscreen ingredients (avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, homosalate, octisalate, and octinoxate) may build up in the body at unhealthy levels. The ingredients were absorbed after only one day’s exposure, and some persisted in the body after use.
Question 25: What blood level of vitamin D is considered ideal for disease prevention, according to the research cited?
Answer: According to the research cited, the ideal blood level of vitamin D for disease prevention is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL, while 40 ng/mL is considered the low end of sufficiency, and 30 ng/mL is the minimum to prevent disease.
Question 26: What signs and symptoms may indicate that a person has low vitamin D levels?
Answer: Signs and symptoms that may indicate low vitamin D levels include ongoing musculoskeletal pain and achy bones, frequent infections or illnesses, neurological symptoms (such as depression, cognitive impairment, and migraines), and fatigue and daytime sleepiness.
Question 27: How does the antioxidant astaxanthin function as an “internal sunscreen”?
Answer: Astaxanthin is a potent antioxidant that acts as an internal sunscreen by protecting against UV radiation exposure and gene expression changes that lead to skin photoaging, such as sagging and wrinkles. It has strong free radical scavenging activity that protects against oxidative damage.
Question 28: What other nutrients are mentioned that may provide photoprotection for the skin?
Answer: Other nutrients mentioned that may provide photoprotection for the skin include lycopene, beta-carotene, vitamin D, and vitamin E.
Question 29: What does Dr. David Elpern believe led to the overdiagnosis of melanoma and an increase in expensive, low-value procedures for skin cancer and actinic keratosis?
Answer: Dr. David Elpern believes that the American Academy of Dermatology’s (AAD) campaign in the 1980s to educate the public about dermatologists being skin cancer experts led to inflated health anxiety about skin cancer, resulting in the overdiagnosis of melanoma and an increase in expensive, low-value procedures for skin cancer and actinic keratosis.
Question 30: What role did dermatopathologists’ perception of overdiagnosis play in their diagnostic behavior when examining skin biopsy cases?
Answer: The study found no statistically significant associations between dermatopathologists’ perceptions about overdiagnosis and their interpretive behavior when diagnosing skin biopsy cases. Dermatopathologists who believed invasive melanoma was overdiagnosed were slightly more likely to diagnose invasive melanoma compared to other dermatopathologists examining identical cases.
Question 31: What are the consequences of overdiagnosing melanoma for patients?
Answer: Overdiagnosing melanoma can have significant consequences for patients on both an emotional and financial level.
Question 32: What factors make reducing overdiagnosis of skin cancer challenging, according to lead researcher Kathleen Kerr?
Answer: According to lead researcher Kathleen Kerr, reducing overdiagnosis of skin cancer will be challenging as it requires cooperation between patients, primary care physicians, and pathologists.
Question 33: What did the studies from 1991, 2008, 2002, and 2011 demonstrate about the effectiveness of a topical cream containing a nightshade extract (solasodine glycosides) in treating various types of skin cancer?
Answer: The studies from 1991, 2008, 2002, and 2011 demonstrated the effectiveness of a topical cream containing a nightshade extract (solasodine glycosides) in treating various types of skin cancer, including actinic keratosis, basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). The 1991 trial showed complete regression of lesions with no adverse effects, the 2008 trial found a 66% success rate for treating BCC, the 2002 English trial showed a 78% success rate for treating BCC with a short duration of treatment, and the 2011 case report showed good cosmetic outcomes for large BCC and SCC lesions.
Question 34: What is the current state of natural and alternative treatments for skin cancer, such as Curaderm, and why are they not more widely known and utilized despite their reported success rates?
Answer: There are several natural and alternative treatments for skin cancer that have been scientifically studied and have shown promising results. One such treatment is Curaderm, a topical cream containing solasodine glycosides, which are derived from eggplant extract. Studies have demonstrated that Curaderm has a success rate of 66-78% in treating basal cell carcinoma (BCC), the most common type of skin cancer.
In addition to Curaderm, other natural and alternative treatments that have undergone scientific study include topical creams containing vitamin B3 (niacinamide) and vitamin A (retinoids). While these treatments have shown potential, more research is needed to fully establish their effectiveness and safety.
Despite the reported success rates of these alternative therapies, they are not widely known or utilized in the mainstream treatment of skin cancer. This lack of awareness and adoption can be attributed to several factors, one of which is the potential threat they pose to the lucrative business model of the dermatology profession.
Healthy Sunbathing (by AMD)
One of the major mistakes Americans frequently make is the belief that if something is good for you, more of it is better. This very much holds true for sun exposure, as (assuming you are caucasian) once your skin starts turning pink, you lose the ability to utilize the sunlight you are being exposed to (e.g., you stop producing vitamin D), and in time also begin to burn (which can damage the skin). For this reason, many advise stopping sunbathing once your skin starts to turn pink and making sure to have regular small bursts of sunlight rather than intermittent large ones.
Note: doing this often completely eliminates the need for vitamin D and is one of the things that I’ve repeatedly seen greatly helps with longevity.
Additionally, there is a “good” type of ultraviolet light (UVB) and a bad type (UVA), and depending upon the time of day, different types are in prominence. For this reason, the absolute best time to be outside is between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., which interestingly is the time Chinese Medicine recognizes that the energy of the heart peaks (an organ I believe is particularly sensitive to the energy of sunlight).
Conversely, most windows block UVB (but not UVA) so it’s actually not a good idea to get your direct light exposure through the window.
Note: specialized materials exist which don’t do this (e.g., quartz glass), but they are a bit expensive and hard to find.
Finally, something many do not appreciate about sunscreens is that two forms of them exist—ones that work by having chemicals which absorb UV light (and decrease it) and ones that simply block and reflect it. The chemicals that absorb UV light are often quite toxic, and a case can be made they are actually responsible for some of the increase in skin cancer that has been observed. With the reflecting ones, either titanium oxide or zinc oxide are typically used. Zinc oxide is the better option (people don’t react to it, and it can sometimes help heal the skin), so when selecting a sunscreen, the main thing to look for is one that uses zinc oxide and doesn’t have any questionable chemicals in it.
Note: there are now beginning to be pushes to stop the use of more toxic sunscreens in areas with abundant aquatic life because they poison the reefs. This raises the point that if a small amount of sunscreen diluted in the water is too toxic for an ecosystem to handle, why would you want to put it on your skin where it can directly absorb into the body at its full concentration?
Irish comedian and storyteller, Aidan Killian travelled around Ireland during ‘lockdown’ and this shows another side of the story about how many lived, connected, and gathered during these dark times.
United Nations experts say they are “appalled” that Israeli military forces continue to sexually assault Palestinian women in the Gaza Strip.
In a joint statement on Monday, UN Special Rapporteurs “expressed profound dismay at the reported targeting of Palestinian women by Israeli forces.”
They underscored “continued reports of sexual assault and violence against women and girls, including against those detained by Israeli occupation forces.”
“We are appalled that women are being targeted by Israel with such vicious, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, seemingly sparing no means to destroy their lives and deny them their fundamental human rights.”
A UN report in March said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual violence, including rape, was committed in multiple locations across the besieged Palestinian territory.
The Special Rapporteurs had earlier warned the regime that these inhumane acts could “amount to serious crimes under international criminal law that could be prosecuted under the Rome Statute.”
UN experts also said the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, exacerbated by widespread destruction of housing and infrastructure, disproportionately affects women and girls.
They cited the challenges faced by pregnant and lactating women, including Israel’s direct bombardment of Gaza hospitals and denial of access to healthcare facilities, that has led to a surge in miscarriages and infant mortality.
The Special Rapporteurs are independent experts – part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council – whose mandate is to follow and report on the human rights situation of a specific country or thematic issues in all parts of the world.
Israel has killed more than 34,600 people, 70% of whom women and children, in Gaza since early October, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Police in the Turkish city of Adana detained 11 suspects, five Israeli and two Syrian, on allegations of organ trafficking, the Daily Sabahreported on 5 May.
The Provincial Directorate of Security’s Anti-Smuggling and Border Gates Branch began investigating after examining the passports of seven individuals who arrived in Adana from Israel about a month ago by plane for the purpose of health tourism. The two Syrian nationals, ages 20 and 21, were found to have fake passports.
Further investigation revealed that Syrian nationals had each agreed to sell one of their own kidneys to two of the Israeli nationals, ages 68 and 28, for kidney transplants in Adana.
During searches at the suspects’ residences, $65,000 and numerous fake passports were seized.
Israel has long been at the center of what Bloombergdescribed in 2011 as a “sprawling global black market in organs where brokers use deception, violence, and coercion to buy kidneys from impoverished people, mainly in underdeveloped countries, and then sell them to critically ill patients in more-affluent nations.”
The financial newspaper added, “Many of the black-market kidneys harvested by these gangs are destined for people who live in Israel.”
The organ-trafficking network extends from former Soviet Republics such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova to Brazil, the Philippines, South Africa, and beyond, the Bloomberg investigation showed.
Accusations of Israeli involvement in organ trafficking also apply to the occupied Palestinian territories.
In 2009, Sweden’s largest daily newspaper, Aftonbladet, reported testimony that the Israeli army was kidnapping and murdering Palestinians to harvest their organs.
The report quotes Palestinian claims that young men from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israeli army, and their bodies returned to the families with missing organs.
“‘Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,’ relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied,” wrote Donald Bostrom, the author of the report.
Bostrom also cites an incident of alleged organ theft during the the first Palestinian intifada in 1992. He says that the Israeli army abducted a young man known for throwing stones at Israeli troops in the Nablus area. The young man was shot in the chest, both legs, and the stomach before being taken to a military helicopter, which transported him to an unknown location.
Five nights later, Bostrom said, the young man’s body was returned, wrapped in green hospital sheets.
Israel’s Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir Forensic Medicine Institute harvested skin, corneas, heart valves, and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians, and foreign workers without permission from relatives.
The Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place, but claimed, “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer.”
Israel’s assault on Gaza since 7 October has provided further opportunities for the theft and harvesting of Palestinians’ organs.
On 30 January, WAFA news agency reported that the Israeli army returned the bodies of 100 Palestinian civilians it had stolen from hospitals and cemeteries in various areas in Gaza.
According to medical sources, inspection of some of the bodies showed that organs were missing from some of them.
On 18 January, the Times of Israel reported that the Israeli army confirmed reports that its soldiers dug up graves in a Gaza cemetery, claiming its soldiers were trying to “confirm that the bodies of hostages were not buried there.”
The Sharon Tate murders were as bizarre as they were bloody, and the story behind the story is even stranger.
Journalist Tom O’Neill spent 20 years researching, interviewing and digging in his effort to get to the bottom of it. His book, CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties, co-authored by Dan Piepenbring, is an account of O’Neill’s personal odyssey as well as a presentation of his findings which unfold, page after page, in tragedy, weirdness and irony.
Charles Manson’s hit-team killed ten people, perhaps more. That was in California, back in the summer of 1969, while the U.S. Armed Forces were busily slaughtering millions of Asians in Vietnam. And in opposition to that war, hundreds of thousands of Americans marched in mass protests—the anti-war movement.
Even GIs and military veterans were speaking out against the war. The counterculture movement was in full bloom, having started for at least since “the summer of love” two years earlier. Woodstock, an historic occasion which drew 400,000 people to a music event in Upstate New York, also took place the year of the Manson murders in that same month of August.
War, anti-war, and counterculture—it was all going on when Charles Manson and his “family” suddenly stole the show and took center stage with that series of infamous killings. First there was the Gary Hinman murder, then the Sharon Tate killings, followed by the LaBianca murders. Two more victims about whom we do not often hear were Donald Shea, a caretaker at the Spahn Ranch, and Filippo Tenerelli, who was found dead in a Bishop, California, motel.
The FBI’s COINTELPRO and the CIA’s CHAOS programs were also in play—part of intelligence’s covert war on dissent. Several shadowy characters, apparently CIA operatives, turn up in this story and appear to have crossed paths with Charles Manson. Among them was Dr. Louis Jolyon West of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA mind-control project. Another was Reeve Whitson who somehow knew of the Tate killings 90 minutes before anyone else did, and reported it in a phone call to Tate’s photographer. O’Neill devotes a chapter to each of them.
Thirty years had passed since the killings when O’Neill began work on his project in 1999. Several of the key players had already died, but Charles Manson was still in prison, and memories of the killings remained painfully alive. The topic was initially assigned to O’Neill as a magazine article, and the editor gave him three months to complete it.
However, as he launched into it, interviewing dozens—eventually hundreds—of cops, DA lawyers, clerks, Hollywood personalities, drug dealers and others, he found there was far more to the story than he had ever imagined.
He missed his deadline, then his next deadline, and the one after that. The project became his obsession, and the digging and research continued on through 20 long years of plowing through troves of documents: court records, old newspaper files, FOIA requests, and interviews. Research can be frustrating, and clearly it was. “Behind every solid lead, quotable interview, and bombshell document, I put in weeks of scut work that led to dozens of dead ends,” O’Neill tells us. His book finally came out in 2019.
Told in the first person, the book is a gripping detective story that I could not put down—actually an audio that I could not turn off. It is well written, and the audio by Kevin Stillwell is well read. My partner wanted to know what I kept listening to all the time. So I took off my headset and played it out into the room. She caught the bug and we listened to it together day after day, smitten by Tom O’Neill’s obsession.
At Charles Manson’s orders, people were murdered. This is a “mystery” where we know the “who-done-it” part of the story, but we are left to wonder and speculate about almost everything else—motives, the roles of intel and law enforcement, facts that were covered up, and who or what else might have been operating behind the scenes.
Crime novels typically end with the pieces all falling into place to form a coherent picture. Not so in most real-life crime mysteries, O’Neill cautions us. Some pieces are missing; others do not seem to belong, but they are there nonetheless, often in some grotesquely misshapen form.
A good many pieces are left over; they may seem important, but we do not know what to make of them. In this book, the author takes us into a world where cops, judges, prosecutors, witnesses and others do not function in ways that seem rational or above board.
Among the strange pieces in this picture puzzle is something O’Neill calls “Charlie Manson’s get-out-of-jail-free card.”
After having spent much of his life in various prisons, in 1967 Charles Manson was finally out on “federal parole for grand theft auto.” Being on probation is almost like living on the doorstep of a jailhouse.
A parolee can get thrown back in prison for the slightest mis-step. However, Charles Manson went around committing one offense after another—stealing cars, credit cards and firearms, sex with underage women, drugs, etc. Whatever a parolee was not allowed to do, Charles Manson did. He even flouted it. He was caught repeatedly, but none of his numerous violations landed him in jail for more than a few days at a time.
“We were told not to bother those people,” former Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff Preston Guillory told O’Neill. It was a policy handed down from on high, Guillory said: “Make no arrests, take no police action toward Manson or his followers.”
Cops who had clues, evidence or solid proof of Manson’s violations were pulled back from their investigations. On the occasions when Manson was arrested, judges would let him go. His probation officer, Roger Smith, wrote glowing letters about Manson’s supposedly wonderful progress.
Normally, a probation officer would supervise 20 to 100 parolees; but Roger Smith was supervising only one person—Charles Manson. It was with the encouragement of Probation Officer Roger Smith that Manson spent a year in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, at the time a Mecca of the hippie counterculture.
There Charlie acquired his “family” of followers, and morphed into the Charles Manson known to history and legend—the charismatic guru and apocalyptic cult leader, acid-dropping mystic, guitarist and songwriter, con artist, car thief and general predator, manipulator and abuser, and evangelist who expatiated on the Book of Revelation.
Manson was well-connected with Hollywood celebrities and music personalities: Doris Day’s son, music producer Terry Melcher, the Beach Boys, and many more, though most did not wish to have it known that they had been associated with him. Even after 30 years had passed, many refused to be interviewed by Tom O’Neill. The refusers’ list reads like a who’s who of Hollywood stardom. Cops and prosecutors were more inclined to talk, and some of them opened the author’s way to troves of documents and records.
Reading the accounts of these interactions, I sense that O’Neill must be something of a Will Rogers-type person who rarely met a person he did not like. And people in turn seemed to like him. Even officials who worked hard to cover things up seemed to warm up to him. Several, of course, including legendary prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, eventually screamed at him and threatened to sue for millions of dollars.
Bugliosi was the attorney who had prosecuted Manson and afterwards wrote the best-selling Helter Skelter. In the courtroom and later in his book, Bugliosi presented Manson’s murder rampage as a scheme to blame the Black Panthers and thus spark a race war between blacks and whites. That became the official narrative, though it was doubted by people who had researched the case. Tom O’Neill devoted a chapter to reviewing “Holes in Helter Skelter”; he exposes Bugliosi’s handling of the case and does the coup de grâce on that theory.
Vince Bugliosi surrounded by reporters when he was prosecuting the Manson case in 1971. Source: nytimes.com
However, by the time O’Neill’s book came out, Bugliosi had passed on, and thus far his ghost has not risen up to carry out the threatened lawsuit. Another person who had threatened to sue O’Neill was music producer Terry Melcher, also dead by the time the book came out. There can be upsides to being a slow writer, taking a long time to do research.
“I’d spoken to duplicitous celebrities, seedy drug dealers, bumbling cops, and spurious prosecutors. I’d been threatened and cajoled and warned off my investigation. But I didn’t have a smoking gun. There were only mountains of circumstantial evidence,” O’Neill tells us.
So he kept going, finding more pieces of the picture. And it reads like the script of a film noir.
Throughout the drama, Charles Manson was being closely monitored by law enforcement agencies and intel. And yet, even while they were watching him, he sent his acolytes out on those brutal killing sprees of August 1969. Incredibly enough, despite the surveillance, it took law enforcement four long months to eventually arrest him and his hit team. During those extra months of free rein, Manson killed Shea and Tenerelli and perhaps more.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detectives had almost immediately found clues leading to Charles Manson; many Hollywood people also suspected him. So why did it take law enforcement so long to catch him? It appears that the “hands off Manson policy” was still in effect.
Actually, Manson was not the only person in this story who seemed to be immune to prosecution; similar immunity appears to have been granted to two or three Hollywood drug dealers who turn up in the story. That seems to be a fairly common practice in law enforcement.
“A lot of times we arrest people and the DA would say, ‘We can’t keep this person in custody, he’s too valuable, we want him on the streets,’” former Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Guillory told O’Neill. “My suspicion is that Manson was left alone for a while for some reason.”
Former head deputy DA of Van Nuys, Lewis Watnick, gave a similar opinion. “Sometimes this is explained by just pure incompetence,” he said. “But this is not that. It dovetails right in. Manson was an informant.” Of course, that was just his guess, Watnick conceded, but it was an educated one, based on his 30 years of experience. “They’d been watching this guy for something large.”
Looking at the tolerance that authorities had for Manson’s lawbreaking, his relationship with probation officer Roger Smith, and more, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that somebody up there had a major investment in Mr. Charles Manson. They must have wanted him to do something. But what?
Along with his findings, O’Neill shares his uncertainties. “My work had left me, at various points, broke, depressed, and terrified that I was becoming one of ‘those people’: an obsessive, a conspiracy theorist… I don’t consider myself credulous, but I’d discovered things I thought impossible about the Manson murders and California in the sixties.” Further on, he tells us, “I thought most of all about the possibility that Manson, of all people, had some type of protection from law enforcement… It boggled the mind even to speculate that someone like Manson could be plugged into something bigger, and presumably even darker, than he was.”
Something darker than Charles Manson? Our leaders, and the establishment they work for, have a lot of closely guarded secrets—secrets that occasionally make their way out by way of researchers, whistleblowers, hackers, and even congressional hearings.
For background on the political environment of the late 1960s, O’Neill reviews the establishment’s war against the anti-war movement. That includes cases of people who were murdered as a result of FBI and CIA activities and manipulations here in the U.S. He ties this brutality to U.S. actions overseas.
O’Neill looks at the CIA’s Phoenix Program in Vietnam, a kill-capture campaign, which resulted in the death of thousands of Vietnamese civilians. He quotes from a Special Forces soldier, Anthony Herbert, about his time in the Phoenix Program: “They wanted me to take charge of execution teams that wiped out entire families and tried to make it appear as though the Viet Cong had done it themselves. The rationale was that the Viet Cong would see that other Viet Cong had killed their own and… make allegiance with us. The good guys.”
A mission shared by the FBI’s COINTELPRO and the CIA’s CHAOS was to disrupt and discredit the anti-war movement, and that, O’Neill points out, was one effect of the Manson murders. Of course, Charles Manson was not an anti-war activist; it is doubtful that he ever attended an anti-war rally. He was a product of the prison system who somehow found his way into the fringes of the counterculture movement, and there was a lot of overlap between the anti-war and counterculture movements. Many hippies were anti-war, and many activists smoked grass and grew their hair long.
Scene from the 1967 Summer of Love that Manson and the CIA/FBI were out to destroy. Source: allthatsinteresting.com
The corporate media, then as now, was the voice of the establishment elite, and dutifully presented the murderous Manson and his “family” to the world as poster children of the “hippie movement.” A lot of people bought that framing. Even people who self-identified as countercultural were saying, “Manson ended the Summer of Love!”—a message the corporate media pushed.
Although the killings were billed as the “crime of the century” and have received massive newspaper coverage ever since, few articles went beyond the sensational aspects and asked truly penetrating questions. When (in 1971) whistleblower LA Sheriff’s Detective Guillory went public with what he knew about Manson’s get-out-of-jail-free card, the media showed little interest. Nor did many journalists work out a related source and connection between these killings and a society waging a brutal and unjust war.
We assume that our leaders in Washington care about the lives of ordinary people. Our experience with them shows otherwise.
We remember Vietnam. There have been several murderous wars since then, and now Gaza. As I write this, our president and our Congress are in the sixth month of funding, arming and giving diplomatic support to apartheid Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
Our leaders are not averse to promoting mass murder. We have the immortal words of former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright: When asked in 1996 about U.S. sanctions causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, she replied, “We think the price is worth it.”
The powers that be are a bloodthirsty lot when it serves their interests, every bit as murderous as Charles Manson himself. But who might have been the local- or regional-level functionaries authorizing immunity for such criminals?
O’Neill tells us about several high-placed California officials. One was Evelle Younger, then Los Angeles DA. Younger was a former FBI agent who, during World War II, was with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, and also oversaw the prosecution of Sirhan Sirhan; he went on to be California Attorney General from 1971 to 1979.
Another was California Governor Ronald Reagan’s chairman of the “Task Force on Riots and Disorders,” William W. Herrmann. Herrmann was a veteran of the CIA’s Phoenix Program; he had also been a lieutenant with the LAPD. However, O’Neill was not able to establish a definite connection between them and the on-the-ground operatives. We do get an idea of who they seem to have been.
In this book of strange dark characters, one of the stranger ones was Dr. Louis Jolyon West, known to his friends as “Jolly” West. He was a pioneering scientist of the CIA’s mind-control project—MK-ULTRA. In 1966 he came to San Francisco, shortly before Manson arrived, and his project was to study and manipulate hippies.
So there they were, the two of them, in the Haight-Ashbury. Tom O’Neill, with meticulous documentation, suggests that Manson became a product of Jolly West’s experiments.
Another dark character who seems to have worked for the CIA was Reeve Whitson, a friend of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. He somehow knew of the killings before anyone else did, and telephoned the awful news to Tate’s personal photographer, Shahrokh Hatami. That was 90 minutes before the bodies were discovered by Polanski’s maid.
Both Dr. Louis Jolyon West and Reeve Whitson are dead and gone, West in 1999 and Whitson in 1994, and are, thus, not available for interviews or comment.
In this book Tom O’Neill shows us convincing evidence that Charles Manson was some sort of operative, maybe unwittingly. It looks like the purpose of his handlers—presumably from the CIA’s CHAOS or the FBI’s COINTELPRO—was to set him up to create a bloody scene such as the one on August 9, 1969.
It needs to be recognized that Charles Manson and his followers served the establishment well. Nevertheless, they went to prison where they remained for the rest of their lives. Only one, Leslie Van Houten, was finally released last year on parole.
“Far from being an anomaly, Epstein was one of several men who, over the past century, have engaged in sexual blackmail activities designed to obtain damaging information (i.e., “intelligence”) on powerful individuals with the goal of controlling their activities and securing their compliance.”[1]
Jeffrey Epstein is dead and Ghislaine Maxwell is locked away in prison, and the thought-makers of our world seem keen to let the more explosive parts of the scandal dissipate from the public consciousness. As far as the mainstream media is concerned, Epstein and Maxwell were little more than well-connected socialites who ran a sex-trafficking ring for the rich and the powerful, and the focus has shifted instead to the criminal and civil cases seeking to achieve redress for the victims of sexual abuse.
On occasion some newspaper articles will mention the hidden cameras littered across Epstein’s properties, others the reams of CDs and hard drives found within them during the FBI raids. Altogether missing from the Netflix documentaries (Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich [2020] and Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich [2022]) or the articles that spend their time narrowly focusing on the links between Epstein and Bill Gates, is the acknowledgement of the true nature of Epstein himself and the ultimate purpose of this sex-trafficking of minors — a sexual blackmail operation.
Not everyone is cowardly enough to let these controversial aspects lie untouched, as the newly released two-volume book One Nation Under Blackmail by independent reporter Whitney Webb seeks to blow wide open this media-enforced blackout. Utilizing primarily open-source information (that is, publicly accessible information such as books, newspapers articles and government reports),[2] Webb’s book delves into the life and times of Jeffrey Epstein and his deep ties to Jewish billionaires and Israeli intelligence. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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The Sharon Tate murders were as bizarre as they were bloody, and the story behind the story is even stranger.
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