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Massachusetts Flu Shot Requirement Abandoned

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | January 22, 2021

Elizabeth Brehm, part of ICAN’s legal team, joins Del for an update on yet another win, a statewide influenza vaccine mandate that was withdrawn after being served with a lawsuit from our lawyers. Winning!

January 26, 2021 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Video | Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

Scientific evidence on lockdowns suggests they don’t work. The places with the highest death rates all had them

By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | January 26, 2021

The history of medical interventions tells us that often the accepted way of doing things turns out to be dreadfully wrong. I fear this is going to be the case with this so-called Covid ‘cure’.

“Paradoxically, human beings, when compelled to act, learn to justify a chosen course with an assurance unwarranted by the evidence for the course chosen.” – Bernard Lown.

I have studied the history of medicine, and medical interventions, for many years. The most extreme disasters have always followed a fairly distinct pattern. A series of steps, if you like.

Step one: We have a serious disease that is killing lots of people.

Step two: It creates great fear, and the medical profession has nothing much in place to deal with it.

Step three: A charismatic leader emerges to decree that he (almost always a ‘he’ up to now) knows how to treat it/control it, etc. This is ‘the idea’.

Step four: The ‘idea’ is enthusiastically taken up around the world and becomes mainstream thinking.

Step five: The ‘idea’ becomes standard practice.

Step six: The ‘idea’ is taught to medics and becomes accepted truth, a fact.

Step seven: Anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked.

There is always, of course, the possibility that the ‘idea’ is the best thing to do. This happens from time to time. However, there seems to be little or no correlation between the enthusiasm – and speed – with which ideas are taken up, and the likelihood that they are correct.

The problem, as I came to recognise, lies between step two and step four. By which I mean that a charismatic figure convinces everyone that they have the answer, before there is any evidence to support it. The person may not be charismatic, rather simply someone who has the ability to grab attention and push the ‘idea’ forward. Such as the Chinese premier.

Another thing that leads to disaster, which is of perhaps even greater importance, is that the ‘idea’ must sound like the most obvious common sense. It should trigger a response along the lines of “Yes, of course, that sounds perfectly reasonable.” Once that’s been achieved, the ‘idea’ drops neatly into people’s minds, settles down, and grows roots, creating not a ripple of cognitive dissonance.

At which point it cements itself in, and becomes difficult – even painful – to remove.

To quote the film ‘Inception’: “What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed – fully understood – that sticks; right in there somewhere.”

We love ideas; they make us who we are. We defend them, sometimes with our very lives.

“Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions with such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?” – JG Farrell.

So, yes, I have no illusions about the strength of ideas. They are so powerful, and so dangerous, that you must be very careful where you aim them. Because ideas also have a God-like power, which is that they are immortal.

The damage inflicted by medical ideas

You can kill a person who holds an idea. You can kill thousands of people who hold the same idea – but you cannot kill that idea. Unless you kill every single person who believes in it, then wipe it from the historical record, so that no-one can ever think it again. See ‘1984’.

I will give you a couple of examples of horribly damaging medical ideas. The first is the radical mastectomy. An idea first driven by William Halsted, a US surgeon from the end of the nineteenth century. He believed, as did almost everyone else at the time, that breast cancer spread locally – as did all cancers. Therefore, anything located anywhere near the cancer had to be cut away in case it had already been polluted.

With a radical mastectomy the entire breast, the other breast, muscles on the chest wall, lymph nodes, more muscles were cut out. Almost anything that could be removed without actually killing the women in the process.

The mutilated women were immensely grateful, and the surgeons proud of their expertise. They were doing a good thing, because the idea was considered to be inarguably correct. Questioning it was to be met with the response like, ‘Do you want these women to die – you heartless swine?’

Except that it wasn’t correct. Breast cancer does not spread locally. At least, when it does, it does so very slowly. The spread that causes problems, and kills women, is not local. Cancer cells get into the lymphatic system, and the bloodstream, and spread widely around the body, very early on. Often, long before the primary cancer can be detected.

Those who questioned the radical mastectomy, were attacked. Geoffrey Keynes, brother of John Maynard, tried less radical surgery in the 1920s. It did not go down well:

“Halsted’s followers in America ridiculed this approach, and came up with the name ‘lumpectomy’ to call the local surgery. In their minds, the surgeon was simply removing ‘just’ a lump, and this did not make much sense. They were aligning themselves with the paradigm of Radical Mastectomy. In fact, some of the surgeons even went further to come up with ‘superradical’ and ‘ultraradical’ procedures that were morbidly disfiguring procedures where the breast, underlying muscles, axillary nodes, the chest wall, and occasionally the ribs, part of the sternum, the clavicle and the lymph nodes inside the chest were removed. The idea of ‘more was better’ became prevalent.”

More is better… this is another of the deadly repeating themes of ‘the idea’. The idea can never be wrong, it is just that people are not doing it with sufficient vigour. If women are still dying from metastatic breast cancer, even after radical mastectomies (and they were), the answer could not possibly be that the procedure doesn’t work. The answer is that we are not being radical enough: “Hack away more, and then more.”

‘I was greeted with hands stretched out in a Nazi salute’

Another big medical idea is that of bed rest following a heart attack. It was thought, at one time, that all heart attacks were fatal. James Herrick, another US doctor, described the first non-fatal heart attack in 1912, then suggested that following such an attack, strict bed rest was important. This would take pressure off the heart and allow it a chance to heal. Again, this sounds perfectly reasonable. As described by Dr Bernard Lown, a professor of cardiology and the developer of the defibrillator:

“To a medical novice like me, the justification for enforced bed rest was persuasive. It was based on a sacrosanct therapeutic principle, the need to rest a diseased body part, be it a fractured limb or a tuberculosis-affected lung. Unlike a broken bone, which could be immobilized in a cast, or a lung lobe, which could be collapsed by inflating the chest cavity with air, the heart could not be cradled into quietude. The only approximation for a diseased heart was to diminish its workload. It was long known that during recumbency the heart rate slows and blood pressure drops, both indices of less oxygen usage and therefore of decreased cardiac work. Heart rest was therefore equated with bed rest.”

And so it became standard practice. It was simply what you did:

“Patients were confined to strict bed rest for four to six weeks. Sitting in a chair was prohibited. They were not allowed to turn from side to side without assistance. During the first week, they were fed. Moving their bowels and urinating required a bedpan. For the constipated, which included nearly every patient, precariously balancing on a bedpan was agonizing as well as embarrassing.

“Because world events might provoke unease, some physicians prohibited their patients from listening to the radio or reading a newspaper. Visits by family members were limited. Since recumbency provoked much restiveness and anxiety, patients required heavy sedation, which contributed to a pervasive sense of hopelessness and depression. Around one in three patients died.”

Bed rest started as a relatively mild thing. However, as it is with almost all things, it became increasingly ‘radical’. Lown, along with his mentor Dr Samuel Levine, tried to change this. He became involved in trying to get patients up out of bed to sit in a chair:

“Little did I realize that violating firmly held traditions can raise a tsunami of opposition. The idea of moving critically ill patients into a chair was regarded as off‑the‑wall. Initially the house staff refused to cooperate and strenuously resisted getting patients out of bed. They accused me of planning to commit crimes not unlike those of the heinous Nazi experimentations in concentration camps. Arriving on the medical ward one morning I was greeted by interns and residents lined up with hands stretched out in a Nazi salute and a ‘Heil Hitler!’ shouted in unison.”

Step six: Anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked.

No evidence, no problem

Then, among all the other problems with ‘the idea’, between steps two and three, is one that I have not yet mentioned. It is that no study is ever done to find out whether or not the idea works. It is just conceived to be so obviously beneficial, such common sense, that there would be no point in wasting time and resources trying to prove that it worked.

No-one ever did a study to find out if the radical mastectomy improved survival. No-one ever did a study to prove that bed rest saved lives. They were both introduced on the back of absolutely nothing. In time, eventually, the folly of both was finally recognised. It took 70 years for radical mastectomy, 50 for bed rest.

Which takes us to lockdowns. The most expensive, invasive, and potentially destructive medical intervention ever attempted by humanity. Was there any evidence from anywhere, before we embarked upon them, that lockdowns would work? No, there was none. But we have the six steps on full display here.

Step one: We have a serious disease that is killing lots of people – check.

Step two: It creates great fear, and the medical profession has nothing in place to deal with it – check.

Step three: A charismatic leader emerges to decree that he (almost always a ‘he’ up to now) knows how to treat it/control it etc. This is the ‘idea’ – check.

Step four: The ‘idea’ is enthusiastically taken up around the world and becomes ‘mainstream thinking’ – check.

Step five: The ‘idea’ becomes standard practice – check.

Step six: The ‘idea’ is taught to medics and becomes accepted truth, a fact – check.

Step seven: Anyone who goes against the ‘idea’ is ruthlessly attacked – check.

Does it work? Have lockdowns worked? You can pick and choose countries to support the case that it does and dismiss any evidence you don’t much like. Unfortunately, once you introduce a medical intervention that affects everyone, everywhere, you have lost the possibility of carrying out a controlled experiment of any sort.

Despite the lack of any randomised evidence, most people are absolutely convinced that lockdowns work to control the spread of Covid-19. They point to various countries, e.g. New Zealand, Norway, Australia and Taiwan, to prove their case. They always have a ready explanation as to why countries that underwent lockdown still have high death rates and vice-versa.

The ‘idea’ has become the truth. Its proponents now demand that those who doubt the efficacy of lockdowns prove that they don’t work. It is not the job of those suggesting lockdowns don’t work to prove that they don’t, it is the job of those promoting them to prove that they do.

The starting point for any scientific hypothesis is for the proponents to disprove the null hypothesis. Demanding that those who believe something may not work prove that it doesn’t is to turn the scientific method upside down. You can never prove a negative.

The null hypothesis, by the way, is that there is no difference between two things. Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) in medicine are designed to prove, statistically, that there is an actual difference between doing A and B. This is how science is done, how research is done.

We must look carefully at the death rates

Unfortunately, it is not possible to do a controlled trial with Covid-19. The possibility of doing any randomised study was lost very early on. Which means that we are instead forced to rely on observational studies. We can look at country X, that did Y, and see how it compares with country Z that did not do Y.

Or we can look at two countries that did Y, to see how they compare. Or two countries that did not do Y. With Covid, of course, no two countries did exactly the same thing. Not even the four ‘countries’ within the UK. So any observations become more difficult to rely on due to this ‘confounding variable’.

In some UK countries, six people could meet up, while in others it was eight, or two households, or only one household etc. In some, restaurants were open, in others they were shut – at varying times. From a scientific perspective, it’s a mess.

Anyway, to simplify things, let’s look at the 10 countries around the world with the highest death rate from Covid. That is, deaths per million population (I have left out countries with a population of less than one million, such as Monaco, or Liechtenstein, because a few deaths here or there can distort the death rate considerably)

What did they do differently, and what did they do the same? These countries all locked down, relaxed them, then brought in tighter lockdowns at various times. Looking only at first lockdown dates:

Belgium first locked down on March 18, 2020.

Slovenia first locked down on March 20, 2020.

Czechia first locked down on March 16, 2020.

The UK first locked down March 23, 2020.

Bosnia-Herzegovina first locked down March 16, 2020.

Italy first locked down March 9, 2020.

North Macedonia first locked down March 18, 2020.

The USA is highly federal and different states took different approaches – seven states did not issue lockdown orders: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. In those seven states, the death rate from Covid averaged at 1,280 per million, versus 1,254 as the US average.

In comparison, New Jersey first locked down on March 21, 2020, and its current death rate is 2,310 per million. New York locked down on March 12 – its current death rate is 2,130 per million. These states have the highest Covid related deaths in the US.

Bulgaria first locked down on March 13, 2020.

Hungary first locked down on March 28, 2020.

All countries locked down, Italy first, Hungary last. As you can see, the date of first lockdown is unrelated to the death rate. The other stand-out facts are that these are all countries with majority Caucasian populations. They are all in the northern hemisphere.

People will say, ah, but what about variables, such as population density, age distribution, number of tests done… etc, etc (there are dozens to choose from)? In the end, you can only rely on two things – did a country lock down and what is the death rate from Covid? These are the inescapable facts, everything else can be twisted to suit any argument.

If I were thinking of running a clinical trial where the hypothesis was that a lockdown was the best way to prevent deaths from Covid, then I would start by looking at observational data such as this.

I would find that the 10 countries in the world with the highest death rates all locked down.

I would look at the US, where the death rates in states that locked down, and those that did not, were almost the same rate (or vastly higher in the cases of New Jersey and New York), and I would conclude that the observational studies had – thus far – failed to disprove the null hypothesis. In fact, the evidence up to this point could suggest that lockdowns may actually increase the death rate.

In short, I would look for another idea.

Malcolm Kendrick, doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. His blog can be read here and his book, ‘Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,’ is available here.

January 26, 2021 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, United States | Leave a comment

The Question of Masks

By Jenin Younes | AIER | January 26, 2021

I envy the reader who can reach the end of Alex Berenson’s Unreported Truths About Covid-19 and Lockdowns: Masks, without tearing her hair out in frustration at the absurdity of the world today, which apparently is not so different from the one that Galileo inhabited four centuries ago.

Berenson makes an airtight case (no pun intended) that there is no evidence whatsoever that surgical and cloth masks work to control coronavirus spread, and a substantial amount that they do not. Nevertheless, as anyone who has tried to discuss the topic in a blue state knows, the subject has been so politicized that to make this contention amounts to heresy.

This is the third booklet in a series, Unreported Truths About Covid-19 and Lockdowns. The first two focus upon the deleterious effects of lockdowns and overestimation of the virus’s dangerousness. Berenson, who used to work as a reporter at the New York Times before he became a full-time novelist, has been known from the very beginning as a coronavirus “contrarian,” and has since attained unofficial status as king of the lockdown skeptics. As his Twitter profile famously depicts him smiling sardonically with a mask under his chin, it is about time he addressed the subject.

Initially, Berenson documents the so-called experts’ notorious about-face on masks this past March. Having said for weeks that face coverings do not stop transmission of the virus, Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Surgeon General, and others, did a 180 virtually overnight. The common explanation for this sudden change is that the first message was disingenuous, and given only to prevent a mask shortage among health care professionals. Berenson eschews this interpretation, arguing that the initial message was correct, but these people and institutions succumbed to political pressure.

What is the proof that this was political? Although Berenson does not explicitly state as much, it is worth noting that former President Trump immediately defied the idea of mask-wearing, as did many of his supporters, which I believe led to the extreme reaction in the opposite direction among Democrats and liberals.

Berenson points out that immediately, when mere weeks and months before Americans had been told not to wear masks, newspapers and magazines began publishing “insufferably arrogant” pieces portraying those who resisted mask-wearing as cretins, narcissists, and even sociopaths. This plays into the idea, held by many in this country, that those who are not on their side politically are fundamentally different, morally inferior, or perhaps even evil. Thus, to suggest that people who resist masks are narcissists or sociopaths fits squarely into the narrative that the political other is less-than.

But the real evidence lies in the fact that, contrary to the dogma that has taken root in American society, especially in Democratic circles, there is simply no scientific substantiation for the claim that masks, as they are worn in everyday life, protect either the wearer or those who encounter her. In Berenson’s words, “The evidence that face coverings do any good turns out to be even more porous than the masks themselves.” In my opinion, were the subject not so politically fraught, it is unlikely that the scientific evidence would be ignored.

Berenson describes the studies that evaluate whether surgical and cloth masks protect the wearer, and his verdict will, at this point, be unsurprising. Theoretical evidence establishes that surgical and cloth masks “offer next to no protection” because the virus typically travels on particles so small that in order to provide protection, the material must be fine enough to catch nearly all aerosols and droplets.

Apart from N95 respirators, which also are more effective because they are fitted to the individual’s face, masks are not made from such material. Not only are N95s expensive, but worn properly, they are “suffocating, uncomfortable, and difficult to tolerate for long durations.” Thus, as a practical matter, if non-medical professionals are going to wear face-coverings for an extended time period, they will be standard cloth or surgical masks.

The yet stronger proof, from randomized controlled studies (RCTs) — the “gold standard” in science – is overwhelming that these masks are not effective. As Berenson explains, research from Hong Kong and Vietnam found no evidence that surgical masks reduce influenza transmission, and evidence that cloth masks increase rates of infection, respectively.

The first large RCT, conducted in Denmark specifically to assess the utility of masks against SARS-CoV-2, found no difference in rates of infection between those who wore and those who did not wear masks (I have previously analyzed the distortion of the study’s results, especially by the New York Times and other center-left publications).

As for the proposition that masks may not protect the wearer but do protect those around her, again, “masks have almost no chance of catching most of the particles we exhale” because of the particles’ size, as explicated in a paper published in the Lancet. (From a logical standpoint, I have never found the concept that masks can protect those around the wearer though they do not protect her to be persuasive: either the mask functions as a barrier or it does not, although I am not a scientist and perhaps am missing something).

Berenson notes that the author “did not go so far as to call masks useless – a near impossibility in the current environment – but he was lukewarm at best on their value to protect other people even in the most obvious case, when they are worn by symptomatic cases in hospitals.”

Similarly, on June 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a paper stating that “widespread use of masks by health people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality or direct scientific evidence and there are other potential benefits and harms to consider.”

Again, given the political climate, the WHO “chok[ed] out” a tepid endorsement of mask usage: “Governments should encourage the general public to wear masks in specific situations and settings.”

Berenson compellingly dispels the myth that observational studies prove masks’ efficacy, such as the much cited salon in Missouri where two hairdressers who had coronavirus symptoms wore masks and did not infect 139 clients. As Berenson notes, there are countless other explanations for this result. For example, maybe the salon had good ventilation, or maybe the hairdressers were not very infectious. Despite the lack of scientific and intellectual rigor underlying it, this anecdote served as the rationale for many jurisdictions’ mask mandates. Moreover, the remaining observational data points staunchly in the opposite direction: worldwide, rising cases are not correlated with mask usage.

As anyone who has become embroiled in the mask debate knows well, the next question is always, why not wear one, since we don’t know for sure and there’s a chance they help? As Berenson argues, government directives should be supported by some evidence.

It has not been disproven that five-minute headstands prevent coronavirus spread, but most of us would see a problem with government requiring us to stand on our heads for five minutes a day just in case. Put otherwise, allowing the government to make rules without adequate evidence they are effective creates substantial danger that it will issue arbitrary directives to give the appearance of doing something.

Furthermore, as Berenson explains, masks are not harmless. He details two 2013 decisions from Canadian arbiters, addressing a challenge to hospital rules requiring nurses to wear masks if they had not been vaccinated against influenza. Both arbiters found in the nurses’ favor, and determined there was limited or no evidence that demonstrated the “utility of masks in reducing transmission” and substantial harms, including discomfort and skin irritation.

Although Berenson does not discuss this, widespread, long-term mask usage may cause significant psychological damage, especially to children and babies and even more so to those with disabilities such as autism. Even the New York Times acknowledged that masks likely impede children’s cognitive development, despite reaching the irrational conclusion that such harm is inevitable.

One of Berenson’s most critical points is that there is now substantial evidence that the coronavirus is very rarely, if ever, spread by asymptomatic individuals. The belief that asymptomatic transmission was one of the primary forces driving coronavirus spread propelled lockdowns and universal mask requirements in the spring.

If only symptomatic people spread the virus, then there is no justification whatsoever for quarantining and masking healthy populations: all that societies must do is ask people exhibiting symptoms to stay home.

Several large, recent studies have established that asymptomatic transmission of the coronavirus is exceedingly uncommon, if it occurs at all; the WHO has also recognized this fact. Of course, these studies have been entirely ignored by the media. Those who have staked their personal and professional reputations on the efficacy and necessity of lockdowns and mask mandates cannot now acknowledge having made such a grave, crucial error.

Berenson ends by theorizing that mask mandates appear to reflect “an effort by governments to find out what restrictions on their civil liberties people will accept on the thinnest possible evidence . . . Today, we must wear masks. Tomorrow we’ll need negative Covid tests to travel between countries. Or vaccines to go to work.”

As I have written in the past, I agree resoundingly with Berenson’s conclusion, although I tend to blame governmental incompetence and refusal to concede error as well as more nefarious motives.

Of course, the media is at fault too, with publications and television channels such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC promoting a blindly pro-lockdown, pro-mask ideology, at the same time discounting the evidence pouring in from all corners of the earth that lockdowns do not work as long- or medium-term solutions while they are destroying millions of lives, and masks are ineffective. Even now, with a vaccine available, the New York Times is publishing articles arguing that the supposedly deadlier new strain of the virus means that countries must lock down harder and longer; Australia expects to keep its borders closed through the end of 2021, if not longer; and the United Kingdom has indicated it will remain in lockdown until at least July.

Berenson sees the writing on the wall. Until a substantial portion of us stand up and make clear that we will not tolerate being stripped of life, liberty, property, and dignity, our governments will continue to inflict these repressive measures.

Jenin Younes is a graduate of Cornell University and New York University School of Law. Jenin currently works as an appellate public defender in New York City.

January 26, 2021 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

Unelected Biden/Harris Regime to Wage War on Civil Liberties

By Stephen Lendman | January 26, 2021

On Friday, White House press secretary Jennifer Psaki said the following:

The Biden/Harris regime “will confront (violent extremism) with the necessary resources and resolve (sic).”

“We are committed to developing policies and strategies (to) confront this threat (sic).”

Biden’s DNI will conduct a “comprehensive threat assessment, coordinated with the FBI and DHS on domestic violent extremism (sic).”

“As a part of this, the NSC will undertake a policy review effort to determine how the government can share information better about this threat, support efforts to prevent radicalization, disrupt violent extremist networks and more (sic).”

“(R)elevant parts of the federal government (will be involved) to enhance and accelerate efforts to address DVE (domestic violent extremism) (sic).”

“This focus (will address) evolving threats, radicalization, the role of social media, opportunities to improve information sharing, operational responses and more (sic).”

“The January 6th assault on the Capitol and the tragic deaths and destruction that occurred underscored what we have long known.”

“The rise of domestic violent extremism is a serious and growing national security threat (sic).”

“Congress should immediately pass legislation to make domestic terrorism a federal crime (sic).”

At a time when the only domestic and foreign threats are invented, not real, the stage is set for making the repressive Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act the law of the land.

Much more of the same likely coming is reminiscent of what happened post-9/11 — the mother of all US sponsored false flags to that time.

In its immediate aftermath, Bush/Cheney launched a war OF terror on invented enemies at a time when no real ones existed.

Abroad it was against nonthreatening Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq.

At home, it was against Muslims and other invented enemies of the state because no real ones existed then or now.

It was against fundamental constitutional law by trampling on the Bill of Rights.

The 2001 Patriot Act created the crime of domestic terrorism for the first time.

It unlawfully targeted anti-war global justice demonstrations, environmental and animal rights activists, civil disobedience for justice denied, and dissent for the same reason.

Does the Biden/Harris regime intend more of the same to eliminate what remains of greatly eroded freedoms?

Supported by media press agents, nonviolent pro-Trump Capitol Hill protesters are considered “domestic terrorists (sic).”

Rent-a-mob anti-Trump extremists bussed in for what happened on January 6 are considered freedom fighters by elements in Washington wanting remaining ones eliminated altogether — including speech, media and academic freedoms, along with the right of public assembly to petition US authorities for redress of legitimate grievances.

Big Media are on board for what may end a free and open society in the US — cheerleading for what demands denunciation.

The NYT called for addressing “domestic terrorism” that will target its victims, not state and Big Media supported perpetrators against Trump and others opposed to how US dark forces operate.

Biden/Harris regime DNI-designee Avril Haines should be confronted and challenged for supporting targeted assassinations, torture, and other lawless actions.

Victoria Nuland for under secretary of state for political affairs is an unindicted war criminal.

So are others nominated by Biden for high level posts, figures likely to be involved in perpetrating domestic and/or foreign state terrorism against US enemies.

The neocon/CIA linked Washington Post expressed support for combating domestic and foreign terrorism — that’s committed by the US and its imperial partners, not innocent victims falsely blamed for what they had nothing to do with.

Biden/Harris are beginning their tenure with a bang against, not for, what just societies hold dear.

Perhaps before their tenure ends, today’s America may no longer exist.

What replaces it may be full-blown tyranny — on the phony pretext of combatting threats to national security that exist only in the nation’s capital by hardline extremists running things.

January 26, 2021 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties | Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

When Fascism Comes, It Will Be Wearing a Mask

By Ron Paul | January 25, 2021

Almost immediately after his inauguration, President Joe Biden began creating new government dictates via executive orders. Many of these executive orders concern coronavirus, fulfilling Biden’s promise to make ramping up a coronavirus-inspired attack on liberty a focus of his first 100 days.

One of Biden’s executive orders imposes mask and social distancing mandates on anyone in a federal building or on federal land. The mandates also apply to federal employees when they are “on-duty” anywhere. Members of the military are included in the definition of federal employees. Will citizens of Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries where US troops are or will be “spreading democracy” be happy to learn the troops shooting up their towns are wearing masks and practicing social distancing?

Another one of Biden’s executive orders forces passengers on airplanes, trains, and other public transportation to wear masks.

Biden’s mask mandates contradict his pledge to follow the science. Studies have not established that masks are effective at preventing the spread of coronavirus. Regularly wearing a mask, though, can cause health problems.

Biden’s mask mandates are also an unconstitutional power grab. Some say these mandates are an exercise of the federal government’s constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce. However, the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to regulate interstate commerce. The president does not have the authority to issue executive orders regulating interstate commerce absent authorization by a valid law passed by Congress. The Founders gave Congress sole law-making authority, and they would be horrified by the modern practice of presidents creating law with a “stroke of a pen.”

Just as important, the Commerce Clause was not intended to give the federal government vast regulatory power. Far from giving the US government powers such as the power to require people to wear masks, the Commerce Clause was simply intended to ensure Congress could protect free trade among the states.

Biden also signed an executive order supporting using the Defense Production Act to increase the supply of vaccines, testing supplies, and other items deemed essential to respond to coronavirus. The Defense Production Act is a Cold War relic that gives the president what can fairly be called dictatorial authority to order private businesses to alter their production plans, and violate existing contracts with private customers, in order to produce goods for the government.

Mask and social distancing mandates, government control of private industry, and some of Biden’s other executive actions, such as one creating a new “Public Health Jobs Corps” with responsibilities including performing “contact tracing” on American citizens, are the type of actions one would expect from a fascist government, not a constitutional republic.

Joe Biden, who is heralded by many of his supporters as saving democracy from fascist Trump, could not even wait one day before beginning to implement fascistic measures that are completely unnecessary to protect public health. Biden will no doubt use other manufactured crises, including “climate change” and “domestic terrorism,” to expand government power and further restrict our liberty. Under Biden, fascism will not just carry an American flag. It will also wear a mask.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute

January 25, 2021 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

New York Times touts ‘How to Blow Up A Pipeline’ as a ‘new way to think’

Book argues ‘strategic acceptance of property destruction & violence has been the only route for revolutionary change’

Climate Depot | January 25, 2021

NYT’s Tatiana Schlossberg (the daughter of Caroline Kennedy): How to Blow Up a Pipeline author Andreas Malm “argues that there should be room for tactics other than strict nonviolence and peaceful demonstrations — indeed, he is a bit contemptuous of those who offer strategic pacifism as a solution — and notes that fetishizing nonviolence in past protest movements sanitizes history, removing agency from the people who fought, sometimes violently, for justice, freedom and equality. Sure. But the problem with violence, even if it’s meant only to destroy “fossil capital,” is that ultimately it’s impossible to control.”

Climate Depot note: The website of the publisher of the book, Verso books, asks, “why haven’t we moved beyond peaceful protest?” The publisher website explains: “[How to Blow Up a Pipeline author Andreas] Malm argues that the strategic acceptance of property destruction and violence has been the only route for revolutionary change.”

“Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force fossil fuel extraction to stop—with our actions, with our bodies, and by defusing and destroying its tools. We need, in short, to start blowing up some oil pipelines.”

New York Magazine climate reporter David Wallace-Wells, also provided a featured review of Malm’s book: “If a livable world requires an all-over transformation, where and when and how do we start? Perhaps with this book, a provocative manifesto from the pioneering theorist of the climate age.” – David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth

In 2010, NASA’s former lead climate scientist also endorsed a similar sounding book. See: James Hansen declared author ‘has it right…the system is the problem’ — Book proposes ‘razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine’

2013: Video: Eco-Terror Threats Issued at Rally: Climate Depot attended: ‘We will dismantle the Pipeline’ sign prominently displayed at rally — ‘By any means necessary’

January 25, 2021 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | United States | Leave a comment

Biden Justice Department investigates ITSELF on whether any employees tried to help Trump overturn election result

RT | January 25, 2021

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is probing whether any current or former official tried to help overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory, apparently seeking to root out employees who lack loyalty to the new regime.

The investigation, announced by Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Monday, will be limited to current or former employees of the DOJ. Horowitz said he aims to “reassure the public that an appropriate agency is investigating the allegations.”

Former President Donald Trump has been accused of trying to get the DOJ to take legal action to help overturn Biden’s victory, based on his allegations of massive election fraud, but any appeal for help was apparently unsuccessful. In fact, ABC News host George Stephanopoulos and other media figures have cited a DOJ statement that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud as a talking point in their efforts to dismiss Trump’s allegations as preposterous.

“The Department of Justice, led by William Barr, said there was no widespread evidence of fraud,” Stephanopoulos said Sunday in an interview with Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). “Can’t you just say the words, ‘This election was not stolen.’”

The New York Times said on Friday that DOJ lawyer Jeffrey Clark plotted with Trump to oust acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and try to force Georgia lawmakers to overturn the state’s election results. Like a steady stream of other anti-Trump articles by the newspaper, the story was based on comments by officials who declined to be identified.

The investigation marks the latest inquiry by the new Biden-led government into alleged wrongdoing by the Trump administration. The House this month voted to impeach Trump for a second time, and the Senate will hold a trial seeking to convict the former president even as it juggles with confirmation hearings and trying to push through Biden’s legislative agenda.

The DOJ not only declined to launch the sort of comprehensive election fraud investigation that Trump sought, but also chose to keep probes involving Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, from public view until after the election.

January 25, 2021 Posted by aletho | Progressive Hypocrite | DOJ, New York Times, United States | Leave a comment

All Hail the Reopening!

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | AIER | January 25, 2021

What a glorious thing the reopening is! After nearly a year of darkening times, the light has begun to dawn, at least in the US.

Given how incredibly political this pandemic has been from the beginning, many people smell a rat. Is it really the case that the reopening of the American economy, particularly in blue states, is so perfectly timed? Do the science and politics really line up so well?

These are questions for another day. And for the record, my own opinion is that the loosening of restrictions is timed well with the relaxing of public disease fear, from whatever source, political or through exhaustion or through a shift in the media narrative. In any case, it doesn’t matter for now. What matters right now is that the astonishing destructiveness of lockdowns might be coming to an end.

For those of us inveighing against lockdowns for a full year, it’s truly been a remarkable week. Restrictions are being loosened or are going away. We are finally getting some truth about the carnage. And we are even starting to see some elected officials being honest with us.

Let’s start in the most locked down state on the mainland: Massachusetts. Governor Charles Baker, whose pandemic management has wrecked so many businesses in his state, has decided it’s time to open up restaurants and businesses.

More remarkably, Massachusetts’s chief epidemiologist admits that the lockdowns didn’t achieve their goal. Shira Dorn of Tufts said: “Businesses and restaurants have not been shown to be a significant source of spread of infection, and it’s not clear that the additional measures that were instituted in November and December actually helped.”

So sorry we ruined your holidays and lives.

The egregious limits on gatherings will persist for a few more weeks, but the tone of the argument here has shifted. It is the most significant change in state policy in a very long time. Perhaps people can begin soon to get their human rights back?

The same is happening in other states.

Washington, D.C. will resume indoor dining.

Maryland’s governor has decided that the state needs to reopen schools now and no later than March 1.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan says Michigan restaurants can reopen for indoor dining on February 1. Her health adviser decided to resign. Let us hope it is the beginning of many.

Chicago’s mayor is now demanding an immediate opening of restaurants and bars. Chicago is also threatening teachers unions that they must return to work.

New York Governor Cuomo has dramatically reversed his rhetorical course and demanded a reopening of the city.

Governor Gavin Newsom, incredibly, has lifted all stay-at-home orders across the state and is permitting dining to open up. Many restaurants have defied orders for months now, and good for them. This new announcement shows that their defiance had an influence.

Montana’s new governor has lifted Covid restrictions.

National Public Radio has decided to announce that the virus has peaked.

The WHO is insisting that the PCR cycle threshold must change. If nations adjust, it should make a big difference in the case trend.

And perhaps in the most honest statement uttered by any elected official in twelve months, Joseph Biden said the following: “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” He didn’t need to qualify that statement. He could have stopped after pandemic.

CNN has removed the death tracker from its main page, while the New York Times has reported a 33% decline in new cases in the past two weeks. Plus, the Times, which arguably made the most profound contribution to the public panic over the virus, is finally reporting on the terrible carnage.

In an incredibly heartbreaking article, the Times chronicles the unspeakable deaths of despair from young children denied schooling over the past year. It’s an absolutely shocking article, one that should echo unto the ages, given what happened this last year. It’s worth a read.

As for the astonishingly anti-scientific blather dished out by the media over the last year, even that is starting to change. The Washington Post has published a helpful introduction to immunological basics, as written by JHU Professor Marty Makary:

Having the infection activates both antibodies as well as memory B- and T-cells, which teach your immune system to recognize the same virus in the future to swiftly eradicate it.

Natural immunity after covid-19 infection appears to last for at least the one year in which the virus has been circulating at large. Extrapolating from research on the SARS and MERS coronaviruses, it could be much longer. In one study of 176 people infected with SARS, immunity lasted for an average of two years. Another long-term analysis of health-care workers previously infected with SARS found antibodies up to 12 years later. Protective antibodies for the MERS coronavirus have similarly been documented to last for at least three years. And while the 1918 pandemic was caused by an influenza virus, the immune systems of those infected were able to make antibodies to the virus nearly nine decades later, a 2008 Nature study found.

Even mild infections appear to elicit a persistent and functional immune response. One recent European study found that people who had mild or asymptomatic covid-19 mounted a “robust T-cell immunity” afterward. A separate French study affirmed this, noting that some people who lived with a confirmed covid-infected person developed T-cell immunity even when they did not test positive for covid.

The article goes even further to openly admit what many of us have noticed since March: “Many medical experts have been dismissive of natural immunity due to prior infection, but there is overwhelming data showing that covid-19 reinfections are rare, and when they do occur, the infection is often mild.”

These basic facts fundamentally change the rationale for locking down. We’ve evolved with viruses without locking down. Starting in the late 19th century, once we got smarter about viruses, we realized that protection of the vulnerable and exposure among the non-vulnerable, in the framework of a functioning society, was the best approach to dealing with pandemics. We pursued that policy for a full century until last year. The unprecedented experiment with lockdowns will end up causing more death than if we had maintained a functioning society while treating disease as a medical and not a political problem.

We are also getting some truth telling on track-and-trace, courtesy of Holman Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal :

Top of the list is magic solution X, a national test and trace program. I won’t mince words. A 9-year-old could see the math didn’t work. Covid spreads more easily than the flu. An overwhelming share of cases are asymptomatic or indistinguishable from ailments that millions of Americans suffer every day. In a country as big, mobile and open as the U.S., there was zero chance of catching and isolating enough spreaders to matter.

Many experts said so at the time, but quietly. Anthony Fauci eventually said so, but quietly. All implicitly knew not to get between the media and its imperative that every big misfortune be played as a failure of inadequate government.

Even when the testing data shouted the truth, the press couldn’t hear it. Our testing misses 70% to 90% of Covid cases and yet 91% of the people being tested for Covid tested negative and were suffering from something else. We were never going to make a dent in the epidemic this way. It was a distraction.

Finally, we have actual experiments in openness right here in the US. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and South Dakota have all been open since the spring of last year, with life continuing on more or less as normal. The results have been no worse and most often better than what we see in lockdown states. It’s almost as if the virus doesn’t care about your political solutions.

One final data point. I watched the AFC Championship football game last night. Gone were the dreary ads of 2020 that all began “In these challenging times.” Instead we were treated to pictures of happy parties, friends socializing, people living life normally and happily. Even the masks are going away. True the stadium was only half full due to preposterous regulations but it felt much more normal.

Are our governments getting wise? Doubtful but many are feeling pressure to start recognizing the rights of human beings again. The new variant (viruses naturally mutate and the NYT is trying to bring calm) might frighten them again. Biden has already imposed new international travel restrictions. We aren’t out of the woods yet.

Will they admit error and apologize? That will take longer if it happens at all. At this point, right now, other things matter more. The priority must be to emancipate us from bad science and destructive policy so we can put our lives back together again.

January 25, 2021 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

Iran Will Reportedly Issue Seven Demands to President Biden Before Re-Entering Nuclear Deal Talks

By Jason Dunn – Sputnik – 24.01.2021

United States President Joe Biden has expressed his support for reversing the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and officials within the new government are reported to already be holding quiet discussions with Iranian representatives.

Diplomats from Tehran have spoken to officials within the Biden administration over resuming talks on Iran’s nuclear program and have reportedly set out seven preconditions, an unnamed Iranian government source told a Kuwaiti newspaper on Sunday.

Speaking to Kuwait’s al-Jarida newspaper, the anonymous official from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s office said that contacts began prior to President Joe Biden’s ascension to office, and implied that they are continuing but unofficial.

According to the Kuwaiti report, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht Rawanji was called to Tehran to arrange contacts with the new administration in Washington before returning to New York with a series of seven conditions for Iran’s involvement in the resumption of talks over its nuclear program.

The first condition is reportedly that Iran will not accept partial sanctions alleviation, as Tehran considers the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to be indivisible. The report says that Iran will reaffirm its demands that the US maintain all aspects of the deal, including the total lifting of sanctions, as an essential precondition to returning to the agreement.

Secondly, any disagreements over the accords must be discussed within the framework of the official negotiating committees. One of these anticipated disagreements is Tehran’s demand for compensation for financial losses it incurred due to the Trump administration’s exit from the deal, notably the financial impact of the sanctions.

The third condition, according to the report, is that Tehran will not approve of using the terms of the nuclear deal to address separate issues, such as its missile program and activities abroad.

As a fourth condition, no new members will be permitted to enter into the deal aside from the existing P5+1, including any Gulf Arab countries.

Fifthly, concerns over other regional states must be discussed as a separate matter, and not included in the negotiations over nuclear enrichment. The next point is said to be that despite not being willing to discuss its missile system, Iran would find it acceptable to talk about arms control on a regional level with United Nations supervision, raising particular concern over Israel’s missiles and illegally-held nuclear stockpile.

Finally, Iran will not allow a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and instead demands a UN referendum that includes Jewish Israelis and Palestinians over the “land” issue. No further details on the content of the potential referendum were outlined, according to the report.

Rouhani will be issuing these conditions to the Biden administration directly, the report also said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a Foreign Affairs article on Friday that Iran will not accept any further demands, terms, or state signatories added to the original deal proposed by Washington in 2015. Zarif said that if Washington began by “unconditionally removing, with full effect, all sanctions imposed, re-imposed, or relabeled since Trump took office”, Iran would reverse the steps it has taken since the US withdrew its signature from the deal in 2018.

Channel 12 News reported last week that the Biden administration has already begun largely undisclosed talks with Iranian officials over a return to the agreement and has also updated Israel of their contents.

This comes amid reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will send Mossad chief Yossi Cohen to Washington next month to issue Israel’s demands before any new version of the Iran nuclear deal is agreed to. According to reports, Cohen will be the first senior Israeli official to meet with President Biden and is also expected to meet with the CIA director.

Even before his election last year, Biden openly expressed his desire for the US to rejoin the accord, while Israel has said that a return to the deal must include new restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program and alleged support for terror activity internationally.

The JCPOA, which limits Iranian development of uranium in return for sanctions relief, was signed by Tehran as well as six world powers in 2015. In 2018, former President Donald Trump withdrew the US signature from the deal and introduced harsh sanctions against the nation, claiming that Tehran was not in compliance with its terms, despite international observers and the European Union claiming that Tehran was acting in full accordance with the treaty.

January 24, 2021 Posted by aletho | Wars for Israel | Iran, Israel, Sanctions against Iran, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

“Aid and Comfort” To the Enemy: Speaker Pelosi Ramps Up Attacks On Republican Colleagues Amidst Calls For Expulsions

By Jonathan Turley | January 23, 2021

Speaker Nancy Pelosi ramped up the attacks on members of her own house this week, accusing them of giving “aid and comfort” to those who want to destroy the nation. The comments came after Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., denied a public accusation by Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., that she personally took rioters around the capitol for a tour before the attack on January 6th. Boebert pointed out that the “rioters” were her family members and she has never given such tours. Rather than encouraging colleagues to avoid baseless and inflammatory accusations pending review of what occurred on January 6th, Pelosi threw gasoline on the fire and accused her colleagues of giving “aid and comfort” to those who were trying to destroy the Constitution and the country. It is, in my view, another failure of leadership by the Speaker in her duties to the institution as a whole.

Like many, I support a commission to look into how these rioters gained such rapid entry into the Capitol Hill. However, Democratic members have claimed that Republican members were actual co-conspirators in the riot in supplying access to the building to plan out the attack. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D., N.J.) went public with an extraordinary allegation against some of her colleagues that they conducted secret surveillance in a conspiracy with rioters at the Capitol. Sherrill stated in a Facebook live address to her constituents that she witnessed the surveillance personally. She said unidentified members of Congress “had groups coming through the Capitol” in “a reconnaissance for the next day.”

Sherill has still not supplied any of the names of her colleagues to who worked as inside co-conspirators. As noted earlier, this is an unambiguous allegation of criminal conduct against colleagues. Either members were conspiring in a crime or Sherill unfairly defamed her colleagues. Article I, Section 5, the Constitution says, “Each House (of Congress) may determine the Rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.” The House may discipline members for violations of both unlawful conduct as well as any conduct which the House of Representatives finds has reflected discredit upon the institution. In re Chapman, 166 U.S. 661, 669-670 (1897). A House Select Committee in 1967 stated:

Censure of a Member has been deemed appropriate in cases of a breach of the privileges of the House. There are two classes of privilege, the one, affecting the rights of the House collectively, its safety, dignity, and the integrity of its proceedings; and the other, affecting the rights, reputation, and conduct of Members, individually. Most cases of censure have involved the use of unparliamentary language, assaults upon a Member or insults to the House by introductions of offensive resolutions, but in five cases in the House and one in the Senate [as of 1967] censure was based on corrupt acts by a Member, and in another Senate case censure was based upon noncooperation with and abuse of Senate committees.

If members did conspire as alleged by Rep. Sherrill, they could be expelled for that criminal act. They would also face prosecution. It would be a betrayal of not just Congress but the country.

One would think that this rising level of acrimony would prompt a Speaker to calm her members and call for an investigation. Speaker Pelosi however proceeded to ramp up the rhetoric. She started out well by stating, “You have to have evidence for what has happened.” She then took a shot at Republicans and stated “There is no question that there were members in this body who gave aid and comfort to those with the idea that they were embracing a lie — a lie perpetrated by the president of the United States that the election did not have legitimacy.” The language comes from the treason language in the Constitution Article III, Section 3 states: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or, in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

In the context of alleged criminal conspiracy by members, the use of this language clearly suggested members were more than just politically at fault for their positions. It suggested that they were traitors.

These attacks are coming as some members are calling for the possible expulsion of members for challenging the electoral votes, an act expressly allowed under federal law and repeatedly done by Democrats in prior elections. It is an example of the rage-filled politics that continues to build in our country, including calls for blacklists and punitive measures against anyone deemed supportive of Trump. As I noted in today’s column, it is a crisis of leadership in this country when we desperately need leaders who can unite us rather than capitalize on our divisions.

January 24, 2021 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | United States | Leave a comment

Sen. Rand Paul Challenges Big Money Media’s Defining People with Differing Opinions as Liars

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | January 24, 2021

One of the most disturbing developments over the last few years in big money media in America is the blanket characterization of people who disagree with the big money media’s narrative on important matters as liars.

We have seen this approach in action with the repeated dismissal of people challenging any of “the science” proclaimed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or prominent government bureaucrats such as Anthony Fauci in regard to coronavirus. So bad has been this tendency that the media even followed right along to reverse its absolutist declarations regarding mask wearing when the CDC, Fauci, and others in the US government’s coronavirus message team turned on a dime regarding the matter.

Another of many areas we have seen the phenomenon is in big money media interpretation of the 2016 and 2020 presidential election results. The 2016 election results that brought Donald Trump into the presidency were repeatedly declared by big money media as undeniably tainted by Russian interference. Yet, it turned out after much investigation there was no “there” there in this accusation. Plus, a major effort within the US government to do whatever it took to peg Trump with “Russian collusion” was uncovered.

Skip forward to the 2020 presidential election and the big money media suddenly says questioning the declared results is beyond the pale, repeatedly dismisses any allegations of election wrongdoing leading to Joe Biden’s victory. That is the line host George Stephanopoulos pushed at the beginning of his Sunday This Week interview with United States Senate member Rand Paul (R-KY) at ABC. Stephanopoulos started off the interview with the following:

Senator Paul, let me begin with a threshold question for you. This election was not stolen. Do you accept that fact?

In response, Paul mentioned several apparent election problems that ‘we should get to the bottom of.’ What proceeds from there was relentless badgering by Stephanopoulos in an effort to make Paul declare the media mantra about the election. Stephanopoulos even declares to Paul, “Can’t you just say the words ‘this election was not stolen’?”

Commendably, Paul stood his ground against the berating throughout the seven-minutes interview and even discussed more reasons to suspect there were significant problems in the 2020 presidential election. Paul also, in the interview, stood up to and exposed the disturbing transition in big money media over the last few years that Stephanopoulos was demonstrating. Paul stated:

Hey, George, George, George, where you make a mistake is that people coming from the liberal side like you, you immediately say everything is a lie instead of saying there are two sides to everything. Historically, what would happen is, if I said that I thought there was fraud, you would interview someone else who said there wasn’t. But, now you insert yourself in the middle and say, ‘The absolute fact is that everything I am saying is a lie.’

“Let’s have an open debate,” said Paul later in the interview. Yes, let’s.

Watch the complete interview here.

January 24, 2021 Posted by aletho | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | United States | Leave a comment

American Pravda: How the CIA Invented “Conspiracy Theories”

BY RON UNZ • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 5, 2016

A year or two ago, I saw the much-touted science fiction film Interstellar, and although the plot wasn’t any good, one early scene was quite amusing. For various reasons, the American government of the future claimed that our Moon Landings of the late 1960s had been faked, a trick aimed at winning the Cold War by bankrupting Russia into fruitless space efforts of its own. This inversion of historical reality was accepted as true by nearly everyone, and those few people who claimed that Neil Armstrong had indeed set foot on the Moon were universally ridiculed as “crazy conspiracy theorists.” This seems a realistic portrayal of human nature to me.

Obviously, a large fraction of everything described by our government leaders or presented in the pages of our most respectable newspapers—from the 9/11 attacks to the most insignificant local case of petty urban corruption—could objectively be categorized as a “conspiracy theory” but such words are never applied. Instead, use of that highly loaded phrase is reserved for those theories, whether plausible or fanciful, that do not possess the endorsement stamp of establishmentarian approval.

Put another way, there are good “conspiracy theories” and bad “conspiracy theories,” with the former being the ones promoted by pundits on mainstream television shows and hence never described as such. I’ve sometimes joked with people that if ownership and control of our television stations and other major media outlets suddenly changed, the new information regime would require only a few weeks of concerted effort to totally invert all of our most famous “conspiracy theories” in the minds of the gullible American public. The notion that nineteen Arabs armed with box-cutters hijacked several jetliners, easily evaded our NORAD air defenses, and reduced several landmark buildings to rubble would soon be universally ridiculed as the most preposterous “conspiracy theory” ever to have gone straight from the comic books into the minds of the mentally ill, easily surpassing the absurd “lone gunman” theory of the JFK assassination.

Even without such changes in media control, huge shifts in American public beliefs have frequently occurred in the recent past, merely on the basis of implied association. In the initial weeks and months following the 2001 attacks, every American media organ was enlisted to denounce and vilify Osama Bin Laden, the purported Islamicist master-mind, as our greatest national enemy, with his bearded visage endlessly appearing on television and in print, soon becoming one of the most recognizable faces in the world. But as the Bush Administration and its key media allies prepared a war against Iraq, the images of the Burning Towers were instead regularly juxtaposed with mustachioed photos of dictator Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden’s arch-enemy. As a consequence, by the time we attacked Iraq in 2003, polls revealed that some 70% of the American public believed that Saddam was personally involved in the destruction of our World Trade Center. By that date I don’t doubt that many millions of patriotic but low-information Americans would have angrily denounced and vilified as a “crazy conspiracy theorist” anyone with the temerity to suggest that Saddam had not been behind 9/11, despite almost no one in authority having ever explicitly made such a fallacious claim.

These factors of media manipulation were very much in my mind a couple of years ago when I stumbled across a short but fascinating book published by the University of Texas academic press. The author of Conspiracy Theory in America was Prof. Lance deHaven-Smith, a former president of the Florida Political Science Association.

Based on an important FOIA disclosure, the book’s headline revelation was that the CIA was very likely responsible for the widespread introduction of “conspiracy theory” as a term of political abuse, having orchestrated that development as a deliberate means of influencing public opinion.

During the mid-1960s there had been increasing public skepticism about the Warren Commission findings that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been solely responsible for President Kennedy’s assassination, and growing suspicions that top-ranking American leaders had also been involved. So as a means of damage control, the CIA distributed a secret memo to all its field offices requesting that they enlist their media assets in efforts to ridicule and attack such critics as irrational supporters of “conspiracy theories.” Soon afterward, there suddenly appeared statements in the media making those exact points, with some of the wording, arguments, and patterns of usage closely matching those CIA guidelines. The result was a huge spike in the pejorative use of the phrase, which spread throughout the American media, with the residual impact continuing right down to the present day. Thus, there is considerable evidence in support of this particular “conspiracy theory” explaining the widespread appearance of attacks on “conspiracy theories” in the public media.

But although the CIA appears to have effectively manipulated public opinion in order to transform the phrase “conspiracy theory” into a powerful weapon of ideological combat, the author also describes how the necessary philosophical ground had actually been prepared a couple of decades earlier. Around the time of the Second World War, an important shift in political theory caused a huge decline in the respectability of any “conspiratorial” explanation of historical events.

For decades prior to that conflict, one of our most prominent scholars and public intellectuals had been historian Charles Beard, whose influential writings had heavily focused on the harmful role of various elite conspiracies in shaping American policy for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, with his examples ranging from the earliest history of the United States down to the nation’s entry into WWI. Obviously, researchers never claimed that all major historical events had hidden causes, but it was widely accepted that some of them did, and attempting to investigate those possibilities was deemed a perfectly acceptable academic enterprise.

However, Beard was a strong opponent of American entry into the Second World War, and he was marginalized in the years that followed, even prior to his death in 1948. Many younger public intellectuals of a similar bent also suffered the same fate, or were even purged from respectability and denied any access to the mainstream media. At the same time, the totally contrary perspectives of two European political philosophers, Karl Popper and Leo Strauss, gradually gained ascendancy in American intellectual circles, and their ideas became dominant in public life.

Popper, the more widely influential, presented broad, largely theoretical objections to the very possibility of important conspiracies ever existing, suggesting that these would be implausibly difficult to implement given the fallibility of human agents; what might appear a conspiracy actually amounted to individual actors pursuing their narrow aims. Even more importantly, he regarded “conspiratorial beliefs” as an extremely dangerous social malady, a major contributing factor to the rise of Nazism and other deadly totalitarian ideologies. His own background as an individual of Jewish ancestry who had fled Austria in 1937 surely contributed to the depth of his feelings on these philosophical matters.

Meanwhile, Strauss, a founding figure in modern neo-conservative thought, was equally harsh in his attacks upon conspiracy analysis, but for polar-opposite reasons. In his mind, elite conspiracies were absolutely necessary and beneficial, a crucial social defense against anarchy or totalitarianism, but their effectiveness obviously depended upon keeping them hidden from the prying eyes of the ignorant masses. His main problem with “conspiracy theories” was not that they were always false, but they might often be true, and therefore their spread was potentially disruptive to the smooth functioning of society. So as a matter of self-defense, elites needed to actively suppress or otherwise undercut the unauthorized investigation of suspected conspiracies.

Even for most educated Americans, theorists such as Beard, Popper, and Strauss are probably no more than vague names mentioned in textbooks, and that was certainly true in my own case. But while the influence of Beard seems to have largely disappeared in elite circles, the same is hardly true of his rivals. Popper probably ranks as one of the founders of modern liberal thought, with an individual as politically influential as left-liberal financier George Soros claiming to be his intellectual disciple. Meanwhile, the neo-conservative thinkers who have totally dominated the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement for the last couple of decades often proudly trace their ideas back to Strauss.

So, through a mixture of Popperian and Straussian thinking, the traditional American tendency to regard elite conspiracies as a real but harmful aspect of our society was gradually stigmatized as either paranoid or politically dangerous, laying the conditions for its exclusion from respectable discourse.

By 1964, this intellectual revolution had largely been completed, as indicated by the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the famous article by political scientist Richard Hofstadter critiquing the so-called “paranoid style” in American politics, which he denounced as the underlying cause of widespread popular belief in implausible conspiracy theories. To a considerable extent, he seemed to be attacking straw men, recounting and ridiculing the most outlandish conspiratorial beliefs, while seeming to ignore the ones that had been proven correct. For example, he described how some of the more hysterical anti-Communists claimed that tens of thousands of Red Chinese troops were hidden in Mexico, preparing an attack on San Diego, while he failed to even acknowledge that for years Communist spies had indeed served near the very top of the U.S. government. Not even the most conspiratorially minded individual suggests that all alleged conspiracies are true, merely that some of them might be.

Most of these shifts in public sentiment occurred before I was born or when I was a very young child, and my own views were shaped by the rather conventional media narratives that I absorbed. Hence, for nearly my entire life, I always automatically dismissed all of the so-called “conspiracy theories” as ridiculous, never once even considering that any of them might possibly be true.

To the extent that I ever thought about the matter, my reasoning was simple and based on what seemed like good, solid common sense. Any conspiracy responsible for some important public event must surely have many separate “moving parts” to it, whether actors or actions taken, let us say numbering at least 100 or more. Now given the imperfect nature of all attempts at concealment, it would surely be impossible for all of these to be kept entirely hidden. So even if a conspiracy were initially 95% successful in remaining undetected, five major clues would still be left in plain sight for investigators to find. And once the buzzing cloud of journalists noticed these, such blatant evidence of conspiracy would certainly attract an additional swarm of energetic investigators, tracing those items back to their origins, with more pieces gradually being uncovered until the entire cover-up likely collapsed. Even if not all the crucial facts were ever determined, at least the simple conclusion that there had indeed been some sort of conspiracy would quickly become established.

However, there was a tacit assumption in my reasoning, one that I have since decided was entirely false. Obviously, many potential conspiracies either involve powerful governmental officials or situations in which their disclosure would represent a source of considerable embarrassment to such individuals. But I had always assumed that even if government failed in its investigatory role, the dedicated bloodhounds of the Fourth Estate would invariably come through, tirelessly seeking truth, ratings, and Pulitzers. However, once I gradually began realizing that the media was merely “Our American Pravda” and perhaps had been so for decades, I suddenly recognized the flaw in my logic. If those five—or ten or twenty or fifty—initial clues were simply ignored by the media, whether through laziness, incompetence, or much less venial sins, then there would be absolutely nothing to prevent successful conspiracies from taking place and remaining undetected, perhaps even the most blatant and careless ones.

In fact, I would extend this notion to a general principle. Substantial control of the media is almost always an absolute prerequisite for any successful conspiracy, the greater the degree of control the better. So when weighing the plausibility of any conspiracy, the first matter to investigate is who controls the local media and to what extent.

Let us consider a simple thought-experiment. For various reasons these days, the entire American media is extraordinarily hostile to Russia, certainly much more so than it ever was toward the Communist Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s. Hence I would argue that the likelihood of any large-scale Russian conspiracy taking place within the operative zone of those media organs is virtually nil. Indeed, we are constantly bombarded with stories of alleged Russian conspiracies that appear to be “false positives,” dire allegations seemingly having little factual basis or actually being totally ridiculous. Meanwhile, even the crudest sort of anti-Russian conspiracy might easily occur without receiving any serious mainstream media notice or investigation.

This argument may be more than purely hypothetical. A crucial turning point in America’s renewed Cold War against Russia was the passage of the 2012 Magnitsky Act by Congress, punitively targeting various supposedly corrupt Russian officials for their alleged involvement in the illegal persecution and death of an employee of Bill Browder, an American hedge-fund manager with large Russian holdings. However, there’s actually quite a bit of evidence that it was Browder himself who was actually the mastermind and beneficiary of the gigantic corruption scheme, while his employee was planning to testify against him and was therefore fearful of his life for that reason. Naturally, the American media has provided scarcely a single mention of these remarkable revelations regarding what might amount to a gigantic Magnitsky Hoax of geopolitical significance.

To some extent the creation of the Internet and the vast proliferation of alternative media outlets, including my own small webzine, have somewhat altered this depressing picture. So it is hardly surprising that a very substantial fraction of the discussion dominating these Samizdat-like publications concerns exactly those subjects regularly condemned as “crazy conspiracy theories” by our mainstream media organs. Such unfiltered speculation must surely be a source of considerable irritation and worry to government officials who have long relied upon the complicity of their tame media organs to allow their serious misdeeds to pass unnoticed and unpunished. Indeed, several years ago a senior Obama Administration official argued that the free discussion of various “conspiracy theories” on the Internet was so potentially harmful that government agents should be recruited to “cognitively infiltrate” and disrupt them, essentially proposing a high-tech version of the highly controversial Cointelpro operations undertaken by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.

Until just a few years ago I’d scarcely even heard of Charles Beard, once ranked among the towering figures of 20th century American intellectual life. But the more I’ve discovered the number of serious crimes and disasters that have completely escaped substantial media scrutiny, the more I wonder what other matters may still remain hidden. So perhaps Beard was correct all along in recognizing the respectability of “conspiracy theories,” and we should return to his traditional American way of thinking, notwithstanding endless conspiratorial propaganda campaigns by the CIA and others to persuade us that we should dismiss such notions without any serious consideration.

For Further Reading:

Our American Pravda
American Pravda: Was General Patton Assassinated?
American Pravda: Alexander Cockburn and the British Spies
John McCain: When “Tokyo Rose” Ran for President
The Good Fortune of Mr. Browder? – Israel Shamir
The Magnitsky Hoax? – Philip Giraldi

January 24, 2021 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | CIA, United States | Leave a comment

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TV Drama Review

Japanese drama projects Japan’s wartime atrocities onto Chinese characters

Global Times | October 25, 2026

By portraying Chinese characters as perpetrators of ruthless violence while casting Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) intelligence operatives as defenders, the season 2 of the Japanese drama Vivant has recently drawn criticism from Chinese netizens, who argue that its depiction turns historical reality on its head while ignoring Japan’s wartime atrocities.

The TBS drama series – a spy suspense story in which an alleged unofficial intelligence unit of the SDF operates across the globe — has attracted a passionate fanbase. Its currently airing season 2 opened with a household rating of 18.8 percent, the highest for a TV drama this year, according toa commentary article by Japanese media Toyo Keizai.

What draws attention is the portrayal of the enemies in the series, the article noted. Scenes in which the Chinese organization subjects kidnapped members of the SDF unit to brutal torture are repeated with unrelenting intensity.

It is rare for Japanese TV dramas to explicitly portray a real-life country as the enemy, the article noted.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also made a reference to the drama, saying that she has been recording Vivant and hopes to binge-watch it over the year-end and New Year holidays, according to Japanese media outlets.

China’s CCTV News report on Sunday revealed that the drama features scenes in which Chinese personnel cut off the fingers of and stab Japanese intelligence operatives in the abdomen. Such acts bear striking similarities to the torture inflicted on Chinese nationals by invading Japanese troops during the World War II.

The drama distorts the truth by attributing these atrocities to modern Chinese characters. Beneath the surface, it subtly glorifies Japan’s cross-border overseas operations, blurs the functional boundaries of the SDF and implicitly promotes an expansionist narrative, per CCTV News. … continue

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