All about conspiracy theory

This is a superb and comprehensive article from off Guardian.

If like me you believe in conspiracy theories, not the flat earth kind but the ones that powerful people discuss in the shadow, don't be ashamed, you are in good company.

Most great scientists and thinkers questioned the paradigm of their time and often proved it wrong against the odds, their peers and almost everyone involved. Often to their great peril like Giordano Bruno burned at the stake in 1600 for defending the theory of multiple worlds.

To have to fight for the truth is not the exception but the rule. As Plato said, we are only seeing the shadow of reality on the wall of a cave from which we can't escape. Unfortunately some people enjoy others to see the shadows dancing to their tune. This has always been so and probably always will.

As everything, the truth is not a right but something you must fight to acquire. Most people don't and accept what is being served to them, fast food for the brain, made of half-truths and lies.

But to enter this fight and enjoy the reward of knowing and understanding, we must first understand what we are up against. This is the purpose of this article.

A Conspiracy Theorist Confesses

Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,

I am what the general population, politicians and the mainstream media (MSM) would call a conspiracy theorist. While I don’t agree with their definition of the term, there’s not much point in me denying it. It is applied to me, and millions like me, whether we like it or not.

 those who deem conspiracy theorists to be some sort of threat to society, we are the social and political malcontents who lack reason and hate our democratic way of life. We are trolls, bots and disinformation agents on social media, probably employed by the Russians, the Chinese or Iranians

We are supposedly hellbent on sewing the seeds of discontent and can be found protesting against every government policy and decision. Alternatively, we are arrogant fools, both anti-science and evidence averse, who trot out crazy theories based upon little knowledge and no evidence. Apparently this is a very dangerous thing.

Thus we come to the glaring contradiction at the heart of the concept of the loony conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theorists are both imbeciles, who don’t have any proof to back up anything they say, while simultaneously being dangerous subversives who threaten to destabilise democracy and foment chaos.

threat to “our way of life,” come from? What is it that the conspiracy theorists say that is so dangerous? Why do their opinions seemingly need to be censored? What are governments so worried about?

WHAT IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY?

Some definitions are required here. From the Cambridge online English dictionary we have

Misinformation: [noun] wrong information, or the fact that people are misinformed.

Disinformation: [noun] false information spread in order to deceive people.

Fake News: [noun] false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke.

Conspiracy: [noun’] the activity of secretly planning with other people to do something bad or illegal.

Theory: [noun] a formal statement of the rules on which a subject of study is based or of ideas that are suggested to explain a fact or event.

Conspiracy Theory: [noun] a belief that an event or situation is the result of a secret plan made by powerful people

It is notable that Cambridge University Press have introduced the concept of “secret” into their definition. By describing something as secret you are suggesting that it is impossible to know what it is. This added notion of secrecy is not commonly found in other dictionaries.

Nor is it present in the legal definition of conspiracy. Blacks Law Dictionary defines conspiracy as:

Conspiracy: In criminal law. A combination or confederacy between two or more persons formed for the purpose of committing, by their joint efforts, some unlawful or criminal act.

Obviously conspirators would like to keep their plans hidden. But that doesn’t mean they always remain so. If all conspiracies were “secrets” nobody would ever discover any of them

Known conspiracies, such as Operation Gladio, Iran Contra, the Lavon Affair, the 2001 anthrax letter hoax and so on, would not have been exposed had people not highlighted the evidence which proved their existence.

The notion of the “secret conspiracy” is not one most people called conspiracy theorists would recognise. Often the whole point of our argument is that the conspiracies can be quite plainly evidenced. Most of that evidence is in the public domain and freely available.

More often conspiracy theorists are concerned with the denial or obfuscation of the evidence. It is not that the evidence doesn’t exist, rather that it either isn’t reported at all or is hidden by labelling those who do report it conspiracy theorists.

We can define “conspiracy theory” simply to mean: the reporting of evidence indicating a plan between two or more people to commit an illegal or nefarious act.

We can add that a conspiracy theory is an opinion or an argument. The merit of which is solely defined by the strength or weakness of the evidence.

However, if you read Wikipedia a very different definition is suggested. Suddenly conspiracy theory means an attempt to ignore other more plausible explanations. It is a theory based upon prejudice or insufficient evidence, it resists falsification and suffers from circular reasoning. It has left the realms of logical deduction and become a matter of faith.

This rationale is some distance away from the dictionary and legal definitions. It relies heavily upon opinion and is highly subjective. It is a pejorative definition which claims to be based in science, though the scientific evidence is feeble to non existent.

This depiction of the delusional conspiracy theorist, as described by Wikipedia, is the popularly accepted meaning. Perhaps we can agree, the narrative we are given about alleged conspiracy theorists broadly runs like this:

Conspiracy theorists forward arguments that are unfounded. These are based upon limited knowledge and lack substantiating evidence. Most conspiracy theorists are simply wrong and unwittingly spread misinformation. However, prominent conspiracy theorists spread disinformation and have used their large followings on the Internet to create a dangerous phenomenon called ‘fake news.’

Many of those with the largest followings are agents for foreign powers. They use a global network of trolls and bots to advance their dangerous political agenda. This is designed to undermine our democratic way of life and valued political institutions. Therefore all conspiracy theory is anti-democratic and must be stopped.

It is difficult to understand how democracies, which supposedly value freedom of thought, speech and expression, can be threatened by diversity of opinion. Yet it appears many people are willing to ignore this contradiction and support government attempts to censor information and silence the voices of those it labels conspiracy theorist. Which is genuinely anti-democratic.

Consequently it has become relatively straightforward for politicians and the media to refute evidence and undermine arguments. As long as they can get the label of conspiracy theory or theorist to stick, most people will discount their arguments without ever looking at the evidence.

The label of conspiracy theorist is an umbrella term for a huge array of ideas and beliefs. Some are more plausible than others. However, by calling everyone who challenges accepted norms a “conspiracy theorist” it is possible to avoid addressing the evidence some offer by exploiting guilt by association.

For example, many people labelled as conspiracy theorists, myself included, believe even the most senior elected politicians are relatively low down the pecking order when it comes to decision making. We suggest powerful global corporations, globalist think tanks and international financial institutions often have far more control over policy development than politicians. We can cite academic research to back up this identification of “Biased Pluralism.”

We do not believe the Earth is flat or the Queen is a lizard. However, because we believe the former, politicians, mainstream academia and the media insist that we must also believe the latter.

Psychology is often cited as evidence to prove conspiracy theorists are deranged, or at least emotionally disturbed in some way. Having looked at some of this claimed science I found it to be rather silly and anti-scientific. But that is just my opinion.

However, unlike many of the psychologists who earn a living by writing junk science, I do not think they should be censored nor stopped from expressing their unscientific opinions. However, governments across the world are seemingly desperate to exploit the psychologist’s ‘work’ to justify the silencing of the conspiracy theorists.

This desire to silence people who ask the wrong questions, by labelling all as conspiracy theorists, has been a common theme from our elected political leaders during the first two decades of the 21st century. But where did this idea come from?

Which is it? It can’t be both. Unless society is so fragile it cannot withstand the opinions of idiots.

So where does the idea that fools present a threat to “our way of life,” come from? What is it that the conspiracy theorists say that is so dangerous? Why do their opinions seemingly need to be censored? What are governments so worried about?

THE HISTORY OF THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST LABEL

Conspiracy theory is nothing new. Nearly every single significant world event had at least one contemporary conspiracy theory attached to it. These alternative interpretations of events, which lie outside the accepted or official narratives, are found throughout history.

In 117 CE, the Roman Emperor Trajan died only two days after adopting his successor Hadrian. All his symptoms indicated a stroke brought on by cardio vascular disease.

Yet by the 4th century, in the questionable historical text Historia Augusta, a number of conspiracy theories surrounding Trajan’s death had emerged. These included claims that Trajan had been poisoned by Hadrian, the praetorian prefect Attianus and Trajan’s wife, Plotina.

While we would call this a conspiracy theory today, the term was not commonly used until the late 1960’s. The earliest written reference to something approaching the modern concept of conspiracy theory appeared in the 1870’s in the Journal of Mental Science vol 16.

“The theory of Dr Sankey as to the manner in which these injuries to the chest occurred in asylums deserved our careful attention. It was at least more plausible that the conspiracy theory of Mr Charles Beade”

This is the first time we see an association made between “conspiracy theory” and implausibility. Throughout most of the 19th and 20th century, if used at all, it usually denoted little more than a rationale to expose a criminal plot or malevolent act by a group.

After the Second World War colloquial use of “conspiracy theory” was rare. However, academics were beginning to lay the foundations for the interpretation which has produced the label we are familiar with today.

The burgeoning idea was that the large numbers of people who questioned official accounts of events, or orthodox historical interpretations, were all delusional to some degree. Questioning authority, and certainly alleging that authority was responsible for criminal acts, was deemed to be an aberration of the mind.

Karl Popper

In 1945 The philosopher Karl Popper alluded to this in his political work The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper was essentially criticising historicism. He stated that historical events were vulnerable to misinterpretation by those who were predisposed to see a conspiracy behind them.

He argued this was because historians suffered from cognitive dissonance (the uncomfortable psychological sensation of holding two opposing views simultaneously.) They could not accept that tumultuous events could just happen through the combination of error and unrelated circumstances.

In Popper’s view, these historians were too quick to reject the possibility of random, chaotic events influencing history, preferring unsubstantiated conspiratorial explanations. Usually because they made better stories, thereby garnering more attention for their work.

Popper identified what he called the conspiracy theory of society. This reflected Popper’s belief that social sciences should concern themselves with the study of the unintended consequences of intentional human behaviour. Speaking of the conspiracy theory perspective, he wrote:

It is the view that an explanation of a social phenomenon consists in the discovery of the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence of this phenomenon (sometimes it is a hidden interest which has first to be revealed), and who have planned and conspired to bring it about.”

Popper also believed that increasing secularism had led people to ascribe power to secretive groups rather than the gods:

The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups – sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from – such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists.”

Popper’s theory illustrates the fundamental difference between those labelled conspiracy theorists and those who, on the whole, defend the official narrative and the establishment. For conspiracy theorists the evidence shows that powerful forces have frequently conspired to shape events, control the flow of information and manipulate society. The deliberate engineering of society, suggested by the conspiracy theorists, is rejected by their opponents and critics.

For them the conspiratorial view has some minor, limited merit, but the suggested scale and prevalence of these plots is grossly exaggerated. They see nearly all world events as the result of the unintentional collision between disparate forces and the random influence of fate.

In general, they consider the powerful incapable of malice. Where disastrous national and global events have clearly been caused by the decisions of governments, influential groups and immensely wealthy individuals, these are invariably seen as mistakes.

Any suggestion that the power hierarchy’s destructive decisions may have achieved their intended objectives receives blanket rejection. Even asking the question is considered “unthinkable.”

For many people called conspiracy theorists this is a hopelessly naive world view. History is full of examples of the powerful using their influence to further their own interests at others expense. Often costing people their lives.

For their opponents, like Popper, to reject this possibility outright, demonstrates their cognitive dissonance. They seem unable even to contemplate the possibility that the political and economic power structures they believe in could ever deliberately harm anyone. They have faith in authority and it is not shared by people they label conspiracy theorists.

Following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 alternative explanations proliferated, not least of all due to the apparent implausibility of the official account. Many U.S. citizens were concerned that elements within their own government had effectively staged a coup. Others, such as the prominent American historian Richard Hoftsadter, were more concerned that people doubted their government.

Richard Hofstadter

Building on the work of Popper, partly as a critique of McCarthyism but also in response to the Republican nomination loss of Nelson A. Rockefeller, American historian Richard Hofstadter suggested that people’s inability to believe what they are told by government was not based upon their grasp of the evidence. Rather it was rooted in psychological need.

He claimed much of this stemmed from their lack of education (knowledge), political disenfranchisement and an unjustified sense of self importance. He also suggested these dangerous opinions threatened to pollute the body politic.

Like Popper, Hofstadter did not identify conspiracy theorists directly. But he did formulate the narrative underpinning the modern, widely accepted, definition. He wrote:

I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind…It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant

[…]

Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates “evidence.”….he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions.

Going to great lengths to focus on the “paranoid’s” tendency to highlight the evidence, as if that were a failing, like most critics of so-called conspiracy theorists, Hofstadter chose neither to address nor even mention what that evidence was. He merely asserted that it was unbelievable. The reader just had to take his word for it.

The Warren Commission Report into the JFK assassination drew considerable criticism. The finding that Oswald acted alone contradicted numerous eye witness accounts, film, autopsy and ballistic evidence.

Four of the seven commissioners harshly criticised the report issued in their name. Widely seen as quite ridiculous, in the absence of any sensible official account of the assassination, numerous explanatory theories inevitably sprang up.

In response to the mounting criticism, in 1967 the CIA sent an internal dispatch to all field offices called Document 1035-960: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report.

Revealed by a New York Times Freedom of Information Request in 1976, the dispatch is the first written record we have of the combination of Popper’s “conspiracy theory of society” with Hofstadter’s “paranoid style” militant. It defined the modern concept of the conspiracy theorist.

The document states:

Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists.”

It can be considered as the origin of the weaponised term “conspiracy theory.” It recommends a set of techniques to be used to discredit all critics of the Warren Commission Report. Once you are familiar with them, it is obvious that these strategies are commonly deployed today to dismiss all who question official statements as “conspiracy theorists.” We can paraphrase these as follows:

1. Deny any new evidence offered and cite only official reports stating ‘no new evidence has emerged.’
2. Dismiss contradictory eyewitness statements and focus upon the existing, primary, official evidence such as ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence.
3. Do not initiate any discussion of the evidence and suggest that large scale conspiracies are impossible to cover up in an open and free democracy.
4. Accuse the conspiracy theorists of having an intellectual superiority complex.
5. Suggest that theorists refuse to acknowledge their own errors.
6. Refute any suggestion of witness assassinations by pointing out they were all deaths by natural causes.
7. Question the quality of conspiracy research and point out that official sources are better.

The report recommended making good use of “friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” and to “employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics.”

The CIA advocated using mainstream media feature articles to discredit people labelled conspiracy theorists.

While the use of these methods has been refined over the years, the essential process of labelling someone a conspiracy theorist, while studiously avoiding any discussion of the evidence they highlight, is extremely common in the mainstream media today. We only need look at the reports about academics who questioned the government’s narrative about COVID19 to see the techniques in operation.

The drive to convince the public to use only “official sources” for information has seen the rise of the fact checker.

These organisations, invariably with the support of government and corporate funding, are offered as the reliable sources which provide real facts. The facts they provide are frequently wrong and the fact checking industry has settled legal claims from those who challenged their disinformation.

People have been directed by the mainstream media to abandon all critical thinking. They just need to go to their government-approved fact-checker in order be told the truth.

Providing the public believe the people labelled conspiracy theorists are crazy, ill informed or agents for a foreign powers, the mainstream media, politicians and other commentators can undermine any and all evidence they present. In keeping with the CIA’s initial recommendations, it is extremely unlikely that the evidence will ever be openly discussed but, if it is, it can be written off as “conspiracy theory.”

However, it isn’t just the mainstream media who use the conspiracy theorist label to avoid discussing evidence. Politicians, speaking on the worlds biggest political stage, have seized the opportunity to deploy the CIA’s strategy.

THREE SPEECHES ONE AGENDA

Even for Prime Ministers and Presidents, addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations is a big deal. These tend to be big thematic speeches as the leader impresses their vision upon the gathered dignitaries and global media.

Yet, despite the fact that conspiracy theorists are supposed to be idiots who don’t know the time of day, global “leaders” have repeatedly used this auspicious occasion to single them out as one of the greatest threats to global security.

In November 2001 George W. Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly with the following words:

We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty. To inflame ethnic hatred is to advance the cause of terror.”

Even if you accept the official account of 9/11, and there are numerous reasons why you wouldn’t, how does questioning it suggest that you support terrorism or mark you out as a racist?

The suggestion appears absurd but it does illustrate that the U.S. president wanted both to silence all criticism of the government account and link those questioning it to extremism and even terrorism.

This theme was reiterated by the UK Prime Minister David Cameron in his 2014 address. He said:

To defeat ISIL – and organisations like it we must defeat this ideology in all its forms…..it is clear that many of them were initially influenced by preachers who claim not to encourage violence, but whose world view can be used as a justification for it. We know this world view. The peddling of lies: that 9/11 was a Jewish plot or that the 7/7 London attacks were staged […] We must be clear: to defeat the ideology of extremism we need to deal with all forms of extremism – not just violent extremism. We must work together to take down illegal online material […] we must stop the so called non-violent extremists from inciting hatred and intolerance.

This season we will mostly be wearing anti-fear glasses

Like Bush before him, Cameron was at pains to identify what he called non violent extremists (commonly called conspiracy theorists). According to him, all who question government accounts of major geopolitical events are, once again, tantamount to terrorists.

Calling for online censorship to stop any questions ever being asked, it is this authoritarian need to avoid addressing evidence that led his successor, Prime Minister Theresa May, to propose wide-sweeping censorship of the Internet.

At the time of writing, the UK is among the many nations still in so called “lockdown” following the outbreak of COVID19. When UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the U.N General Assembly in September 2019 he delivered a speech which seemed weirdly out of context. With Brexit and possible conflict with Iran high on the agenda his address, which barely touched on those issues, was received with considerable bewilderment.

Six months later his predictive powers appear to be remarkable. It transpires that Johnson’s comments were extremely relevant. Just six months too early.

There are today people today who are actually still anti-science […] A whole movement called the anti-Vaxxers, who refuse to acknowledge the evidence that vaccinations have eradicated smallpox […] And who by their prejudices are actually endangering the very children they want to protect […] I am profoundly optimistic about the ability of new technology to serve as a liberator and remake the world wondrously and benignly […] Together, we can vanquish killer diseases.”

Despite the wealth of scientific evidence which justifies scepticism about some vaccines, anti-vaxxer (a variant of conspiracy theorist), is another label used to convince people not to consider evidence. The assertion is that those who question vaccines all fundamentally reject the concept of artificially inducing an immune response against a disease.

This isn’t true but how would you know? The anti-vaxxer label alone is sufficient to convince most to turn away.

Johnson’s speech rambled across so many seemingly irrelevant subjects there is little reason to suspect any COVID 19 foreknowledge. But given the global pandemic that would occur just a few months later, it was certainly prescient. Johnson was sufficiently concerned about the supposedly baseless questions of so called conspiracy theorists (or anti-vaxxers) to allege they killed children. A ludicrous suggestion the mainstream media strongly promoted.

It doesn’t matter that academic research has proven that the official account of 9/11 cannot possibly be true; it makes no difference that Mossad agents admitted that they had gone to New York on the morning of 9/11 to “document the event;” studies showing that approximately 90% of the total 20th Century disease reduction in the U.S. occurred prior to the widespread use of vaccines are irrelevant.

None of these facts need to be known by anyone and governments are going to censor all who try to tell others about them. All questions that reference them are crazy conspiracy theories. They are both stupid questions and a huge threat to both national security and the safety of the little children.

One of the recurring themes the people labelled conspiracy theorists discuss is that policy is made behind the closed doors of corporate boardrooms and policy think tanks. It doesn’t matter who you elect or what party you choose to rule over you, they are only capable of tinkering at the edges of the policy platform.

The policy agenda is set at a globalist level. So the fact that, over two decades, one U.S president and two British Prime Minsters were delivering essentially the same message doesn’t surprise the conspiracy theorists.

As we move toward a world where certain ideas are forbidden and only officially approved questions can be asked, where governments and corporations have a monopoly on the truth and everything else is a conspiracy theory, only one thing really matters. The evidence.

Hofstadter’s believed that his paranoid style militants constant citation of evidence was merely an attempt to “protect his cherished convictions.” This could be true, but the only way to find out is to look at that evidence. The label of the conspiracy theorist has been deliberately created in order to convince you not to look at it.

Regardless of whether or not you think someone’s opinion is a conspiracy theory, you owe it to yourself and your children to consider the evidence they cite. Perhaps you will reject it. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But to reject it, without knowing what it is, really is crazy. Your only other option is to unquestioningly accept whatever you are told by the government, globalist think tanks, multinational corporations and their mainstream media partners.

If you choose to believe that everyone who claims to have identified the malfeasance of officials, the crimes of government or the corruption of powerful global institutions, are all conspiracy theorists, then you have accepted that the establishment is beyond reproach.

If you also agree the same established hierarchy can not only determine what you can or cannot know, but can also set all the policies and legislation which dictates your behaviour and defines the limits of your freedom, you have elected to be a slave and don’t value democracy in the slightest.

German Official Leaks Report Denouncing Corona as ‘A Global False Alarm’

This Post, the 3rd of our series explains why governments in most countries miscalculated. Poor data, bad statistics and models, groupthink and over reaction. But this time, what we are seeing is not turning back or reconsidering of useless decisions but "damage control" with limits on information, smearing of whistle blowers and other doctors who do not toe the line.

The document originated in Germany, but any other country in Europe would have provided a similar background.


German Official Leaks Report Denouncing Corona as ‘A Global False Alarm’

Daniele Pozzati
May 29, 2020


Germany’s federal government and mainstream media are engaged in damage control after a report that challenges the established Corona narrative leaked from the interior ministry.

Some of the report key passages are:

The dangerousness of Covid-19 was overestimated: probably at no point did the danger posed by the new virus go beyond the normal level.
The people who die from Corona are essentially those who would statistically die this year, because they have reached the end of their lives and their weakened bodies can no longer cope with any random everyday stress (including the approximately 150 viruses currently in circulation).
Worldwide, within a quarter of a year, there has been no more than 250,000 deaths from Covid-19, compared to 1.5 million deaths [25,100 in Germany] during the influenza wave 2017/18.
The danger is obviously no greater than that of many other viruses. There is no evidence that this was more than a false alarm.
A reproach could go along these lines: During the Corona crisis the State has proved itself as one of the biggest producers of Fake News.
So far, so bad. But it gets worse.

The report focuses on the “manifold and heavy consequences of the Corona measures” and warns that these are “grave”.

More people are dying because of state-imposed Corona-measures than they are being killed by the virus.

The reason is a scandal in the making:

A Corona-focused German healthcare system is postponing life-saving surgery and delaying or reducing treatment for non-Corona patients.

Berlin in Denial Mode. The scientists fight back.

Initially, the government tried to dismiss the report as “the work of one employee”, and its contents as “his own opinion” – while the journalists closed ranks, no questions asked, with the politicians.

But the 93-pages report titled “Analysis of the Crisis Management” has been drafted by a scientific panel appointed by the interior ministry and composed by external medical experts from several German universities.

The report was the initiative of a department of the interior ministry called Unit KM4 and in charge with the “Protection of critical infrastructures”.

This is also where the German official turned whistleblower, Stephen Kohn, work(ed), and from where he leaked it to the media.

The authors of the report issued a joint press release already on Mai 11th, berating the government for ignoring expert advise, and asking for the interior minister to officially comment upon the experts joint statement:

“Therapeutic and preventive measures should never bring more harm than the illness itself. Their aim should be to protect the risk groups, without endangering the availability of medical care and the health of the whole population, as it is unfortunately occurring”

“We in the scientific and medical praxis are experiencing the secondary damages of the Corona-measures on our patients on a daily basis.”

“We therefore ask the Federal Ministry of the Interior, to comment upon our press release, and we hope for a pertinent discussion regarding the [Corona] measures, one that leads to the best possible solution for the whole population”

At the time of writing, the German government had yet to react.

But the facts are – sadly – vindicating the medical experts’ worries.

On Mai 23 the German newspaper Das Bild titled: “Dramatic consequences of the Corona-Measures: 52,000 Cancer Ops delayed.”

Inside, a aeading medical doctor warns that “we will feel the side-effects of the Corona crisis for years”.

Shooting the Whistleblower. Ignoring the Message.

As Der Spiegel reported on Mai 15th: “Stephen Kohn [the whistleblower] has since been suspended from duty. He was advised to obtain a lawyer and his work laptop was confiscated.”

Kohn had originally leaked the report on May 9th to the liberal-conservative magazine Tichys Einblick one of Germany’s most popular alternative media outlets.

News of the report went mainstream in Germany during the second week of Mai – but already in the third week media and politicians alike stopped discussing the issue by refusing to comment upon it.

Emblematic was the approach taken by Günter Krings, the representative for Interior Minister Horst Seehofer – the whistleblower’s boss:

Asked it he would treat the document seriously, Krings replied:

“If you start analyzing papers like that, then pretty soon you’ll be inviting the guys with the tin foil hats to parliamentary hearings.”

Men in tin foil hats – Aluhut in German – is a term used to describe people who believe in conspiracy theories.

Indeed one article by Der Spiegel addressing the Corona protest movement and the consequences of the leaked report contained the word “conspiracy” no fewer than 17 times!

And no discussions of the issues raised by the report itself.

Outside Germany the news has virtually gone unreported.

The Protest Movement – or “Corona-Rebellen”.

Germans begun demonstrating against Lockdowns as early as April.

And thousands of citizens keep showing up at demos every week-end, even as the government is easing the restrictions.

The demos are not merely against restrictions, which have actually been comparatively mild compared to many other Western countries.

The demos question the entire Corona Narrative, and even more its principals, especially the role Bill Gates is playing, as the WHO second biggest donor (the first one since Trump suspended U.S. contribution).

Indeed the biggest such demos took place in Stuttgart on May 9th, where tens of thousands people assembled to say no – to the NWO.

Germans are saying no to any Orwellian solution the government might one day impose out of a questionable “emergency status”, from mass surveillance Apps to mandatory vaccinations.

The leaked report has proved their fears to be well founded.

At least as far as the fake nature of the “Corona pandemic” is concerned

Dr Paul: "Listen to the Doctors, End the Lockdowns!"

This is the second post from our series on Corona Virus and the Lockdowns. Probably the most controversial one. Dr Paul is a well known libertarian politician and as such I do not agree with many of his relatively extreme positions. Not that they are stupid, far from it, but often, other political factors just make such ideas difficult or even impossible to apply.

This said, Dr Paul is also a doctor and his opinion is therefore far more educated than many we hear on the net... And he is independent!


Guest Post by Ron Paul

Six hundred physicians recently signed a letter to President Trump calling for an end to the coronavirus lockdowns. The physicians wrote that, far from protecting public health, the lockdowns are causing “exponentially growing negative health consequences” for millions of Americans.

Since the lockdowns began, there have been increases in alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence. There has also been an increase in calls to suicide hotlines. This is a direct result of the mass unemployment and limitations on people’s activities resulting from the lockdowns. As long as millions of Americans are sitting at home wondering how to survive until the government says they can go back to work — assuming the lockdowns did not drive their employers out of business, there will be more substance abuse and suicides.


At the start of the lockdowns, Americans were told to stay away from emergency rooms and doctors’ offices to avoid exposure to coronavirus. This has led Americans to neglect their health. US hospitals have seen a 40 percent decline in the number of patients admitted for severe heart attacks since March. Does anyone believe that the coronavirus panic just happened to coincide with a miraculous decline in heart attacks?

Physicians have also become unable to help many stroke victims who coronavirus lockdowns have kept from seeking medical assistance.
Early in the coronavirus panic, hospitals were told to cancel elective procedures to ensure space was available for an expected wave of coronavirus patients. But hospitals were not overwhelmed by coronavirus patients. Beds and other resources were unused.

According to the American Hospital Association, this has cost healthcare providers tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue. Inner-city and rural hospitals that already operate on slim profit margins are especially hard hit by the financial impact of the lockdowns. These hospitals may have to cut back on services. Some may even close. This will make it even more difficult for rural and inner-city Americans to obtain quality, affordable healthcare.

Postponing needed surgeries will have serious consequences. Many patients whose surgeries have been delayed will find that their once easily treatable conditions now require intensive and expensive care.

Some people are forgoing disease management and checkups that could keep them from developing more serious problems. The coronavirus lockdowns have even caused the canceling of chemotherapy treatments.

According to the physicians’ letter to President Trump, the coronavirus lockdowns are preventing 150,000 Americans a month from finding out they have cancer. Skipped routine cancer screenings mean cancer is not detected in an early stage, when it is most easily treated.

The coronavirus lockdowns have upended the lives of Americans to “protect” them from a virus with a 0.2 percent fatality rate, with the majority of those fatalities occurring in nursing homes and among people with chronic health conditions. Instead, the rational response would be to protect the vulnerable, and let the rest of the people live their lives. But politicians and government-anointed “experts” do not respond rationally to a “crisis,” especially when a panicked reaction can increase their power and prestige.

The lesson of the unnecessary lockdowns is clear: Government bureaucrats and politicians, even the media’s beloved Dr. Fauci, must be stripped of the ability to infringe on our liberty and prosperity.

This is Post one of a series of posts from doctors, Nobel prizes and other authorities highlighting the absurdities and propaganda we have been served concerning the Corona Virus crisis. Now that we are almost 6 months into the so called pandemics, some conclusions can be drawn. I do not necessarily agree with all the points discussed bellow but still believe these people are worth listening to, to form an educated opinion.

In this first post, based on strong statistical evidence, Prof Michael Levitt gives his opinion that the lockdowns were not only mistakes but counter-productive. This is a scientific opinion. We will later listen to economists showing us from an economist point of view, how the social over-reaction was not only counter productive but will in the end kill more people than doing nothing, on top of course of destroying our economies which by itself will end up being even more costly in human lives in the long term.

After these last few posts on Corona virus, we will move to the economic and social consequences as they start boiling over to the surface as can be seen most clearly in the US now. One thing is certain, the virus was only a black swan, our social and economic systems will be facing daunting risks and challenges over the coming years. This is the beginning of a process of transformation on a scale we haven't seen for the last 500 years.   

Nobel Prize Winner: Lockdowns Are "A Huge Mistake"

Authored by Edward Peter Stringham via The American Institute for Economic research,

Michael Levitt is Professor of computer science and structural biology at Stanford Medical School and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

He has been a close observer of the pandemic and the response from the outset through its movement to Europe, the U.K., and the U.S.. Last month, speaking to the Unherd podcast and youtube channel, he offered some compelling thoughts and observers, and a striking conclusion.

Below is a transcript of the parts I found most relevant.

Q: So you noticed that the curve was less of an exponential curve than we might have feared, in those early days?
A: In some ways there was never any exponential growth from the minute I looked at it, there were never any two days that had exactly the same growth rate — and they were getting slow…of course you could have non exponential growth where every single day they’re getting more than exponential — but the growth was always sub-exponential. So that’s the first step.
Q: [In the UK] we talk endlessly about the R-rate — the reproduction rate — and apparently that began very high, maybe as high as 3, and … [we’ve now] got it down below 1 in the UK. Intuitively, if there’s a high reproduction rate, you should see that exponential curve just going up and up.
A: Well no, wait, okay. The R-0, which is very popular, is in some ways a faulty number. Let me explain why. The rate of growth doesn’t depend on R-0. It depends on R-0 and the time you are infectious. So if you are twice as long infectious and have half the R-0 you’ll get exactly the same growth rate. This is sort of intuitive, but it’s not explained, and therefore it seems to me that I would say at the present time R-0 became important because of a lot of movies — it was very popular — talked about R-0.
Epidemiologists talk about R-0 but, looking at all the mathematics, you have to specify the time infectious at the same time to have any meaning. The other problem is that R-0 decreases — we don’t know why R-0 decreases. It could be social distancing, it could be prior immunity, it could be hidden cases.
Q: You’ve been observing the shapes of these curves and how the R-0 number tends to come down and the curve tends to flatten in some kind of natural way regardless of intervention. Is that what you are observing?
A: We don’t know. I think the big test is going to be Sweden. Sweden is practicing a level of social distancing that is keeping children in schools, keeping people at work. They are obviously having more deaths in countries like Israel or Austria that are practicing very very strict social distancing but I think it is not a crazy policy. The reason I felt that social distancing was unimportant is practicing very very strict social distancing, but I think it is not a crazy policy.
The reason I felt that social distancing was unimportant is that I had two examples in China to start with and then we had the additional examples. The first one was South Korea (yeah), and Iran, and Italy. The beginning of all the epidemics showing a slowing down, and it was very hard for me to believe that those three countries could practice social-distancing as well as China. China was amazing, especially outside Hubei, in that they had no additional outbreaks. People left Hubei, they were very carefully tracked, had to wear face masks all the time, had to take their temperatures all the time, and there were no further outbreaks.
So this did not happen in either in South Korea or in Italy or in Iran. Now, two months later something else suggests that social distancing might not be important, and that is that the total number of deaths we’re seeing in New York City, in parts of England, in parts of France, in northern Italy — all seem to stop at about the same direction of the population so are they all practicing equally good social distancing? I don’t think so.
The problem I think is outbreaks occurring in different regions. I think social distancing that stops people moving from London to Manchester is probably a really good idea. My feeling is that in London, and in New York City, all the people who got infected, all got infected before anybody noticed. There’s no way that the infection grew so quickly in New York City without the infection spreading very quickly. So one of the key things is to stop people, who know that they’re sick, from infecting the others. Here again, China has three very, very important advantages that are not high-tech that don’t involve security tracking of telephones.
What they involve is, number one, the tradition in China for years, of wearing a face mask when you’re sick. As soon as the coronavirus started everybody wore a face mask. It doesn’t have to be a hygienic face mask it just has to be a face covering to stop you spraying saliva, micro droplets of saliva on somebody you talk to. The second thing in China is that because they were so scared of the SARS epidemic in most airports, stations where you pay tolls et cetera, there are thermometers. Infrared thermometers that that measure your temperature. So having your temperature measured at every single store entrance — either with a handheld thermometer or with something mounted on the wall — is something completely standard in China. And the third thing is that almost all payments in China are made not using a credit card, so in some senses it is very much easier there to practice social distancing. Of course, in addition they know where people are.
Q: What’s your view of the lockdown policy that so many European countries and states in America have introduced?
A: I think it is a huge mistake. I think we need smart lockdowns. If we were to do this again, we would probably insist on face masks, hand sanitizers, and some kind of payment that did not involve touching right from the very beginning. This would slow down new outbreaks and I think that for example they found as I understand, that children, even if they’re infected, never infect adults, so why do we not have children at school? Why do we not have people working? England, France, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, are all reaching levels of saturation that are going to be very, very close to herd immunity — So that’s a good thing. I think the policy of herd immunity is the right policy. I think Britain was on exactly the right track — before they were fed wrong numbers and they made a huge mistake.
I see the standout winners as Germany and Sweden. They didn’t practice too much lock down, they got enough people sick to get some herd immunity. The standout  losers are countries like Austria, Australia, Israel that actually had very very strict lockdowns but didn’t have many cases. So they have damaged their economies, caused massive social damage, damaged the educational year of their children, but not obtained any herd immunity. 
I think in many ways the European countries are fine. They didn’t need to have lockdown but they have all reached a high enough level of infection not to have to worry about further future attacks of coronavirus. The United States seems to be heading that way, they’re certainly that way in New York City but they still have a long way to go
Q: What you’re saying is that, you believe success — as we are currently measuring it which is as few cases as possible and as small a spread of the virus as possible — is actually failure?
A: I think if you really control your epidemic, for example, California, it’s now had lockdowns for six weeks, and wants another four weeks, they have so far less than a hundred deaths, that means they don’t have more (let’s say a hundred thousand) in people, that is not enough to give them significant herd immunity. They didn’t need to do all that lock down.
The lockdown is particularly hurtful in countries that don’t have good social infrastructure, countries like the United States and Israel. Many, many people have been really really hurt — especially young people. You know I think that everybody panicked — they were fed incorrect numbers by epidemiologists and you know this I think led to led to a situation. 
There is no doubt in my mind that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdowns will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor. One very easy way to see this is, and again I am getting into a sensitive territory here, but economists have a very simple way of looking at death. They don’t count people. They come to the conclusion that if you’re 20 and you die that’s a greater loss than if you’re 85 and you die. It’s a hard issue, but in some ways are we valuing the potential future life of the 20 year old? Are we valuing the loss of more senior persons by what’s called daily disability-adjusted life years. Basically if somebody is in their 80s, has Alzheimer’s disease, and then dies from pneumonia (perhaps due to corona) that is less of a loss than if a 15 year old is riding his motorcycle bike and gets run over. This is an important way of looking at death.
It’s also you know, right now, the number of excess deaths is around 130,000 up to yesterday, [May 1st]. This is for all of Europe, for a population of around 330 million people. So an excess of 100,000 for this whole year, is actually not that much. In some of the worst flu epidemics we get to those kinds of numbers — sometimes it’s a bit more, sometimes a little bit less. 
Now, I’m not saying flu is like coronavirus, I’m just simply saying that the burden of death of flu is like coronavirus. Especially when we correct for the fact that people who die from coronavirus are older on average than people who died from flu. Flu kills young people, it kills two or three times more people under 65 than does coronavirus. If we put those facts into the situation we find that the burden of death from coronavirus and Phillip Shaw will, in Europe, where we have good numbers in less than that of a very flu.
Another factor which has not been considered are all the cancer patients who aren’t being treated, or all the heart cardiology patients who aren’t being treated. I’ve got estimates of tens of thousands of people who are basically going to be dying because of lack of that treatment — and generally again the age group who die of cancer are younger than the age group who die of coronavirus. 
There’s one very easy way to sort of summarize coronavirus. I put an article in the medium by the pretty famous British statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge [University] and he had said that the numbers coming from Ferguson suggested that we had to lose about one year of people. It turns out that I immediately wrote an article in the same medium and replied to him, saying that in fact the answer was actually one month, not one year. So basically my feeling is, and it’s being supported by the numbers, is that the amount of excess death you need to reach saturation, I’m not going to call it herd immunity, where the virus by itself stops, is on the order of four weeks of excess. Now to give you some idea in the European area where there is good monitoring, by a website called EuroMoMo, run out of Denmark, which covers about 300 million people. Every week in Europe in that area there’s around 50,000 natural deaths. So in four weeks there will be about 200,000 extra deaths in that year — and it looks like coronavirus in Europe where it’s no doubt that it’s the most severely hit area in the world — we’ll probably reach around 200,000 or 4 weeks worth.
Q: So what happens if what you’re saying is there’s a sort of statistical observation which is around four weeks of excess death and then the pandemic seems to peter out, or begin to flatten out. What does that mean policy-wise for these European countries then?
A: If we could protect the old people perfectly, then the death rates would be very, very low. So for example in Europe there were about 140,000 excess deaths in the last nine weeks. The number of those excess deaths who are younger than 65 is about 10%. So basically 13,000 of 130,000 deaths are actually under 65 years old and if we had simply been able to protect elderly people then the death rate would have been much much less. But the key thing is to have as much infection for as little possible death and also do whatever you can to keep the hospitals full but not overflowing. It’s a difficult calculation and the trouble is that in Sweden there’s no political concerns.
The trouble is is that in Israel and I know as well in the United States, everything is political and therefore nobody could say something like this. They would say, “Ah, but you are not valuing death — the thing that should have been done is for the media to stress to people that everyday somebody dies. These people are essentially in the same age band, and they die from Corona and other comorbidities, other diseases. 
I’ve become a huge fan of Twitter. I’d never used twitter before and for me Twitter is the best discussion forum I had seen since I was a student at the Cambridge Laboratory of Natural Biology. Which is a 26 Nobel Prize winning lab. The best lab in the world. The Twitter discussion is phenomenal and I’m getting documents from Italy showing that many of the Covid deaths were either dead before they were tested or else they had up to three other conditions. There is nothing wrong with this, people die for all sorts of reasons, but the news should be stressing this and maybe they should be counting it as a 0.1 Covid death.
Countries seem to be racing to have as many Covid deaths as they could, and this is a huge mistake. In the flu season no one cares about these people. I mean, the total number of Covid deaths in Europe will be very similar to a severe flu season, and you know, this is serious. Flu is a serious disease. Maybe we should just shut down the economy during the flu season. I mean people should have been made to understand it. Unfortunately I think in Britain they started out wanting to go for herd immunity without too much lockdown, there was then a scary paper — which is likely to be retracted — which influenced Italy as well where basically it was claimed they were — [Interviewer interrupts]
Q: I know you had some specific queries about Neil Ferguson’s paper; we had him on the show last week. So, what did you think he got wrong in those models and predictions?
A: His work was on modelling, and around the 10th of February he had his first paper (that I saw) and in there he was getting a case fatality ratio of around 15%, whereas all my observations were saying that it was around three or four percent. So I was suspicious: I looked at the paper very carefully and in a footnote to a table it said “assuming exponential growth for six days at fifteen percent a day.” Now, I had looked at China, and never, ever seen exponential growth that wasn’t decaying rapidly so I was suspicious. My numbers were 10% of the numbers that Ferguson had obtained. I pointed this out, in a reply in the medium — which was out there, it’s clear nobody has ever seen it but it’s there, and I didn’t hide it it just didn’t get any likes and this said that it was much more like one month than one year and have an exchange with Spiegelhalta and Ferguson, where I tried to show my case.
But all I was doing was just simple proportionality using exactly the same profile of — different ages have different death rates, so there’s a profile saying that people over 80 have a certain fraction of the disk [deaths] people between 17 and 80 have a different fraction — just using that data… and simply saying we want the number of deaths that occurred on the Diamond Princess to be the same number that we found which was 7 or 8. If you do that, and then you apply that proportionality to Britain and the USA, you find that for Britain the half a million drops to about 50,000 and in the United States the two million drops to 200,000. Essentially a year dropping to a month.
Q: And so the the argument that is made here is that whether you believe the infection fatality rate is point three percent or whether you believe it’s point eight percent there is still a big chunk of the population, the majority population who hasn’t had been exposed to the disease or hasn’t had it and therefore if we just let it rip there will be many many tens possibly even further hundreds according to Professor Ferguson of thousands of deaths and that’s why it’s politically totally not an option to be at do anything other than follow this ultra cautious approach.What do you say to that?
A: The World Health Organization, and epidemiologists in general, can only go wrong if they give [politicians] a number smaller. If I said it’s going to be 1 billion deaths from coronavirus and it’s, “oh, you guys have done what I’ve said and there’s only gonna be a hundred thousands,” that is considered good policy. They overestimated bird flu by a factor of a hundred, or ten thousand in The Guardian. The Guardian wrote about this. Ebola was overestimated by a factor of 100 I think. They see their role as scaring people into doing something. I can understand that and there’s something to be said for it. If you could practice lock down with zero economic costs, and zero social costs — let’s do it. But the trouble is that those costs are huge, we’re gonna have fatalities from hospitals being closed down, additional children in trauma, businesses damaged — maybe less so in the UK because of the compensation policy — but certainly massive economic damage in the USA and in Israel, and in other countries. So you need to balance both of these things.
That is what I don’t think is responsible. In my work if I say a number is too small and I’m wrong or a number is too big and I’m wrong, both of those errors are the same. If I’m 10 percent too high or 10 percent too low that is okay. It seems that being a factor of a thousand too high is perfectly okay in epidemiology, but being a factor of three too low, is too low. 
Q: I’m trying to think about what this means for the UK and for these countries that are trying to work out what to do next.Is your view then having looked at the numbers that if we had not implemented lockdown we would have seen a fall off anyway is that a fair summary?
A: We could have had smart lockdown. Sweden, for example, doesn’t allow gatherings of more than 50 people. I think a football game would be a really bad idea right now, because people shout and therefore spray saliva on everyone around them, and they could infect a lot of people. But you know Sweden is doing fine, their deaths again are very localized to nursing homes, like they are in England — it’s the same profile.
I think that you know again it’s Sweden so all the evidence suggests that. So my contradiction is the following: Britain, if they had done nothing would have had reported deaths. Now remember there’s a difference of reported death, my numbers are all reported. This would have four weeks of additional reported death when the numbers actually came in from what were the real axis death. My guess is they would be less than that so it would not have been double. It wasn’t in the month but maybe one and three quarters or so on. So that is my feeling — we’re seeing this in Europe we will know the answer in three or four weeks time. We will know for all of Europe exactly what the excess death of coronavirus was, right now it’s a hundred and thirty seven thousand.
Q: Do you find when you’ve been making these points — in the media that you received a lot of backlash? Do you think there’s a lot of political pressure, as an academic and as an academic you know they’re one of your colleagues in Stanford dr. Ioannidis has also put out studies that seem to become skeptical and has received a lot of political blowback.
A: I went on CNN once when he was CNN Vicky Anderson out of London. I appeared on Fox News a couple of times basically said this is all just common sense because I appeared on Fox News CNN wouldn’t have me anymore. So basically I have had very clear of things. I had one article in the Los Angeles Times which did great but since I was not saying things that were too extreme none of the East Coast newspapers wanted me, they quoted me, but they wouldn’t have me. What’s disconcerting is, a few of my academic colleagues — even relatives — were very upset with me. Because in my earlier writing I published a report, the medium report from the 22nd of March but on the 13th or 14th of March I distributed a 19 page report,and three academics got very upset with me. I think they were totally panicked, and they felt that if anyone thought this was true they wouldn’t lock down as tightly as they should, I’m in fact friends with all the people again, there are no hard feelings. 
Q: Let me leave you with one final question: what’s your prognosis, what do you think is now gonna happen with this… what happens next?
A: There will be a reckoning. Maybe countries will start to see that they need governments that are not necessarily great in rhetoric, but actually thinking and doing. I often go back and think about what Socrates said 2,400 years ago: use your common sense instead of listening to the rhetoric of leaders. We have become very influenced by [rhetoric] that. I think this is another foul-up on the part of the baby boomers.
I am a real baby-boomer, I was born in 1947, and I think we’ve really screwed up. We cause pollution, we allowed the world’s population to increase three-fold, we’ve caused the problems of global warming, we’ve left your generation with a real mess in order to save a really small number of very old people. If I was a young person now, I would say, “now you guys are gonna pay for this.”
We have my family whatsapp and very early on I said this is a virus being designed to get rid of the baby boomers. You know I don’t know, I think my wife thinks this is going to be a take it to the streets thing,and we’re gonna have the young people on the street saying you guys have really screwed up it’s time to go. And I always joke with her, saying well at least I’ve made lots of friends among the young people, I’ll be okay.
But quite frankly you know I’ve had a great life, and I must say this to all the young faces in front of me. I have a grandson who’s 17. I’d much rather have young people live for a very long time. That said I do have a mother who’s a hundred and five years old living in London with my brother, she’s in lockdown and I talk to her by whatsapp every single day on FaceTime, and she’s fine. She still uses her phone and so on so you know these differences but…
You guys should get out there and do something don’t accept this anymore we screwed up too much 

Did we allucinate an epidemics?

The corona virus in perspective.
So much economic destruction for so few casualties.
In France the median age of death from the virus is 84 year old.
This is older that life expectancy!
In many cases, it is not even certain that the virus is the cause of death.
Which practically means that the added mortality in 2020 will be nil!

This crisis will remain as one of the biggest blunder in political history when decisions were taken based on faulty mathematical projections from Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College in London which showed hundred of thousands of deaths within months which obviously did not materialized.
Conversely, the successful strategy pursued in Asia to wear masks and isolate a few hot spots resulted in a death rate 10 to 20 times less in countries like Japan and Korea.

Now the medical emergency is almost over in Europe and past its peak in the US, just as the economic crisis is gaining speed. The social and political consequences will wait until later this year but will probably go far beyond a mere epidemics.