The Ancient Greeks: Crucible of Civilization Episode 3 Empire of the Mind

PBS (2000)

Film Review

Along with the phenomenal material success of Athenian democracy (thanks to a large number of Mediterranean colonies) came a revolution in science and thinking. The Athenians now abandoned the ancient Babylonian belief that heavenly bodies were god. Instead the Greeks came to see the moon, planets and stars as inanimate bodies whose movements could be explained by reason and mathematics.

Thales is credited as the first Western scientist* to write a book on using celestial bodies in ship navigation. He also calculated the height of the Great Pyramid of Egypt by measuring its shadow at high noon. Other Athenian scientists measured the earth’s circumference and built steam engines and primitive water pumps.

This was also the era of Socrates, who the filmmakers describe as the first Western philosopher. Socrates taught critical thinking, namely that it was the responsibility of every citizen to make decisions based on what they knew to be right or good.

In 431 BC when Athens, was still the greatest power in Greece, Pericles persuaded their democratic assembly to go to war with Sparta. The latter had expanded to control all of southern Greece and, according to Pericles, posed a growing threat to Athens and the other city-states in the  Delian League.

Because Sparta had a much stronger infantry (Athens had a stronger navy), Pericles’ strategy  was to refuse to engage Sparta on land. He called for the Athenians to give up their farmlands, retreat behind Athens’ city walls and rely on imported foodstuffs.

After the Spartan burned all the fields around Athens, the city effectively relied on imported foodstuffs until one particular ship also brought the plague. Killing over a third of the population (including Pericles), the epidemic also caused the city-state to collapse into mob rule.

The mass execution of 13 naval officers who won a major battle against Sparta (on a trivial offense) proved a major loss to the Athens; naval force, dragging the war out over the next decade. In 413 BC Athens suffered a major defeat protecting a colony on Sicily, from which they never recovered. Sparta’s longtime ally Persian responded by blockading Athenian harbors. Their access to grain cut off, Athenians began dropping dead of starvation on the streets.

In 404 BC they surrendered to the Spartan commander Lysander, who installed the Thirty Tyrants’ reign of terror in Athens. After eight months in which roughly 5% of the population were subject to arbitrary arrest and execution and even more to property confiscation and/or exile, a popular uprising overthrew the tyrants and restored democratic rule.

The film end with the 39 9BC political trial (bought by Meleteus a private citizen serving as a voluntary prosecutor) and execution (by drinking hemlock) of the philosopher Socrates. His trial, in the public marketplace, by 501 citizens chosen by lot to be judges. The official charges against him were questioning the state religion and corrupting the youth of Athens. As neither offense was defined in Athenian law, the motivation seems to have been purely political. Socrates was notorious for publicly pointing out the wrongdoings of Athens’ political leaders and their Persian patrons.**

See Role of Persian Patrons https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1988/eirv15n46-19881118/eirv15n46-19881118_024-the_third_trial_of_socrates_usa.pdf

He was convinced by a small majority 280 to 221. The film includes profoundly moving excerpts from speeches Socrates gave at his trial and to friends who visited him in prison.

*The film asserts the Greeks were the first to employ celestial navigation, but the Chinese have astronomical records used in celestial navigation dating from 3000-1800 BC and the Polynesians built stick models used in celestial navigation in 1000 BC.

**See https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1988/eirv15n46-19881118/eirv15n46-19881118_024-the_third_trial_of_socrates_usa.pdf

Ron Clutz

Michael Simpson of Sheffield University did the literature review and tells it like it is in his recent paper The Scientific Case Against Net Zero: Falsifying the Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis published at Journal of Sustainable Development (2024).  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Abstract

The UK Net Zero by 2050 Policy was undemocratically adopted by the UK government in 2019. Yet the science of so-called ‘greenhouse gases’ is well known and there is no reason to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), or nitrous oxide (N2O) because absorption of radiation is logarithmic. Adding to or removing these naturally occurring gases from the atmosphere will make little difference to the temperature or the climate. Water vapor (H2O) is claimed to be a much stronger ‘greenhouse gas’ than CO2, CH4 or N2O but cannot be regulated because it occurs naturally in vast quantities.

This work explores the established science and recent developments in scientific knowledge around Net Zero with a view to making a rational recommendation for policy makers. There is little scientific evidence to support the case for Net Zero and that greenhouse gases are unlikely to contribute to a ‘climate emergency’ at current or any likely future higher concentrations. There is a case against the adoption of Net Zero given the enormous costs associated with implementing the policy, and the fact it is unlikely to achieve reductions in average near surface global air temperature, regardless of whether Net Zero is fully implemented and adopted worldwide. Therefore, Net Zero does not pass the cost-benefit test. The recommended policy is to abandon Net Zero and do nothing about so-called ‘greenhouse gases’. [Topics are shown below with excerpted contents.]

1. Introduction

The argument for Net Zero is that the concentration of CO2 in air is increasing, some small portion of which may be due to human activities and that Net Zero will address this supposed ‘problem’. The underpinning consensus hypothesis is that the human emission of so-called ‘greenhouse gases’ will increase concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere and thereby increase the global near surface atmospheric temperature by absorbance of infrared radiation leading to catastrophic changes in the weather. This leads to the idea that global temperatures should be limited to 2°C and preferably 1.5°C to avoid catastrophic climate change (Paris Climate Agreement, 2015).

A further hypothesis is that there are tipping points in the climate system which will result in positive feedback and a runaway heating of the planet’s atmosphere may occur (Schellnhuber & Turner, 2009; Washington et al., 2009; Levermann et al., 2009; Notz & Schellnhuber, 2009; Lenton et al., 2008; Dakos et al., 2009; Archer et al., 2009). Some of these tipping point assumptions are built into faulty climate models, the outputs of which are interpreted as facts or evidence by activists and politicians. However, output from computer models is not data, evidence or fact and is controversial (Jaworowski, 2007; Bastardi, 2018; Innis, 2008: p.30; Smith, 2021; Nieboer, 2021; Craig, 2021). Only empirical scientifically established facts should be considered so that cause and effect are clear.

From the point of view of physics, the atmosphere is an almost perfect example of a stable system (Coe, et al., 2021). The climate operates with negative feedback (Le Chatelier’s Principle) as do most natural systems with many degrees of freedom (Kärner, 2007; Lindzen et al., 2001 & 2022). The ocean acts as a heat sink, effectively controlling the air temperature. Recent global average surface temperatures remain relatively stable (Easterbrook, 2016; Moran, 2015; Morano, 2021; Marohasy, 2017; Ridley, 2010) or warming very slightly from other causes (Sangster, 2018) and the increase in temperature from 1880 through 2000 is statistically indistinguishable from 0°K (Frank, 2010; Statistics Norway, 2023) and is less than predicted by climate models (Fyfe, 2013). This shows the difference between the consensus view and established facts.

The IPCC has produced six major assessment reports (AR1 to 6) and several special reports which report on a great deal of good science (Noting that the IPCC does not do any science itself but merely compiles literature reviews). The Summaries for Policy Makers (SPM) are followed by most politicians. Yet the SPM do not agree in large part with the scientific assessment by the IPCC reports and appear to exaggerate the role of CO2 and other ‘greenhouse gases’ in climate change. It appears that the SPM is written by governments and activists before  the scientific assessment is reached which is a questionable practice (Ball 2011, 2014 and 2016; Smith 2021).

Other organizations have produced reports of a similar nature and using a similar literature (e.g. Science and Public Policy Institute; The Heartland Institute; The Centre for the Study of CO2; CO2 Science; Global Warming Policy Foundation; Net Zero Watch; The Fraser Institute; CO2 Coalition) and arrived at completely different conclusions to the IPCC and the SPM (Idso et al., 2013a; Idso et al., 2013b; Idso et al., 2014; Idso et al., 2015a, 2015b; Happer, et al., 2022). There are also some web pages (e.g. Popular Technology) which list over a thousand mainstream journal papers casting doubt on the role of CO2 and other greenhouse gases as a source of climate change. For example, a recent report by the CO2 Coalition (2023) states clearly Net Zero regulations and actions are scientifically invalid because they:

• “Fabricate data or omit data that contradict their conclusions.
• Rely on computer models that do not work.
• Rely on findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that are government opinions, not science.
• Omit the extraordinary social benefits of CO2 and fossil fuels.
• Omit the disastrous consequences of reducing fossil fuels and CO2 emissions to Net Zero.
• Reject the science that demonstrates there is no risk of catastrophic global warming caused by fossil fuels and CO2.

Net Zero, then, violates the tenets of the scientific method that for more than 300 years has underpinned the advancement of western civilization.” (CO2 Coalition, 2023; p. 1)

With such a strong scientific conviction the entire Net Zero agenda needs investigating. This paper reviews some of the important science which supports and undermines the Net Zero agenda.

[…]

3. Greenhouse Gas Theory

The historical development of the greenhouse effect, early discussions and controversies are presented by Mudge (2012) and Strangeways (2011). The explanation of the greenhouse effect or greenhouse gas theory of climate change is given in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis (IPCC, 2007, p. 946):

“Greenhouse gases effectively absorb thermal infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface, by the atmosphere itself due to some gases, and by clouds. Atmospheric radiation is emitted to all sides, including downward to the Earth’s surface. Thus, greenhouse gases trap heat within the surface-troposphere system. This is called the greenhouse effect.”

This is plausible but does not necessarily lead to global warming as radiation will be emitted at longer wavelengths in other areas of the electromagnetic spectrum where greenhouse gases do not absorb radiation potentially leading to an energy balance without increase in temperature.

[…]

3.1 The Falsifications of the Greenhouse Effect

There are numerous falsifications of the greenhouse gas theory (sometimes called ‘trace gas heating theory’, see Siddons in Ball, 2011, p.19), of global warming and/or climate change (Ball, 2011; Ball, 2014; Ball, 2016; Gerlich & Tscheuschner, 2009; Hertzberg et al, 2017; Allmendinger, 2017; Blaauw, 2017; Nikolov and Zeller, 2017).

[…]

3.1.1 The Ideal Gas Law

PV = nRT (1)

The average near-surface temperature for planetary bodies with an atmosphere calculated from the Ideal Gas Law is in excellent agreement with measured values suggesting that the greenhouse effect is very small or non-existent (Table 1).

[…]

3.1.2 Measurement of Infrared Absorption of the Earth’s Atmosphere

It is now possible to calculate the effect of ‘greenhouse gases’ on the surface atmospheric temperature by (a) using laboratory experimental methods; (b) using the Hitran database (https://hitran.org/); (c) using satellite observations of outgoing radiation compared to Stephan-Boltzmann effective black body radiation and calculated values of temperature.

The near surface temperature and change in surface temperature can be calculated. The result is that climate sensitivity to doubling concentration of CO2 is (0.5°C) including 0.06°C from CH4 and 0.08°C from N2O which is so small as to be undetectable. Most of the temperature change has already occurred and increasing CO2, CH4, N2O concentrations will not lead to significant changes in air temperatures because absorption is logarithmic (Beer-Lambert Law of attenuation) – a law of diminishing returns.

Figure 1. Delta T vs CO2 concentration

[…]

Ball (2014) summarizes a great deal of the geological science:

“The most fundamental assumption in the theory that human CO2 is causing global warming and climate change is that an increase in CO2 will cause an increase in temperature. The problem is that every record of any duration for any period in the history of the Earth exactly the opposite relationship occurs temperature increase precedes CO2 increase. Despite that a massive deception has developed and continues.” Ball (2014: p. 1).

[…]

“Because of the absence of any physical evidence that CO2 causes global warming, the main argument for CO2 as the cause of warming rests largely on computer modelling.”  Easterbrook (2016: p.5).

The results of the models are projected far into the future (circa 80 to 100years) where uncertainties are large, but projections can be used to demonstrate unrealistic but scary scenarios (Idso et al., 2015b). The literature that is used for the IPCC reports appears to be ‘cherry picked’ to agree with their paradigms that increasing CO2 concentrations leads to warming. They ignore the vast literature in climatology, atmospheric physics, solar physics, physics, physical chemistry, geology, biology and palaeoclimatology much of which contradicts the IPCC’s assessment in the summary for policymakers (SPM).

[…]

3.1.4 Anthropogenic CO2 and the Residence time of Carbon Dioxide in Air

There is a suggestion (IPCC) that the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is different for anthropogenic CO2 and naturally occurring CO2. This breaks a fundamental scientific principle, the Principle of Equivalence. That is: if there is equivalence between two things, they have the same use, function, size, or value (Collins English Dictionary, online). Thus, CO2 is CO2 no matter where it comes from, and each molecule will behave physically and react chemically in the same way.

The figures above illustrate how exaggerated claims are made for CO2 based on the false assumption that CO2 resides in the atmosphere for long periods and can affect the climate. These results are enough to falsify the ideas of anthropogenic global warming caused by CO2 and shows how little human activity contributes to CO2 emissions and concentrations in air. The argument is clear, that if the fictitious greenhouse effect were real for CO2 the human contribution would have no measurable effect upon the climate in terms of global average surface temperature.

The residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is between 3.0 and 4.1 years using the IPCC’s own data and not the supposed 100 years or 1000 years for anthropogenic CO2 suggested by the IPCC summaries for policy makers (Harde, 2017) which contravenes the Equivalence Principle (Berry, 2019).

[…]

4. Conclusions

Like many other researchers it was assumed there was robust science behind the greenhouse gas theory and that Net Zero was essential to achieve, but after investigation it now appears that the greenhouse gas theory is questionable and has been successfully challenged for at least 100 years (Gerlich and Tscheuschner, 2009). Much better explanations for planetary near surface atmospheric temperatures are available based on robust, empirically derived scientific laws such as the Ideal Gas law.

[…]

Via https://rclutz.com/2024/12/15/straight-talk-on-climate-science-and-net-zero/

David Marks

When the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary comes before the Senate, the specter of the Samoan measles outbreak of 2019 will dramatically be invoked to challenge him. Kennedy’s critics have repeatedly relied on this topic, citing stories that claim he was responsible for an epidemic in 2019 that caused at least 83 children to die due to vaccine hesitancy. In recent articles, reporters quote previous news coverage relying on unsubstantiated and minimal data to justify their analysis.

These stories repeat dubious assertions, fail to discuss any pathological analysis, and dismiss Kennedy’s considered support of healthcare in Samoa. He had assisted the Samoan government in developing a system for health officials to assess the efficacy and safety of medical interventions or drugs, including vaccines.

In November 2019, while the deaths of Samoan children were rapidly increasing, Kennedy wrote a comprehensive letter to the Samoan Prime Minister, presenting some possible causes of the unprecedented, virulent outbreak of measles. His concerns about the epidemic in Samoa highlight striking anomalies that were apparent to a few investigators at the time, although they remain unexplained.

The most convenient and generally accepted explanations of the outbreak claim the epidemic was the result of hesitancy, causing the population to be under-vaccinated. Measles vaccination rates were low due to the previous deaths of two infants given improperly formulated injections, which had nothing to do with Kennedy’s views.

Any considered analysis of the accessible facts soundly contradicts the conjecture that the high death count was related to low vaccination rates.

In most measles epidemics, mortality is on average one in one thousand, and dying children are often malnourished or immunocompromised. From October through December of 2019, over one in a hundred Samoan children with the disease died, ten times more than any previous outbreak in the world. No accounting for this overt statistical deviance has been published.

Despite the presumptions of those who attack Kennedy, there was never any investigation into any aspect of this baffling tragedy. Edwin Tamasese, a health advocate who questioned Samoan government policies during the outbreak, gave Kennedy some insight into what was happening.

Tamasese was concerned about the number of sick and dying Samoan children and began to assist families whose children were severely ill. He and his colleagues encountered conditions that contradicted the government’s narrative.

While the press condemned him as an anti-vaxxer, Tamasese’s interventions and observations are revelatory. In an interview after the outbreak subsided, he said, “We were very careful to take statistics when we were going in to try to identify trends. When we assessed our numbers, 98 percent of those who were getting ill had been vaccinated consistently six to seven days prior to illness. The excuse was that the vaccine did not have time to become effective. However, according to an immunologist on the team, the six to seven-day period was also the length of time it would take an under-attenuated vaccine to make the recipient sick.”

Doctors in hospitals also reported that the very ill and dying children did not have symptoms consistent with normal cases of measles. When the outbreak began, blood from the first thirty-nine cases had been sent to Australia; only seven samples were positive for measles.

The government stopped testing to confirm the cause of these deaths in early November 2019. Without scientific confirmation, illness and mortality were attributed to low immunization rates. Samoan health authorities continued to claim that the only remedy for the deadly epidemic was a drive to increase vaccination; however, the campaign appeared to increase the number of measles cases.

Neighboring Pacific island countries, Tonga and Fiji, which had concurrent outbreaks of the virus — and had a different source of the measles vaccine — did not suffer the same dramatic mortality rates. This should have raised concerns, yet there hasn’t been an inquiry into why the Samoan government switched vaccine sourcing from India to Belgium midway through the crisis.

A renewed effort to vaccinate with this alternate supply began in the first week of December 2019; it was hailed as the reason the outbreak subsided. Measles vaccines take at least 10 days before creating an immune response. There has been no explanation for the data confirming that the onset of cases dropped dramatically two weeks before this vaccination drive could have had any effect.

The government response was not driven by factual analysis; the effort focused on promoting the vaccine and silencing those questioning authority.

With Samoan officials and the press deriding his work and views, Tamasese was arrested and charged with incitement of a government order and treating children without a license. Although this was deemed appropriate justice by the international news media as they echoed the government’s praise of the vaccine, reporters again failed to present the questions raised by the outbreak.

The prosecution’s primary witness against Tamasese was a nurse whose child had measles. He had suggested that administering vitamins A and C could be helpful — and standard medical treatment for measles patients. She had taken his advice and admitted that her child recovered soon afterward.

Tamasese reported that when the nurse left the courtroom, the judge, in throwing out the case, said, “That witness may as well have represented the accused.” There was relative silence from the news media when all charges against him were dismissed.

While worldwide attention on Samoa ignored dramatic inconsistencies, Kennedy was one of the few people who asked detailed and important questions. His views were marginalized; it was easier and politically correct to blame the tragedy on low rates of vaccination.

The relatively few details known about the Samoan measles outbreak indicate that forces intent on presenting vaccines as an infallible, unquestionable remedy will not tolerate scrutiny or admit failures. This continuing devious tactic is applied internationally and is eagerly supported by most governments and the press.

Analysis of the Covid-19 pandemic has only recently vindicated those who were scorned for questioning the response. The parallels to the unfolding of the epidemic in Samoa are not obscure, and support Kennedy’s contention that vaccine development, manufacturing, and application need much more effective evaluation and monitoring to prevent complications and death.

When the US government assures the public that any vaccine or medication is safe and effective, this must come from an independent, thorough, and transparent process, rather than relying only on the words and actions of those with vested interests.

The current criticism of Kennedy is an endeavor to make him look dangerously ignorant and irresponsible to sway members of the Senate. Much to the chagrin of those who vilify him, his efforts to understand and assist in the Samoan measles outbreak exemplify his thoughtfulness and capabilities.

RFK, Jr. is at the forefront of healthcare oversight; his confirmation as HHS Secretary will ensure that Americans benefit from his experience and knowledge.

The USA and all “rich” nations have experienced a cataclysmic decline in population health since the mid 1980s. All evidence points to a finite list of environmental toxins being to blame, making massive profit for powerful corporations. The devastating rise in epidemics of auto-immune and chronic allergic conditions as well as autism, obesity, diabetes, cardiac conditions, neurologic conditions and more is hard to miss. The years of covid caused a rapid explosion in these and more thanks to the destructive response which turned basic public health on its head. It is well explained by the “return on investment” that can be made from your ill health and the partnerships between public and private entities leading to massive conflicts of interest.

The personal cost of these injuries crushes the ability of individuals and families to afford to live, and is slowly indebting the middle and lower classes. Known as disaster capitalism, convincing you to be afraid is the weapon to ensure maximum profit. Fear of Bird Flu, Marburg, MPox, Ebola, Nipah, Zika; convincing you that eating bugs will save the planet; and many other transformations are all incoming ways to enforce further mass poisoning. Don’t think the infectious disease “experts” will save you. They sit front-and-centre in the lucrative business model, which needs you to be afraid and convinced by their “expertise”.

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/lawsuit-ultraproccessed-foods-teen-health-problems/

By Emily Burns

I have a vivid memory of when I realized that virtually every piece of information I heard from “mainstream media” was a lie. It was in May of 2020. I was driving back to Boston from our place in New Hampshire. Listening to NPR as I had in virtually every car ride since I was a child, I heard them discussing coronavirus cases and mortality.

As I listened, I heard someone who certainly knew the right questions to ask, the context that would have defined the gray areas, the data even then available that could have allayed fears. Instead of doing these things, I listened as they scrupulously avoided doing any of that. I was so furious I started yelling (to myself) “They’re lying! They’re lying!”

Since March of 2020, I had been scouring all aspects of coronavirus data, reading every new article on PubMed, trying to understand my own risks, and those of my family. By April, it had become clear that something wasn’t right with the flow of information, that obvious scientific next steps weren’t being taken (or published). By May, it was clear that the way the media was presenting the information, regardless of extant science, was geared towards spreading panic in service of various policy prescriptions, not towards helping people to understand the situation. But not till this drive did the scope become clear to me.

I wasn’t some “crazy Trumper.” Like many in 2016, I was absolutely gob-smacked when Trump won. It’s totally possible I cried. In March 2020, I was so disgusted with Trump’s Covid press conferences, I changed my registration back to Democrat, and voted for Biden in the Democrat primary.

But on that day in May, driving down I-95 in my red Tacoma, a flip switched in me as violently as I switched off the radio. This time, I was able to recognize every lie and every manipulation for what it was. As I fumed, I began to wonder. “What else are they lying about? Trump?!” I mulled it over for a while, realizing that all of the information I got about him was served to me, and always with a healthy side of disdain—none of it primary sources. Then I remembered “grab ‘em by the pussy.” Nope, Trump was still bad. But then to play Devil’s advocate I asked myself, “What about Bill Clinton?” Hmm…

When I got back, I canceled all of my subscriptions, changed my registration back to Republican, and signed up to volunteer for the only Republican campaign I could find—a total nut-job, but hey, it was Massachusetts.

I relay this anecdote because I think this week there are probably a reasonable number of people asking themselves why they keep getting politically whipsawed—particularly after the yanking of “sharp as a tack” Joe, and the voteless installation of Kamala. There are probably even some who find themselves, as I was in that truck four years ago, asking how much of what they’ve been told for the last 5 years, 10 years, 50 years, 100 years is a lie.

I believe the short answer is basically “most of it.” I have no idea when it started—certainly by the War in Iraq—but beyond that, who knows. In my diagnosis, it is censorship that enables these lies, and that censorship is the reason that tens of millions of very well-educated people keep getting bitch-slapped by reality. I have come to view censorship as the primary author, not just of the Covid catastrophe, but of the rancor that attends and divides us on virtually every issue. If you stay with me for a bit, I will try to both explain and back up these statements.

How Did We Get Here?

After we, the “Legion of Randos on Twitter” beat “The Experts TM” in the great battle of Covid, I started to try to understand what had made the debacle of 2020-2022 possible. I always read a lot, but I shifted what I read to history and philosophy as hopefully better keys to the riddle—histories of the rise of totalitarian regimes, both communist and fascist—Marxist philosophy, postmodern philosophy, feminist philosophy, contemporary history. Anything to try and understand how the vast majority of the people in our country had participated in—and heartily supported—what was a fairly obvious—and wildly harmful—lie.

During that period, details about the nature of our own particular debacle started to come out—Fauci’s cover-up of what he clearly viewed as a likely lab leak, and his demonization of everyone who dared to question him; Fauci’s coordinated attack on the Great Barrington Declaration; the American Federation of Teachers’ role in keeping schools closed, and children masked; the Hunter Biden laptop, and on, and on.

Propaganda is bad, but it is censorship that destroys a society, censorship that paves the way for atrocities. Propaganda without a vigorous censorship component is fairly weak sauce. Whatever precept it propounds can be debated, debunked or simply mocked (or memed) into oblivion. But when propaganda is backed up by censorship, it can easily outshine the truth. Because then propaganda finds itself in possession of a robust and stealthy defense that the naked truth lacks.

This last fact, that censorship is stealthy, is what makes it so toxic—especially in a liberal democracy with nearly absolute freedom of speech as its bedrock principle.

Why? Because in a society that values free speech so highly, abrogating that freedom requires a very compelling justification. Indeed, we don’t even censor literal Nazis. The reason for defending the Nazi’s right to utter intolerable speech, is that failure to do so allows would-be censors to label as “intolerable” all speech criticizing those in power. You either defend the Nazi’s right to speak, or you have an explosion of government-designated Nazis.

This is how censorship causes division. To get dispensation for the civically heinous act of violating a person’s First Amendment rights, the aspiring censor must claim that the would-be target is hateful to whatever degree is required. Thus attempts to stop “hate speech” result in a metastatic explosion of hate. Under the guise of curtailing hate, would-be censors gin up hate against their targets by linking them to state-designated hate groups—misogynists, homophobes, transphobes, climate-deniers, conspiracy theorists, whatever the moral panic du jour might be.

Designating the targets as a kind of anti-mascot allows the would-be censors to call for their censorship. By placing them beyond the pale, the censors’ targets’ rights to free speech may be constrained. The victims of these attacks find few defenders, as would-be defenders stand aside for fear of being tarred with the same brush. Worse still, most people refrain from even hearing the targets’ arguments, often with a sincere unease that their own thoughts might become contaminated in doing so. This is what a friend of mine, Theo Jordan has aptly named “hatecraft.”

And boy does hatecraft work. Social media and traditional media are aflame today with people who are genuinely afraid of their fellow citizens, believing them to be all of the things the media has labeled them. They truly fear, and honestly loathe, those of their countrymen who voted for Donald Trump. Below is just one example from the top of my X feed. The post is from a friend of mine—a Democrat till Covid—who wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal, explaining her rationale for voting for Donald Trump. The author of the email quoted below is apparently a semi-famous actor from the show Twilight, who used his own name and personal email address to send this filth.

The man who wrote this is to be pitied, having been blinded by institutionally sponsored and sanctioned hate. This hate has been deliberately engendered by our media, our government, and the institutions that run cover for it. Could this happen to you, could it have happened to you? It happened to me (I mean, not that bad; but still).

In 2016, I remember learning that the caretaker for our home in New Hampshire was voting Trump. Once I was out of his presence, I flew into a rage. Then I stopped myself. I knew he was a good man—a very, very good man. I knew that whatever was motivating his vote was not hate, because he didn’t have a hateful bone in his body. While I still did not vote for Trump in 2016, I became deeply skeptical of the narrative around Trump’s voters and never used an -ist to describe them again.

[…]

Let me reiterate: YOUR rights were violated by government censorship—even if you were not censored. This wide-ranging censorship has caused YOU harm. Not because your voice was not heard, but because you were robbed of the opportunity to hear the dissenting voices of others, and to better understand—and counter, if possible—their reasons. If you were blindsided by the results of this election, it is this theft that is to blame.

Censorship harms everyone: its targets it mutes, but its real victims are those whom it blinds. Censorship leaves them constantly off balance, lashing out at ill-defined phantoms in the funhouse mirror of its distorted reality, rather than at the censors who have blinded them.

Censorship brought us Trump. No matter what the media wants to claim, the reason people like me voted for Trump (in 2016, and 2020, as well, not just in 2024) wasn’t because of some inherent degeneracy, but rather because of our fury over the policies and cultural insanity of the last four years and beyond. Criticism of those policies and positions was either muted by censorship or marginalized by hatecraft. This allowed these policies and positions to find their way into law and culture unrefined by the chisel of debate, manifesting in their crudest and most barbaric forms.

Russiagate, lockdowns, extended school closures, Zoom school, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, open borders, fake-infrastructure-fueled inflation, woke supremacy, the trans stuff, the censorship industrial complex itself: none of these policies or cultural fads would have survived open debate. Had they been thrown aside, or at a minimum implemented in less monstrous forms, the fury that brought Trump to office would have been dampened—likely the few percentage points needed to deprive him of a second term. (And so, ironically, I find myself somewhat glad that they went so full-bore, but that is for another post.)

If perhaps, as a Democrat voter, you don’t believe that you, personally, were harmed by any of the policies or narratives I mentioned above, let me suggest another that might resonate better. As a Democrat voter hoping for a Democrat president (any democrat president, I presume) rather than Trump, you were harmed by the censorship and propaganda that propped up Joe Biden, both that which claimed his fitness for office in 2020 and 2024 and that which muted the many valid criticisms of his policies. The same mix of propaganda and censorship propped up Kamala and led you to believe that she would win the election. It is no stretch to say that censorship brought you Donald Trump—in its absence, you would have had better candidates and better policies.

[…]

The Elevation of Biden

In 2020, Joe Biden was brought to power on a litter of lies supported by the media, government bureaucracies, and state-funded NGOs. He was held aloft by suppression of criticism and demonization of his critics.—this was directed at YOU.

[…]

Do you feel manipulated? If your answer is that you don’t care, Trump was so bad that the manipulation was worth it, you are acknowledging that you have ceded your personal sovereignty to unknown entities whose motivation—because of their total opacity—you cannot possibly understand. (If you have special insight, please share below!) Given how deceptive these entities have proven to be, and how badly their policy prescriptions have played out, you owe it to yourself to consider retaking your sovereignty. You may still come to the same conclusion, but at least the wider aperture will provide you with more information upon which to base that decision.

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/the-culmination-of-decades-of-censorship-and-propaganda/

Dr Pierre Korry

In this post, I want to further the historical record of massive censoring actions by medical journals on the unprecedented adverse vaccine data of the Covid vaccines. A Midwestern Doctor, my colleague and friend, has done a masterful job of detailing that history in regard to small pox, polio, HPV and many other aspects of childhood vaccines. Never forget the Cutter incident, where officials covered up the fact they were distributing contaminated and deadly polio vaccines:

The Cutter incident was one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in US history, and exposed several thousand children to live polio virus on vaccination.^[3] The NIH Laboratory of Biologics Control, which had certified the Cutter polio vaccine, had received advance warnings of problems: in 1954, staff member Bernice Eddy had reported to her superiors that some inoculated monkeys had become paralyzed and provided photographs. William Sebrell, the director of NIH, rejected the report.^[4]

The censoring of Eddy’s report led to:

• 120,000 doses of polio vaccine that contained live polio virus.
• 40,000 children recipients developed abortive poliomyelitis
• 56 developed paralytic poliomyelitis—and of these, 5 children died from polio
• exposures led to an epidemic of polio in the families and communities of the affected children, resulting in a further 113 people paralyzed and 5 deaths.

Thus, censorship of adverse vaccine data is not new but the deadly impacts of the polio vaccines is nowhere near the scope and scale of the current mRNA vaccine catastrophe.

Of those who, like me, started studying the dangers of Covid gene therapy “vaccines”, many then moved on to learn about the rest of the childhood vaccine schedule by reading “Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth.

That book exposes decades of censoring of both the acute and chronic illnesses caused by the ever-expanding CDC schedule with its pragmatic but unscientific clumping of numerous vaccine administrations on a single day, an intervention that has never been tested for safety. That book also exposes the biggest myth about vaccines which is that deaths from the illnesses they protect against had been nearly eradicated through improvements in sanitation and hygiene (and antibiotics) before the vaccine for that particular disease was even developed! Note the corresponding decrease in TB and Scarlet fever mortality, two diseases for which there is no vaccine to date:

My first post on this topic of censoring adverse vaccine data began with exposing the media and the result of their censoring – e.g. the story of my meeting with a “system pathologist” who did not know what the spike protein was (interestingly, that was one of my most popular posts to date).

In this post, I will detail how the toxicity and lethality of the mRNA vaccines has been suppressed through pervasive academic medical journal censorship.

A brilliant Substack post on this same issue was just written by Nicholas Hulscher, MPH on Peter McCullough’s Substack on November 1 (this post has been in draft form for a long time and I was working on it this weekend when I came across his article).

He tells the story of several papers that have been unfairly retracted in violation of retraction guidelines. One paper he highlighted was his own which was titled “A Systematic Review of Autopsy Findings in Deaths after COVID-19 Vaccination.” It was removed from The Lancet’s preprint server, probably because of its conclusion: “A total of 240 deaths (73.9%) were independently adjudicated as directly due to or significantly contributed to by COVID-19 vaccination.”

The case of his retracted paper provides an example of a tactic used by what he calls “the Cartel” (the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers). He cited this article from September which details a recent lawsuit filed against the Cartel for “tremendous damage to science and the public interest.”

Since the rollout of the Covid mRNA “vaccines” numerous papers have been published showing tight, temporally associated increased rates of diseases and/or deaths associated with it. They have nearly all been retracted. Meanwhile, absurdly flawed or statistically manipulated papers concluding safety and efficacy (even in pregnant women) have been published in high impact journals.

Remember the absurd Lancet “mathematical modeling study” which claimed the campaign saved 20 million lives? Is that why excess mortality started to worsen across the world in 2021 and persists today? Interestingly, one exception to the censoring of negative vaccine studies is case reports of injuries – those they have let through by the thousands. At last count some months ago, my colleague Ashmedai who writes “Resisting the Intellectual Literati” had compiled over 3,600 case reports of illness and death caused by the mRNA vaccines. This is, as Paul Marik would say, “truly astonishing” for any medical product. Unheard of in fact. Almost 4,000 reports of injuries, many of them serious or fatal, and the campaign just rolls on?

In the article “The Disinformation Playbook,” by the Union of Concerned Scientists they describe 5 tactics used by the pharmaceutical industry to “counter science inconvenient to industry interests.” The first tactic is called “the Fix” and is described as below:

Does that aptly describe what I wrote about above? Know that the article was published in 2017, long before Covid. But at the time, they cited 4 case studies where companies from different industries did the above:

In each case, industry actions caused an immense amount of deaths, the most quantifiable being Merck’s Vioxx scandal whereby they hid and suppressed evidence of massive amounts of heart attacks and strokes. One shocking detail about the Vioxx case was when one expert’s testimony in court described the number of deaths from Vioxx as “equivalent to 4 jumbo jetliners crashing every week for 5 years.” Let that sink in for a second.

Merck also attacked doctors trying to call attention to that fact, another Disinformation tactic called “The Blitz”).

I am personally familiar with the Blitz via my “advocacy” (ugh) of ivermectin in Covid leading to endless major media and social media attacks as well as the revocation of my Board certifications and the loss of several jobs.

Merck ended up paying $4.85 billion to settle the criminal and civil claims. However, they had annual sales of $2.5 Billion in the approximately 5 years leading up to that. So, a win for Merck?

Lets start by asking the question, “How does Big Pharma control medical journals?” Answer: with money! One of the main ways that Pharma money influences the journals is via the purchasing of; 1) advertising and 2) “reprints.” Big money. But the influence doesn’t start or end there. They also pay for:

• Funding of clinical trials – journals rely on these trials to publish studies
• Ghostwriting -they employ ghostwriters to write up studies so as to hide association

From my Brave Browser AI response to the question “How profitable are medical journals?”

Ultimately, all that Pharma money undoubtedly leads to… Editorial control. One example was published by the former Editor of one of the top journals in the world, the British Medical Journal (BMJ), where he includes this anecdote and cartoon:

First know that these journal censoring actions equally applied to the suppression of efficacy of early treatments. I know this firsthand from my own experience publishing my ivermectin review paper in early 2021 when, after passing through three rounds of rigorous peer review by three high-level government scientists and a clinical expert at Frontiers in Pharmacology, it was retracted with nearly no explanation.

What happened was that after my paper was accepted, weeks and weeks passed without it being published (it was an online journal and I had paid the publishing fee to make it “open access.”) Meanwhile, during those weeks, I was watching more people die of Covid than at any other time in the pandemic (winter 2021).

When I finally “lost it” by threatening a journal representative in an email that I would go public with an accusation of scientific misconduct against the journal, the editor of the special issue on Covid (Robert Malone) was quickly informed by the Editor in Chief that the paper was being retracted based on an anonymous 3rd party peer reviewer who recommended retraction because “the data did not support the conclusions.” We were never given a copy of this review. It was the first paper to be retracted amongst me and my co-authors in a cumulative 120 years of academia and publishing. When they later went further and retracted Robert Malone’s papers, he and the other editors of the issue resigned as detailed in the below article.

In hindsight, it was a naive idea to put together a special issue on “the use of available drugs in Covid” given that available, repurposed drugs are the Achilles heel of the entire pharmaceutical industry. Although I republished it some months later, the damage to humanity and to my reputation was already done. Good times.

According to the website Retraction Watch, there are currently 450 papers on Covid-19 that have been retracted. The vast majority of retracted Covid-19 papers after the mRNA campaign roll-out had “negative conclusions” and some were even retracted off of pre-print servers.

Know that the stories behind each retraction are nearly identical to my own with ivermectin above. Essentially, a paper with data and/or analysis which concludes grave harms from the mRNA jabs gets submitted, passes peer review, and soon after publication, the editorial team concocts some story of “concerns” with the analysis and retracts it.

As per the Disinformation tactic called “the Fix”, journals also employ other methods like simply rejecting such papers, or, more devastating is when they “hold the paper hostage.” What does that mean? Basically, in academia, the scientific publishing Cartel mentioned above has a rule that you cannot submit to more than one journal at a time to avoid duplicate peer review (which is voluntary and would consume excessive time among peer reviewers).

The problem is that peer review takes months, so journals sometimes delay that process maliciously before eventually rejecting the paper. At that point, many months have passed (and even more will be required to submit to another journal and undergo a 2nd peer review). Thus, the “delayed” findings can no longer impact policy or knowledge during critical periods like a pandemic. Once and if eventually published, oftentimes the policy (i.e. mass mRNA vaccination) has already been implemented and the data does little to reverse it. This practice is actually one of the issues that the lawsuit against the science journal Cartel is about.

This tactic was deployed repeatedly in the case of the most effective drug against Covid, a medicine called proxalutamide. My close friend and colleague from Brazil, Dr. Flavio Cadegiani, had his wickedly positive, large, high-quality, double-blind placebo controlled studies held hostage by three different high impact journals, causing years to go by before publication. I chronicled his story in a Substack series I wrote called “The High-Impact Medical Journal Editors Harassment Of The World’s Leading Clinical Researcher of Repurposed Drugs in the COVID Pandemic.” Here are the links to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. If you read that series of posts, you will come to the awful realization that, like with the cases of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, millions died around the world as a result of the suppression of the data showing proxalutamide’s incredible efficacy in Covid.

A more recent example of a paper being “held hostage” is that of a clinical shedding study where the authors exposed an unknown number of unvaccinated women to women recently mRNA vaccinated to assess whether the exposed women would develop typical vaccine adverse effects.

[…]

Via https://pierrekorymedicalmusings.com/p/medical-journal-censorship-is-the

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 13.12.2024

Former President Bill Clinton has indicated he is open to discussing a “pre-emptive pardon” for his wife, Hillary Clinton, with outgoing head of state Joe Biden, while maintaining that she has done nothing wrong.

This development was anticipated, according to Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel, who tells Sputnik that Bill Clinton is also likely to seek a pardon for himself and his daughter.

Ortel adds that the proposed pardon could cover a period starting much earlier than Hillary’s 2016 email scandal, which Bill Clinton mentioned on “The View” talk show.

The alleged fraud and pay-to-play activities involving the Clinton Foundation were significant issues, according to Ortel, who has been investigating the charity for many years.

“As in the case of the first Biden family pardon, my view is that a federal pardon for the Clinton family will have to go back, perhaps, to 1992 and continue so long as ‘The Clinton Foundation’ and its affiliates may operate,” Ortel suggests.

Earlier, Biden provided his son with an unusual blanket pardon covering all possible crimes between 2014 and 2024.

The Clintons “have been insiders in a rigged political system at the federal level” since Bill’s first presidential campaign in 1992, Ortel claims.

However, even a federal pre-emptive pardon from Biden “is likely to leave Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton vulnerable to state and foreign prosecutions, along with others,” the analyst believes.

Kash Patel Has Hillary Clinton on His “Government Gangsters” List

Bill Clinton’s readiness to discuss a pre-emptive pardon with President Joe Biden is likely influenced by FBI Director Christopher Wray’s decision to step down and Donald Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel, according to Ortel.

Ortel suggests that Wray is part of the same cabal as former FBI Director James Comey, who allowed Hillary Clinton to escape consequences for her 2016 email scandal.

In contrast, Patel has never been part of the D.C. “swamp” and played a key role in debunking the Trump-Russia collusion allegations, which, based on then-CIA Director John Brennan’s declassified memo, may have been fabricated by Hillary Clinton to divert attention from her email scandal.

According to Ortel, the Department of Justice (DoJ), FBI, and IRS have long covered up the Clintons’ apparent felonies, despite many being evident.

“When the FBI finally spoke with me in December 2018, they focused on my connections with Peter Smith, Jerry Corsi, and Roger Stone, claiming they lacked the scope to investigate why so many in the Obama and Bush administrations might be interested in covering up Clinton Foundation crimes,” Ortel says.

If Patel takes charge of the FBI, he is expected to overhaul the bureau and could investigate the Clintons earnestly, according to Ortel. Reports indicate that Hillary Clinton is on Patel’s “government gangsters” list.

Clintons Have Outlived Their Usefulness to Deep State

The globalist elites and much-discussed US “deep state” may no longer shield the Clintons, as they have outlived their usefulness, Ortel says.

“Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have outlived their usefulness to rich globalists,” Ortel states.

The election defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris, along with the inability of the Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens to produce a more vibrant and popular presidential candidate, apparently exposed their political bankruptcy.

As a result, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who has long been considered an ally of the Democrats, dismissed the party’s gloom-and-doom warnings and openly signaled in October that a Donald Trump victory would be acceptable for Wall Street.

“Should the Trump administration prioritize prosecuting charity crimes, starting with wealthy donors like Bill Gates and George Soros and wealthy ‘educational public charities,’ whistleblowers and the incoming administration could make America proud by [taking down] the Clinton family and many other charity grifters who, even today, seem arrogantly unrepentant and unbowed,” Ortel concludes.

[…]

Via https://sputnikglobe.com/20241213/clintons-open-to-possible-preemptive-pardon-as-deep-state-may-abandon-them-1121159825.html

The Ancient Greeks: Crucible of Civilization Episode 2 Golden Age

PBS (2000)

Film Review

493 BC – This episode starts with the election of General Themistocles, a populist commoner, as archon (ruler) of Athens. Anticipating invasion by the vast Persian Empire (extending from Turkey to India), Themistocles built a fleet of 200 tiremes (see The Ultimate Warship of Ancient Greece). He also founded the Delian League with neighboring city-states.

490 BC – The first Persian invasion of the Greek Peninsula at Marathon. Immediately prior to the battle, the courier Pheidippides ran from Athens to Sparta seeking military support. Owing to a religious taboo against doing battle during the full moon, the Spartans declined to assist. With a population of 30,000 Athens had 10,000 Hoplites (citizen soldiers with swords, spears and shields) plus a comparable number of farmers with clubs and scythes. Despite being hopelessly outnumbered, they prevailed, slaughtering 6,000 Persians.

480 BC – During the second Persian war, Themistocles made the wise decision to avoid a land confrontation by ordering all Athenian citizens to leave the city. Finding Athens empty, king Xerxes he ordered the city and all the temples on the Acropolis burned. Although the Persian fleet was four times the size of the Greek navy (consisting of 200 tiremes), Temistocles cleverly lured Xerxes’ ships into the narrow Strait of Salamis. With no room to to maneuver, the Persians lost 200 ships, ran out of food and were forced to depart.

470 BC – Perpetually at odds with the wealthy Athenian nobility, Themistocles was ostracized in quaint annual ceremony in which every citizen citizen wrote a name on an otsracum (broken shard of pottery) and dropped it into a clay pot.*Whoever received the most votes was forced into exile.

461-429 BC – Pericles, born into one of Athens’ most elite families, was its leader at the height of its power. Twenty years after the Persians burnt the Athenian temples on the Acropolis, he recruited architect and sculptors from all over the known world to build the Parthenon in their place. Costing 5,000 talents ($1 billion) in the first year alone, it took 15 years to construct and required 20,000 tons of marble. Under his rule, the Delian League emerges as the center a vast trading network. Imports include mackerel and salted fish from Hellepont, ivory from Nubia, tattooed saves from Pagasae (in Thessaly) and ox hides from Sardinia, It was during this period, Anocles first recognized the moon was lit by reflected sunlight, Herodotus became the Western world’s first historian and Aeschylus and Euripides wrote the world’s first tragedies.**

*Alexander I of Macedon (r. 498–454 BC) temporarily gave Themistocles sanctuary at Pydna. From there, he he traveled to Asia Minor, where he entered the service of the Persian king Ataxerxes (r 465-424 BC). He eventually became governor of Magnesia in Ionia (a collection of Greek colonies the Anatolian peninsula).

**Despite the filmmakers claim that Athens gave birth to the world’s first theatrical performances, Egyptian theater dates back to 1980 BC and Chinese theater to before 1000 BC.