Here is a portion of that WASHINGTON EXAMINER article Prager is reading from:
Friday marked Sebastian Gorka’s last day at the White House. Democrats, progressives, and even many Republicans cheered. The Federalist published his resignation letter, although anonymous White House officials told the New York Times and Washington Post that he had been fired. The truth might lie in the middle: Chief of Staff John Kelly’s reported decision to withdraw Gorka’s clearance led Gorka to resign. Alas, few if any reporters were self-aware enough to recognize the cognitive dissonance: How could they have reported for months that Gorka lacked a clearance when, indeed, he had one all along?
Regardless, there was no shortage of criticism about Gorka. These centered on three broad themes:
Gorka was a right-wing extremist with ties to Neo-Nazi groups.
Gorka was not a real terrorism expert.
Gorka appeared on television too much.
Consider them in order:
First, the accusation that Gorka was a sympathizer with violent, fascist, Nazi-sympathizing groups in Hungary began when a left-wing blogger suggested that he wore a Vitezi Rend medal to the inaugural ball and that its display suggested ideological sympathy with neo-Nazis. Gorka responded to the accusation here. That the same blogger had earlier left the Center for American Progress under a cloud after Obama White House officials expressed concern at his and his colleagues’ use of anti-Semitic dog whistles in targeting Jewish policymakers, again, was an irony lost on those who seized upon the story uncritically.
The story grew when The Forward, a Jewish website and publication with socialist roots, purported to uncover a video affirming Gorka’s support for a Hungarian party subsequently accused of anti-Semitism. It subsequently emerged, however, that The Forward spliced the video to omit key portions in which Gorka warned against anti-Semitism or its flirting with anti-Semitic groups.
Here’s the key point: While many progressives and opponents of the regime accept with certainty that Gorka is a Nazi, a white nationalist, or an extremist, they have not been able to find a single statement or essay by Gorka or account of his speeches or comments supporting such positions. Given the volume of his previous writing, that should have been a red flag. The Nazi accusation is about as logical as concluding that a picture of Gorka absent his glasses represents a secret endorsement of the Khmer Rouge.
The situation gets worse: Three Democratic senators — Richard Blumenthal, Dick Durban, and Ben Cardin — have seized upon the calumny to suggest the Justice Department consider whether Gorka should have his citizenship revoked.
This sets a dangerous precedent. Politics in Washington are poisonous, with extremists on both sides of debates losing civility and seeking to criminalize policy debate. Donald Trump was guilty of that as a candidate, and Mike Flynn’s “lock her up” chants at the Republican National Convention were cringe-worthy, but threats to strip citizenship are a new low. Given the poison of dual loyalty accusations made by anti-Semites against Jews serving in public capacities, it is especially disturbing to hear Jewish-American senators seeming to use similar cards of insufficient loyalty to the United States against political opponents.
Second, what about the idea that Gorka was a non-expert? Long before Trump’s surprise rise to the presidency, I had the privilege of hearing Gorka lecture at the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany; to the FBI; at the U.S. Marine Corps University; and to U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg. To suggest that he was unknown is simply dishonest. Indeed, his lectures tended to receive rave reviews.
Here’s what many proponents of the ‘amateur’ argument miss: The same charges many critics level at Gorka could just as easily apply to any other counter-terror specialist. Daniel Benjamin, who served as counterterrorism coordinator at the State Department during the Obama administration and worked on counter-terrorism during the Clinton administration at the National Security Council, got his start as a Time Magazine reporter. Francis Townsend, whom Condoleezza Rice picked as her terrorism advisor, got her start as a prosecutor focusing on organized crime.
Many of the academics who criticized Gorka as out of his depth at certain academic conferences would have or have had their theories ridiculed by practitioners such as the FBI and U.S Special Forces as out of touch with reality. There is also a touch of jealousy: Gorka has a New York Times best-selling book; they did not.
Even during the Obama administration, counter-terror practitioners reached out to Gorka. ….
This is an importation of a few posts that are slightly edited for this platform and will be edited — more so — in the future. so I will simply start with the most recent post on my old site and work backwards…. here, Rosie O’Donnmel pushes the myth of an evil cabal planning the Iraq and middle-East takeover — otherwise know as Project for a New American Century (PNAC). I will precede the posts with a date:
Rosie O’Donnell Still Pushing 911 Conspiracy Myths/Lies… PNAC Her Biggest (Originally Posted March 12, 2010)
(Video Description) Talk about a stubborn mule: three years after misleading the public during The View regarding 9-11, Rosie O’Donnell is at it again. In fact, this is the second time in a week she’s used her radio show to revisit her widely-debunked theories.
Take note that some of these links are broken. Just shorten the link to its main website URL to explore. The following mainly comes from 9/11 MYTHS… READING BETWEEN THE LIES:
MISQUOTE EXAMPLE #1
The cabal of war fanatics advising the White House secretly planned a “transformation” of defense policy years ago, calling for war against Iraq and huge increases in military spending. A “catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor”—was seen as necessary to bring this about.
MISQUOTE EXAMPLE #2
The victims of the 9/11 attacks have been disaster for Muslims because 19 Arabs were named as hijackers of the planes, but they’ve been a dream come true for the PNAC ‘think-tank’ whose 2000 Statement of Principles stated a “catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor” would advance their policies, i.e. justify wars and “regime changes”.
MISQUOTE EXAMPLE #3
There is circumstantial evidence that some part of the US administration was involved in the attack. It is certain that there was a strong desire on the part of some members for a “catalyzing event”, like Pearl Harbor, in order to provide the impetus for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq; however desire is not proof of complicity.
These examples should suffice. So how does one respond to this tired old canard? with the real quote (the truth shall set you free). Here is the response via the counter conspiracy site, 9/11 MYTHS:
So, the first quote tells us it’s about war in Iraq and huge increases in military spending, the second says it’s about justifying war and regime changes, the third and fourth link the quote to war on Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems there’s broad agreement, so can they all be wrong? Let’s see.
First, the actual full quote is this.
“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”.
The odd word here seems to be “transformation”. What do they mean? Let’s look back to the beginning of the same chapter.
“To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs. Information technologies,in particular, are becoming more prevalent and significant components of modern military systems. These information technologies are having the same kind of transforming effects on military affairs as they are having in the larger world. The effects of this military transformation will have profound implications for how wars are fought, what kinds of weapons will dominate the battlefield and, inevitably, which nations enjoy military preeminence”.
So “transformation” refers to the process of introducing more information technologies into the military. What does 9/11 have to do with that? Nothing at all. In fact, the attacks demonstrated that one of the PNAC’s pet schemes, a global missile shield, is entirely useless when planes can become bombs….
Can you see why many get frustrated when talking to 9/11 “truthers”? They use the title without actually using the meaning… truth.
PNAC – Project for a New American Century (Originally Posted: December 31, 2008)
…His brother Jeb is not only considering, but 90% sure he will throw his hat into the GOP ring for the Presidency in 2008. Unfortunately for Jeb, the hat will read “I With Stupid.” What a wonderful prospect this is, yet another President who is a card carrying member of the PNAC group. The Bush brothers are pictured above left with one of the carcasses they left behind on the road to the White House…. (emphasis added)
The below is such a great help in understanding what the “Project for a New American Century” is all about… by refuting the crazy conspiracy people who love to link to anti-Semitic sites.
PNAC
Mr. Legge, like many critics of the administration in recent years, attributes both the 9/11 attacks, and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a plan produced by the group Project For a New American Century (PNAC). From the introduction to his paper:
It is certain that there was a strong desire on the part of some members for a “catalyzing event”, like Pearl Harbor, [3] in order to provide the impetus of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq; however desire is not proof of complicity.
The footnote supporting this argument then points to:
3. A plan existed. The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) “The process of transformation.” The plan said, “is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor.”
While the somewhat edited quote,1 is superficially accurate, the conclusion which is drawn from it, is completely wrong. This is not only “not proof of complicity”, this is such a mischaracterization of what that quote says as bordering on academic fraud. The author states that the “Pearl Harbor” they are referring to is “in order to provide the impetus of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq”. The invasions of these two countries, however, are nowhere mentioned in the PNAC document, they are not even vaguely alluded to. It exists purely in the imagination of the person writing this paper. In fact the only time the paper mentions Iraqi policy at all, is in regards to continuing the containment policy around Iraq with regards to the no-fly zones,2 not in invading it.
Afghanistan only merits a brief historical mention, in regards to the cruise missile attacks carried out by President Clinton in 1998, and only while discussing the Navy’s decreased staffing. A researcher does not need to try and infer what PNAC is talking about, however, the “process of transformation” that they are referring to is specifically discussed on the page previous to the “Pearl Harbor”quote (emphasis added):
To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with new technologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs. Information technologies, in particular, are becoming more prevalent and significant components of modern military systems. These information technologies are having the same kind of TRANSFORMING effects on military affairs as they are having in the larger world. The effects of this military TRANSFORMATION will have profound implications for how wars are fought, what kinds of weapons will dominate the battlefield and, inevitably, which nations enjoy military preeminence.
It is no surprise that proponents of this theory only quote the one sentence, not even the whole sentence in this case, because if you read the rest of the paragraph, it becomes abundantly clear, that this has absolutely nothing to do with US international policies after 9/11 (emphasis added):
Further, the process of TRANSFORMATION, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions. A decision to suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production, as recommended by this report and as justified by the clear direction of military technology, will cause great upheaval. Likewise, systems entering production today – the F-22 fighter, for example – will be in service inventories for decades to come. Wise management of this process will consist in large measure of figuring out the right moments to halt production of current-paradigm weapons and shift to radically new designs. The expense associated with some programs can make them roadblocks to the larger process of transformation – the Joint Strike Fighter program, at a total of approximately $200 billion, seems an unwise investment. Thus, this report advocates a two-stage process of change – transition and transformation – over the coming decades.
Furthermore, there is no “strong desire” for this “catalyzing change”, not even the technological transformation which they are actually talking about. They are merely pointing out the likely timetable for these changes to take place, thus the sentence at the end about the process taking decades.
And regards to the Pearl Harbor reference, what precisely were they talking about? A sneak attack by terrorists using fanatical devotion combined with box cutters? Well, curiously enough, the PNAC document uses this Pearl Harbor reference in another part, which despite clarifying the meaning, didn’t manage to make Mr. Legge’s paper.
absent a rigorous program of experimentation to investigate the nature of the revolution in military affairs as it applies to war at sea, the Navy might face a future Pearl Harbor – as unprepared for war in the post-carrier era as it was unprepared for war at the dawn of the carrier age.
They aren’t just talking about a sneak attack, they are talking about a sneak attack using a technology that we are unprepared for, just like the Japanese aircraft carriers on December 7th, 1941. Arabs with box cutters and fake bombs may be a sneak attack, but they were hardly something that could have been prevented by this technological transformation they have spent the entire paper advocating.
An in-depth analysis of this 90 page document also shows that an invasion of Afghanistan andIraq not only fails to assist them in their “transformation”, but it would most likely hinder them. In fact the study points to the increased operational tempo of the operations in the Balkans as detracting from needed R & D funds.7 It also discusses the difficulty of carrying out this transformation without impacting even the current international obligations.8 Somehow we are to believe that two expensive and manpower intensive wars would improve this process.
Mr. Legge then continues this paragraph with:
The fact that the air attack on Afghanistan commenced on October 9, less than a month later, is not proof either, but does suggest the possibility that plans for the invasion were already in place.
This is one of many cases where the author “suggests” things that he admits he can’t prove. I am not aware of the academic merit of just suggesting things. If you have no proof, or even a logical hypothesis, then why are you bringing up the subject? Perhaps if he had done some research on this area he wouldn’t need to suggest as much. One good example is General Tommy Franks’ autobiography, “An American Soldier”, which describes the hectic process and frantic international negotiations needed to prepare for the invasion.
In regards to the “less than a month” part, on August 7, 1998 over 200 people were killed in near simultaneous bombings at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Less than 2 weeks later, on August 20th, the US carried out attacks against suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and the Sudan. Is Mr. Legge going to “suggest” that Clinton had plans prepared ahead of time?
Some of the original FOOTNOTES
1.This quote from the paper titled “Rebuilding America’s defenses,” and actually reads in full from page 51: “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
2. Page 73-74 “Likewise, terminating the no-fly zones over Iraq would call America’s positions as guarantor of security in the Persian Gulf into question; the reaction would be the same in East Asia following the withdrawal of US forces or a lowering of American military presence.”
[….]
7. Page 50 “Moreover, the Pentagon, constrained by limited budgets and pressing current missions, has seen funding for experimentation and transformation crowded out in recent years.”
8. Ibid page 50: The United States cannot simply declare a “strategic pause” while experimenting with new technologies and operational concepts.”
Three things happened – a “Tri-Fecta” of sorts – to make me look seriously at my conspiratorial views of history and the world. MANY years ago, as a newer Christian (as do many new Christians who are reading through the Bible for the first time) – often times [the collective] we get caught-up in an “overabundance” of the eschatological material and issues. This is natural in some respect. It offers a suspensful, fast paced idea to the future. Not only that, but I think God ingrains in us this “the end is coming soon” to make us search for truth a bit. We see it in every generation (literally), and there have been secular versions of it as well all throughout history. The latest being the “Existential Climate Crisis.” In that early fascination of everything “end-times,” my early book collection focused heavily on the New World Order and all that that entails conspiracy-wise. I am still proud [being a bibliophile] that my “conspiracy”/NWO portion of my library holds classics as well as new books on the topic.
I was mesmerized by the conspiratorial view of history. Really, I was. But Y2K came and went without but a murmur, much to the consternation of the many theorists I followed at the time. At that same time, I started listening to the Michael Medved Show who, on every full moon dedicated his 3-hours on that day to taking calls on EVERYTHING under the sun conspiracy-wise. It was the first time I had heard reasonable responses to history I was misinterpreting. So, I started to go through (re-read) many of my books and actually follow the footnotes to see if they “panned-out”… and much of the info I was assuming to be sound was in fact not:
Quotes attributed to Founding Fathers were spurious;
items in museums were not in fact where they were said to be;
fuller readings of the source material showed isolated topics that in a fuller reading (context is king) showed a twisting of the material;
So with these three issues I was well on the way to recovery. Then 9/11 hit, and all the crazy conspiracies that came from it… as well as all the misinformation about Iraq, Big-Oil, Halliburton, WMDs, and the like. Physician, heal thy self.
And so I reject the conspiratorial view for many reasons, not the least of which is one of the same reasons I reject Darwinism.
I have spent a lot of time debunking some issues… not the least of which are 9/11 truther junk. Glad to see some may have found this page with your thinking helmet on.
A VERY SMALL sample of my library on this topic (remember, my home library boasts over 5,000 books, I have about a hundred-or-so of these books dealing with the conspiratorial view of history). I usually starighten and edit my scans, but the rough scans below are a form of saying, “yes I own them… fool!” Lol.
(I am changing some of my “Pages” to “Posts,” so some of this info is older to my site)
This is a discussion between myself and a black, lifelong Democrat. He intimated to me that he would never vote Republican because of the party’s racism. Okay. I asked him to provide me with one example or evidence of racism from Republican leaders. He offered me “birthirism.” Birthers are people who believe Obama was born in Kenya, and thus, not able to be President. Let us begin
What are our options with birtherism? Options:
a) Either the conspiracy theories are true, or; b) He lied to gain access and recognition at Occidental College/Harvard/Columbia an/or at his publisher… similar to Elizabeth Warren; c) The media made this up whole cloth.
Why do I only allow for the above two options? Let me explain and then we will continue with the response.
FIRSTLY, I truly believe Obama was born in Hawaii. In other words, I am NOT a birther in the true sense of the words meaning.
That being said, I do believe he lied about this in order to get more opportunities for educational as well as more opportunities to get published. I say this BECAUSE of the following evidence, which is: that only a few months after Obama threw his hat officially into the 2008 Presidential run, his publisher scrubbed their site of the following. And mind you, the following could not have happened without Obama’s consent/knowledge:
Obama’s literary agent changed Barack Obama’s bio page in April 2007, two months after he announced his run for President of the United States in February 2007. Before that, Obama’s bio said he was born in Kenya.
So, we can rid option “c” from above… we now know this was not a “hit job” by a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Here is an highlighted portion of the above which was on Obama’s publishers website from 1995-to-2007(to the right).
The media is not that smart to foresee into the future like that and plant said evidence with full-knowledge of Obama. So we have “a” and “b” left.
a) Either the conspiracy theories are true, or; b) He lied to gain access and recognition at Occidental College/Harvard/Columbia an/or at his publisher… similar to Elizabeth Warren;
Again, to be clear, I reject birtherism (“a”), but doing so doesn’t mean that common sense can say the following:
Obama was the first “birther.”
In 2003 for instance, when his publisher published Barack Obama’s book, Dreams of My Father, they wrote that Barack Obama was born in Kenya in their own promotional material (Gateway Pundit). Either way there is “some splainin’ to do Lucy.”
Back to the aforementioned Elizabeth Warren. Ann Coulter’s comments on Warren:
“Warren’s lie is outrageous enough to someone like me, who isn’t a fan of race-based affirmative action programs. Still, she is a liar, and she stole the credit of someone else’s suffering. For liberals, it should be a mortal sin: Elizabeth Warren cheated on affirmative action.”
If true of Obama… he would be doubly guilty of this mortal sin. One commentator on my FaceBook made this astute point that “Either way, Joe Wilson was right! He lies!”
BACK to the options.
a) Either the conspiracy theories are true, or; b) He lied to gain access and recognition at Occidental College/Harvard/Columbia an/or at his publisher.
We know the more modern theory was started by the Hillary camp during the contentious campaign between her and Obama (audio to the right). We also have the long-form birth certificate… as well as the birth announcements of Obama from Hawaii when he was born (from two papers: [1961] Honolulu Advertiser; and, [1961] Star Bulletin). So we can exclude “a,” that the conspiracy theories are true.
So, I am inclined to believe “b,” but more importantly… over the years I have been inundated with the “racist” label by those assuming I am a “birther.” So this is why I wanted to expand my thinking on this.
Let us expose the “racism” portion of this a bit more with an example from ThinkProgress (the title of the article is “9 Most Racist Moments of the 2012 Election“) that racism is in the root cause of this conspiracy rather than hyperbole. For instance they quote in their #1 example the son of a Republican, Jason Thompson:
Jason Thompson told a crowd of supporters at a brunch that “we have the opportunity to send President Obama back to Chicago — or Kenya.” Thompson is the son of former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, who is now running for Senate. In attendance at the brunch was Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
In the original challenge by a friend, he stated that Republicans have racist tendencies, provable by their support of birther conspiracies. So my new question is this:
“If Obama used this canard [that he was born in Kenya] in order to receive more accolades or recognition at Harvard and/or his publisher, would this be evidence that he is racist”?
This is obviously hyperbole. But let’s say Jason really believed Obama was born in Kenya… I still cannot see “racism” in this remark. But this claim of racism cuts both was, as we will see. So, here are the four areas I will compare this “racism” claim made about being a birther and this being the best example a life-long Democrat can use to show “Republican racism.”
1) Dem vs. Repub % of belief in conspiracies;
2) what type of conspiracy?;
3) Who believed these conspiracy theories;
4) What is my point?
1) PERCENTAGES
(Speaking to my Democratic detractor) You are aware, I am sure, that the birther story was first started by a Democrat and the story made popular via Hillary Clinton.
For instance, Politico says this in one of their classic articles:
…Where did this idea come from? Who started it? And is there a grain of truth there? The answer lies in Democratic, not Republican politics, and in the bitter, exhausting spring of 2008. At the time, the Democratic presidential primary was slipping away from Hillary Clinton and some of her most passionate supporters grasped for something, anything that would deal a final reversal to Barack Obama. The theory’s proponents are a mix of hucksters and earnest conspiracy theorists, including prominently a lawyer who previously devoted himself to ‘proving’ that the Sept. 11 attacks were an inside job. Its believers are primarily people predisposed to dislike Obama. That willingness to believe the worst about officials of the opposite party is a common feature of presidential rumor-mongering: In 2006, an Ohio University/Scripps Howard poll found that slightly more than half of Democrats said they suspected the Bush Administration of complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks….
So not only would Obama in 1995 would have to of intimated the idea that he was born in Kenya in 1995, here [above] Politico traces the “birther” beginnings to a Democrat. Let us digest this a bit.
I am combining the above with polls from Rasmussen (and others compiled at WIKI) that show an amazing thing. What is this “amazing thing,” you rightly ask?
Democrats in America are evenly divided on the question of whether George W. Bush knew about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in advance. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Democrats believe he did know, 39% say he did not know, and 26% are not sure.
Not sure? Not sure? To be clear, Democrats by over a majority believed Bush either knew directly or they said they were [basically] “still on the fence.” Here is more:
I’ve been looking for a good analogue to the willingness of Republicans to believe, or say they believe, that Obama was born abroad, and one relevant number is the share of Democrats willing to believe, as they say, that “Bush knew.”
There aren’t a lot of great public numbers on the partisan breakdown of adherents to that conspiracy theory, but the University of Ohio yesterday shared with us the crosstabs of a 2006 poll they did with Scripps Howard that’s useful in that regard.
“How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?” the poll asked.
A full 22.6% of Democrats said it was “very likely.” Another 28.2% called it “somewhat likely.”
That is: More than half of Democrats, according to a neutral survey, said they believed Bush was complicit in the 9/11 terror attacks….
What is the percentage of Republicans that believed (at it’s height of belief) Obama was not born in America?
31% of Republican think/thought that Obama was not born in the states…
How many Democrats?
15% of Democrats believe the same… [well as 18% of Independents]
However, a third who believe him to be born out of the country approve of him (ABC-News and my RPT post).
2)WHAT KIND OF CONSPIRACY?
So we have two conspiracies to compare and contrast: 9/11 culpability, and birtherism. What do they show? Are their differences? Let’s work through these. One, birtherism, has a belief held that a person was born out of country, and that other people covered this up.
In other words… when Obama was a child/infant other adults made this happen. He, Obama, was powerless to affect it. Obviously, he was an infant or child. In fact, assuming the conspiracy true and giving the most leeway of the options behind it… Obama may not have known about this until his Presidential run.
What about 9/11?
This conspiracy asserts that a leader of these United States knew of the coming attack and allowed it to happen, thus killing fellow citizens and going to war over it [for oil, a myth]. Thus, murdering more Americans in a war over a conspiracy to profit.
Many of these Democrats also believe Bush was involved in making this happen (HotAir). So this conspiracy would be considered — if we had an evil scale — much more “evil” because it is an American in the highest office basically directly culpable for the death of innocent people.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist for an outside observer to say, “whoa, whoa, whoa… calm down DEMOCRATS! Yeah this other conspiracy [birtherism] is nuts, but it doesn’t posit such an overtly evil act.”
in other words a much larger number of Democrats are on the “fringe” and would be called racist if they were Republicans, for their crazy opposition to a black President. LIKE Republicans are called racist for their birtherism position. Which would also include the 15% of Democrats being equally racist who believe in this birther theory.
3) MAGAZINES, PUNDITS, AND LEADERS
Here is what the Left believes to be a radical, extreme right pundit, Ann Coulter. Her point is instructive, which is, no one in the major influence of the conservative/Republican believes this conspiracy (see Ann Coulter reject birtherism — to the right):
NOTE: not a single mainstream right-wing talk show host believed this (I should stipulate that I listen to Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, and Larry Elder). None of these conservative talk show hosts believed this. In fact, Michael Medved typically takes calls that disagree with him — which led to some great excoriation of this birther conspiracy (here are some of those calls).
I tackled the subject back in 2010 on my old blog, it on my old blog as well as my new site. And I am as conservative as you can get!
The next LOGICAL question becomes who in congress or Democratic leadership believed Bush knew? To name a few: Rep. Dennis Kucinich; Rep. Cynthia McKinney; Congressman Alan Grayson, etc.
4) What Is My Point?
Simply my point is this:
1) The complexity of the seemingly simple “around the cooler” accusation that birtherism equals racism is never addressed. If Republicans are painted as racist, then so to must Democrats since a large percentage of them are “birthers,” not to mention Obama was the O.G. birther and recent birtherism was pushed by Hillary Clinton’s camp.
Simply painting your opponent as bigoted or racist sounds good if one wishes to label and dismiss opposing viewpoints. It is the easy way out for the lazy of mind.
2) If such beliefs make Republicans racist or bigoted, how much more are Democrats with their larger fringe group pushing a theory that infers Bush was personally involved with this act?
3) Since almost all major conservative/Republican magazines, pundits, radio hosts, and Congressmen reject “birtherism,” and many more liberal/Democratic magazines, pundits, radio hosts, and elected-officials believed their own 9/11 theories AND birtherism to some extent… how does this paint the people pushing these conspiracies?
In other words, Republicans at least say Obama was lying about his place of birth in order to get special preference in educational and publishing opportunities; at most saying that Obama later found out about other peoples lies in getting him over to America as a child and tried to cover it up for his Presidential run.
On the other-side of the coin, you have Democrats saying that [at least] Bush knew about the pending attack and allowed it to happen in order to financially profit from a war[s]. At most they say he was actually involved in the taking down of the Trade Towers in order to go to war. BOTH options Bush is culpable for the murder of innocent and military lives.
I wish to start out this post with a bit of a background on myself. As a reinvigorated Christian (recommitted Christian whilst sitting in jail many years ago), my early studies included eschatology. A subject that catches many newer Christians attention as the subject is an exciting, almost adrenaline boosting study — typically like a new Christians faith. So of course I got into the many books, literature, sites that spoke of a New World Order (NWO). One can view the very small sampling of the books I have read and still own in my library here (under the links).
At any rate, in 2000 I had a tri-fecta going on that shook me from the conspiratorial view of history more towards an accidental view of history – which was: listening to Michael Medved’s “Conspiracy Show,” where, on the full moon he would for the entire three hours of his show take calls on nothing else but conspiracies; second, all the people I was “into” warned of the dire consequences of Y2K, which never came to fruition; and third, and mainly because of the previous two, I revisited my past NWO type books and tried to confirm or disprove many of the references to historical event. This venture proved devastating for what was being proffered in these books. The most outrages statements about history were made based on the flimsiest of evidence.
AND THEN 9/11 happened… and all the weirdos came out with all their conspiracy theories. So my debunking many of the propositions laid out by the then popular “Loose Change” video for my son’s friends created an interest in getting to the facts. And so, here we are again… with all the crazy conspiracies coming out about Syria and the chemical attack by Assad.
May I say that I cannot believe I must rev-up this topic again, but so be it.
THE THEORIES
So the first indicator of the conspiracy theories surrounding the recent chemical attack in Syria that I was made aware of was this video by Ron Paul found over at ZEROHEDGE. In the video Ron Paul (a man who thinks America was behind 9/11 BTW) says there is ZERO CHANCE Assad was behind the chemical attacks. Ron Paul also said something that was echoed across the internet, which was this:
“It doesn’t make any sense for Assad under these conditions to all of a sudden use poison gases – I think there’s zero chance he would have done this deliberately…”
He went on to say that Assad could not benefit from this action, and instead saying the “evil” neo-cons are the only one’s who would benefit. (People do not know what the hell they mean when they use the term – BTW) So somehow, they were in cahoots with the military complex and someone on the ground in Syria to make this happen.
POLITIFACT notes this about Alex Jones and his site, InfoWars, and their take on the issue:
Chief among the skeptics was Alex Jones’ InfoWars website, which questioned the validity of the attack in an April 5 post that blamed a group called the White Helmets for arranging the attack for nefarious reasons.
The White Helmets, officially known as Syria Civil Defence, is a group of ostensibly nonpartisan volunteers who aid civilian victims of the civil war. The group has been accused of being pro-rebel, and InfoWars contends they are an al-Qaida affiliate funded by George Soros and the British government.
So Soros is behind it according to “Alex Jones types.” Dumb.
Here is the John Birch Society magazine, THE NEW AMERICAN noting motives… like they are psychologists making informed claims (psychoanalyst) who have sat with Assad for months in private sessions:
Of course, even if Damascus did use chemical weapons on civilians, it would be unlikely to admit that. But a simple analysis of motives — a basic first step in any serious investigation — would suggest that Assad had every reason to avoid the use of chemical weapons at all costs. On the other hand, jihadist rebels on the verge of annihilation had every reason to use them. After years of fighting globalist-backed jihadists and terrorists, the dictatorship in Damascus was reportedly close to victory — at least until Trump intervened by firing dozens of missiles at Syrian targets.
(For the record, I stopped reading this magazine when they had an article saying CIA operative planted the explosives in the Murrah Federal Building.) In that article The New American notes that the “last time Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad supposedly used chemical weapons, the story quickly collapsed under scrutiny.” Unfortunately, this too is false:
The UN mission was not asked to ascertain who was behind the attack.
However, by examining the debris field and impact area where the rockets struck in Muadhamiya and Ein Tarma, the inspectors found “sufficient evidence” to calculate azimuths, or angular measurements, that allow their trajectories to be determined “with a sufficient degree of accuracy”.
When plotted on a map, the trajectories converge on a site that Human Rights Watch said was a large military base on Mount Qassioun that is home to the Republican Guard 104th Brigade
In other words, Assad has used chemical weapons before on his people. In fact, Ned Price, US National Security Council spokesman, said: “it is now impossible to deny that the Syrian regime has repeatedly used industrial chlorine as a weapon against its own people.” So when people talk about WHAT MOTIVE Assad (and his father before him) had in torturing, criminal subjugation, using banned and not banned chemicals on his own people over the many years… I suspect his motive now was the same then. The United Nations has blamed [prior to this attack] three of the four known chemical attacks during this 6-year conflict on the Syrian government. ISIS was to blame for one.
In one discussion on Facebook, this was said with no evidence to back up the belief:
I concur with Ron Paul on every point. It makes no political sense for Assad to do this. Assad had everything going his way. Al Quaida/ISIS was on the run–a good thing–whereas the Neo-Conservatives–McCain, Graham, Saudis, et al.–and Deep State constituents in the military needed to undo that to stay in the game. It plays right into the hands of the Democrats who have used the Neo-Cons to rid Syria of Assad for years. …
You know the saying, opinions are like butt-tholes, everyone has one. Well, that’s exactly what that is, a stinky, unfounded opinion. Emoting, really. AGAIN, it is like these people are well-trained psychologists who have sat with Assad for years in private one-hour sessions.
COUNTER EVIDENCE
I discussed evidences for the attack originating from Al-Shayrat Airfield, using eyewitness testimony, satellite and other surveillance the U.S. is using on that region, operatives, the type of gas used, etc., etc. And then I came across this TWEET:
That Tweet brought me to some Russian news reports that needed translation that showed concrete evidence that Syria had weaponized chemical materials (WMDs) at the exact same airbase that the SU-22s flew their sorties from. I got better pictures than the above Tweet. Here IT is, and click on it to enlarge it:
The top picture is from Russian news agencies of the aftermath of the strike at Al-Shayrat Airfield… take note the chemical weapons barrels meant to store agents to be used in ordinance. The picture below that top one comes from a Russian journal about the Russian military disposing of some of their chemical weapons cache. They are identical.
MOTIVES
EVEN AFTER ALL THIS, people are still stuck on Assad’s motives? I followed the most recent question in this regard with this:
He has done it before, from torturing and mutilating his own people to dropping chlorine bombs on them, to chemical attacks past and present. What were benefits and motives in all these other attacks? The same here… he only controls a third of the country and he wants this to be over — quick.
But, motives are not the question really at stake here. If you were a doctorate holding psychologist who has had many private sessions with Assad, you would be in a position to speak to motives.
What we can answer here is that there is concrete evidence that Assad’s military were the source of this (and past… sorry conspiracy theorists) attack.
For instance I would say Hitler’s motives were a mix of strict adherence to Darwinian evolution, occultism, power, etc. But when you are a polish Catholic sent to a concentration camp — motive is not important. If he were to escape and join the resistance, his only question is “who did this to me and others.”
As if madmen have motives worth calculating. Dumb.
Another person said those photos were photoshopped:
So if I understand correctly, you were part of the battlefield damage assessment team that visited the airfield after the attack and took the photos. Really that tells me that there are barrels in the photo, that photo could be one of the Syrian facilities or something from Iraq, wherever, whenever. It tells me nothing. I have two words for you, Tonkin Gulf.
Sigh. The photo’s were from Russian news agencies, as well as there being drone footage AFTER the attack. So I responded thus (I will add some thoughts in brackets):
So if I understand correctly, Russia placed these barrels there after the bombing of the airfield, then, invited Russian news services in to photo the damage [and the evidence for chemical agents] to show evidence that disputes their earlier claim that it was a [terrorist] cache [merely hit by Assad’s air-force]. [Also undermining their response to America’s “aggression,” and bringing the whole world to the side of Trump’s response.] I will use your thinking behind this: what motivation or benefit would this serve Putin?
So Russia is planting evidence to prove Trump correct? Grind me up an Advil so I can snort it.
The U.S. Military also intercepted communications by the Assad regime planning and speaking to the required experts needed in the operation of such an attack:
The US military and intelligence community has intercepted communications featuring Syrian military and chemical experts talking about preparations for the sarin attack in Idlib last week, a senior US official tells CNN.
The intercepts were part of an immediate review of all intelligence in the hours after the attack to confirm responsibility for the use of chemical weapons in an attack in northwestern Syria, which killed at least 89 people. US officials have said that there is “no doubt” that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the attack.
The US did not know prior to the attack it was going to happen, the official emphasized. The US scoops up such a large volume of communications intercepts in areas like Syria and Iraq, the material often is not processed unless there is a particular event that requires analysts to go back and look for supporting intelligence material.
So far there are no intelligence intercepts that have been found directly confirming that Russian military or intelligence officials communicated about the attack. The official said the likelihood is the Russians are more careful in their communications to avoid being intercepted….
But “no, I will instead,” the typical conspiratorially minded person says, “listen to a guy who thinks the United States of America causes tornadoes in Oklahoma. (*Snort* WOW! That Advil goes right to your head!)
RECAP
Satellite tracking of flights and airfield;
drone footage supporting this was the airfield the chemical weapons were found, to wit;
chemical weapons found at airbase;
Used them three times prior;
the type of chemicals used hint at Assad as well;
eyewitnesses and intercepted communications (both covert and witnesses hit with the ordinance — no secondary explosions);
Russian news services broke story about chemicals on base (not the deep state);
Obama officials admit they did not rid Assad of all weapons like these;
war has been raging for 6-years, Assad is desperate to keep his power;
the chemical cache on the airbase may have been from Iraq’s arsenal and so was not declared.
All this goes a long way to supporting the case that leans to the “most likely” category that Assad’s military was behind it, like the MINIMAL CASE for the Resurrection by Habermas. Since, however, EVERYTHING is explained via these theories… you can never get a concession on a point, like the meta-narrative of the Neo-Darwinian story.
GULF OF TONKIN and MORE
As for the Gulf of Tonkin incident mentioned by the above detractor, here is a quick run down of the evidence that negates the conspiratorial views of this matter (For a more in-depth dealing with this, see the U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE’S article on it that incorporates hundreds of declassified documents):
Myth: The rationale for US intervention in Viet Nam was based on a fraud.
Fact: The Tonkin Gulf incident was not a fraud. It was the motivating force behind the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.
This myth is based on the false belief that US involvement began with the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy “false” torpedo attacks, known as the Tonkin Gulf incidents.
North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap himself admitted that torpedo patrol boats attacked the USS Maddox.
The USS Turner Joy incident is more controversial, but multiple eyewitness accounts of professional sailors, both enlisted and officers, confirm the events of that night.
The testimony of sailors involved in the Turner Joy incident confirms the presence of at least one PT boat (visually sighted), one torpedo wake (visually sighted), one searchlight (visually sighted) and one PT boat sunk (visually sighted).
The Commander of the Destroyer Task Force, Captain John J. Herrick, testified before Congress that the attack on the Turner Joy occurred.
Captain Herrick recommended the Silver Star be awarded to the Turner Joy’s commanding officer, Commander Roger C. Barnhart, Jr. (He was awarded a Bronze Star instead).
The first US combat troops were committed to Vietnam in February, 1965, about seven months after the Tonkin Gulf incident.
Again, usually this is how it works… when one conspiracy theory is proffered and then found wanting… another is used as evidence that shows the previous true. However, these conspiracy theories are also found wanting. That same person said this as well:
It still doesn’t answer the question, why would Assad use these weapons when he has said he wouldn’t, and he is winning?
(*BUZZER SOUND*) No, Assad only has control of a third of his country. This battle has been raging for 6-years… he wants a quick resolution to this. And chemical weapons may be an answer Assad thinks he needs. Two thirds of his country are controlled by rebels as well as Islamic State radicals. Winning? For a dictator like Assad?
There are soo many layers of bad thinking involved in these theories that sometimes you just have to throw your hands in the air. Like I am doing now.
Comments By Others
This comment comes via Facebook — by John S.
Ambassadors and others who have had dealings with Assad directly have found him to be a boldfaced liar. He is well known to lie to the face of an ambassador without any qualms. He is lying about this.
Do we find it hard to understand why he would use chemical weapons against Syrians? Yes, of course, but Assad has done this before. He is engaged in a war with many radical groups that seek to remove him from power or kill him and his family. He would do anything to stay alive and in power. He is trusting in the cover the Russians are providing for him. He could get away with lying to Obama, but now he learns that Trump is no pushover.
McCain is wrong to demand that we supply the rebels. Most of them are now affiliated with radical terrorists. The pressure to remove Assad also comes from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar. This bombing was not meant to destroy Assad, but to send a message that if he wants to stay in power there are certain rules and using chemical weapons is forbidden.
If Assad was smart he would seek our help in fighting ISIS and connecting the dots between ISIS and Al Qaeda. And he should disavow any desire for aggression against his neighbors. But he is also a puppet of Iran and so is pressured from two sides. Right now he is trusting in his previous support from Iran and Russia. That will be his undoing.
➤ “Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”
Again: “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it…”
Or, put another way by Twain: “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”
What I am saying is that many of the anecdotal positions I have heard taken on this issue do not stand up to the fact. And what we need is clear thinking. Like in other posts refuting Food Inc., and the many anthropogenic global warming supporters, what I am not saying is that we shouldn’t consider reducing the amount of vaccines given, or how they are bunched up. Just like I am not saying we should continue to eat sugar and corn-syrup laced foods, or that we shouldn’t be concerned for the environment. People tend to make these conversations either or. Again, what I am saying is that the facts used by many of these persons are just plain wrong.
The issue came up, in fact, in the latest CNN GOP debate:
I have noticed a pattern in this debate though.Those that are religious and have wild “New World Order” views and that like Prison Planet (Alex Jones), tend toward the view that vaccines cause all sorts of ills. Others on the left that have a distrust of Big-Money, corporations, likewise see all sorts of nefarious issues with them. (Why the left then loves Big-Government is beyond me, and treat IT as a non-corporation.) So lets begin this short trek that will surely grow over the years.
Big $$$$$
The first challenge I think is important is one I hear made against global warming skeptics, or creationists/Intelligent design persons, etc. It is the charge that “Big-Money” is powerful enough to change facts. So those that support “Al-Gorian” positions in global warming point out that because big-oil has lots of money… that this MUST influence decisions made in the general public. For instance, we can see how this type of argument backfires. In this small excerpt of a larger debate (seen here), Marc Morano responded to the Director of the Sierra Club, Michael Brune, who charged that Marc’s organization receive (cue *evil laughter*) “big-oil money.”
Brune made the point that receiving money from oil and gas was bad. Morano turned the tables not byarguing that oil and gas do not in fact give monies to these groups… instead he used the premise Brune put forward to his advantage:
✦ Implied premise by Brune: “It is bad to receive money from oil/gas”; ✦ Morano’s implied premise: “Okay, fine, if bad for ‘a,’ why not ‘b’.”
“….he’s [Brune] mentioning funding by the way which I think is funny. The Sierra Club took 26 million from natural gas and Michael has the audacity to try to imply that skeptics are fossil fuel funded.”
The same happened in conversation on the topic of vaccines. One person told me that “the billion dollar industry is attempting to discredit, and bury, things.” And, “There is also billions at stake, so buried data is the M.O.” So I invite those reading this to watch the two videos. The first video deals more factually with the main study people use to support their autism connection to vaccines. The second video gets into motivation. And one must keep in mind that in philosophy there is a fallacy that states that one’s view of truth is built into the geography of one’s birth: the genetic fallacy. But no matter if you were born in the very animistic view of nature via a Papua New Guinea birth, or a Canadian birth… Einstein’s theory of relativity is JUST AS TRUE. In other words, no matter how much money is involved, we can know the truth evidentially and not based on which side has more money.
To enforce the point one should have gotten already. If position “a” is true and “b” is false because of the “Big-Health Inc.” behind it, then I will use the same argument to say that the biggest donor block to Democrats, injury lawyers (after unions, teacher unions to be specific), who have a vested interest in supporting the “counter-vaccine” position and have pumped “Big-Money” into this view — ergo makes my position true/correct.
One can hopefully see the futility of weighing one’s argument on this approach.
In another conversation I gave an example of how people first attributed Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) to vaccines. But later it was found to be trauma, either through accidental means or abuse. The anecdotal position gave way to the evidential one.
The person I was talking to thought I meant something else and tried to correct me:
Not shaking baby syndrome, SIDS may be linked to vaccines because they are, and are you absolutely certain vaccines don’t harm, and everything is just myths? If so, how? How are you certain the peer review on vaccines are not compromised?
I responded that “No, I didn’t mean SIDS, I meant shaking baby syndrome.” However, i followed that with, “But okay, lets deal with SIDS.”
SIDS as been studied well since the 80’s. There have been control groups, and babies without vaccinations as opposed to those with vaccinations shows no difference in SIDS. In one of the largest studies babies who were vaccinated fared better in the SIDS arena.
Note as well that babies of black families are twice as likely and to die of SIDS — Native-American infants are about three times more likely than Caucasian infants. So there is something else going on. Incorporating the above ethnic disparities with the rate of vaccines being “up-to-date,” we already see an issue of where evidence doesn’t meet the claim:
✦ …the percent of kindergarten students at 24 months of age with the 4:3:1 vaccine series was 76.6+4.2% among white children, 75.0+2.4% among Hispanic children, 72.0+8.4% among African American children, and 81.8+6.5% among Asian children.
So SIDS should be highest in the Asian communities, next in the white, etc., ~ you get the point. It is interesting to note as well that SIDS is at an all-time low:
As a result of efforts by the Institute and other organizations, the sudden infant death rate is at an all-time low. However there are still about 4,000 sleep-related infant deaths that occur each year in the US. (SIDS.org).
But how is this possible? America is at an all-time high in vaccinations? You can see how the anecdotal “illogic” starts to fall apart.
As with other issues in our political and religious realms [and the conspiracies/sloppy thinking that accompany both — from the New World Order to the above example of SIDS], many claims are not self-challenged by the people that hold them.
Rate of Vaccinations
Autism is on the rise… or, is being diagnosed more as we refine our ability to detect it. And I was — in conversation — given a link to a columnist I like who has a large database of articles supporting to one extent or another the position that vaccines are harmful. One article I thought was promising to challenge my point of view was an article entitle, “Where are the Autistic Amish?“
What a great study [I though to myself] that is truly a “double-blind” isolated population. However, I was soon wagging my head that a journalist I like left behind her critical skills in self-challenging her position. Whereas a schlub like myself can critique a story like this.
First, some background.
Like in the videos talking about this supposed link, Olmsted’s anecdotal evidence is cited ad nauseum as evidence that thimerosal causes autism. Thimerosal is a form of mercury, and almost always in anti-vaccine sites (like the two examples to the right). However, thimerosal is not mercury as you know it. Which is important. Before 2001, some vaccines contained thimerosal, a preservative made with ethyl mercury. But ethyl mercury, which is safe, is very different from methyl mercury, which is toxic.
The difference is important, says obstetrician-gynecologist Jennifer Gunter, author of The Preemie Primer. Consider, she says, the huge difference between ethyl alcohol, which is drinking alcohol found in wine and beer, and methyl alcohol, also called wood alcohol, which can cause blindness. (USA Today)
Again, this safe product is not in vaccines any longer, except for, multi-dose flu shots. So when I get my flu shot, I make sure that I am getting a single-dose version that will not have this safe preservative that is not mercury. But autism is still on the rise, to wit,
…Olmsted’s anecdotal evidence is cited ad nauseum as evidence that thimerosal causes autism. The case rests on twin assumptions: that the Amish don’t vaccinate, and that they don’t have autism. But Olmsted never visited the cryptically-named Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, where doctors treat dozens of children who exhibit autistic behavior. It’s not even necessary to visit the clinic. A simple phone call to a staff physician, such as the one I made recently, is enough to debunk “the Amish anomaly”, as Olmsted calls it.
“The idea that the Amish do not vaccinate their children is untrue,” says Dr. Kevin Strauss, MD, a pediatrician at the CSC. “We run a weekly vaccination clinic and it’s very busy.” He says Amish vaccinations rates are lower than the general population’s, but younger Amish are more likely to be vaccinated than older generations.
Strauss also sees plenty of Amish children showing symptoms of autism. “Autism isn’t a diagnosis – it’s a description of behavior. We see autistic behaviors along with seizure disorders or mental retardation or a genetic disorder, where the autism is part of a more complicated clinical spectrum.” Fragile X syndrome and Rett Syndrome is also common among the clinic’s patients.
Strauss, along with Dr. D. Holmes Morton, MD, authored a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine which described a mysterious seizure disorder that resulted in mental retardation and autistic behavior in nine Amish children. The study was published one year after Olmsted’s mythic voyage, so it would seem a story correction would be in order.
In an email exchange with AutismNewsBeat, Olmsted said he made several attempts to contact Dr. Morton, but Olmsted would not say if those attempts were made before or after his Age of Autism stories ran. Strauss said Olmsted never visited the clinic, and added “I don’t think he spent much time in Lancaster County.”
Strauss said the clinic treats “syndromic autism”, where autism as part of a more complicated clinical spectrum that can include mental retardation, chromosomal abnormalities, unusual facial features, and short stature, as well as Fragile X syndrome. “We see quite a few Amish children with Fragile X,” he said….
Again, we see that the anecdotal evidence does not stand under even a minimal checking of the facts. Let us continue to dig into some other evidences that undermine the mercury connection.
Japan
In an article entitled “Autism rises despite MMR ban in Japan,” we find that countries that have completely removed the “mercury” from its vaccines, as well as offer much less mandatory vaccines to boot.
For instance, The United States requires infants to receive 26 vaccines, whereas Sweden and Japan administer 12 vaccines to infants, the least amount (Mercola). Yet, autism is on the rise in these least vaccinated countries. Continuing with Japan:
In the New Scientist article where the above graphic is from, the author ends with this:
…They found the cases continued to multiply after the vaccine withdrawal, ranging from 48 to 86 cases per 10,000 children before withdrawal to 97 to 161 per 10,000 afterwards. The same pattern was seen with a particular form of autism in which children appear to develop normally and then suddenly regress – the form linked to MMR by Wakefield.
The study cannot rule out the possibility that MMR triggers autism in a tiny number of children, as some claim, but it does show there is no large-scale effect. The vaccine “cannot have caused autism in the many children with autism spectrum disorders in Japan who were born and grew up in the era when MMR was not available”, Honda concludes.
So if the vaccine is not responsible for the rising rates of autism, what is? “Clearly some environmental factors are causing the increases,” says Irva Hertz-Picciotto of the University of California at Davis, US. Other experts disagree, saying the apparent rise could be the result of changing diagnostic criteria and the rising profile of the disorder (New Scientist print edition, 17 February 2001).
The end is important, because Sharyl Attkisson links to another article by Dr. Frank DeStefano, Director of the CDC Immunization Safety Office, saying,
…But he acknowledged the prospect that vaccines might rarely trigger autism.
“I guess, that, that is a possibility,” said DeStefano. “It’s hard to predict who those children might be, but certainly, individual cases can be studied to look at those possibilities.”
This is what science is… leaving open possibilities. However, we KNOW “mercury” [thimerosal] is not connected. But all the variables involved with vaccinations leaves open the possibility of future evidence. This same scientific approach is not in the eco-fascist response to anthropogenic global warming skeptics. Scientism is in the later example. Science ~ proper ~ is in the possibility left open in cause-effects of vaccines.
In another exchange, I was challenged with the Vaccine Court awarding settlements to people as an evidence of the issue herein discussed.
Vaccine Court
Here is the challenge:
a) In accordance with section 312(b) of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, title III of Pub.L. 99–660, 100 Stat. 3779 (42 U.S.C. 300aa–1 note) and section 2114(c) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 300aa–14(c)), the following is a table of vaccines, the injuries, disabilities, illnesses, conditions, and deaths resulting from the administration of such vaccines, and the time period in which the first symptom or manifestation of onset or of the significant aggravation of such injuries, disabilities, illnesses, conditions, and deaths is to occur after vaccine administration for purposes of receiving compensation under the Program.
As of December 1, 2011, the program had awarded $2.35 billion in 2,810 separate claims, including compensation for 390 deaths.
Firstly, there is flawed logic to this, and I will explain with a recent case.
Freddie Gray was taken into custody and died a week after his arrest, in jail. People blame the officers and six of them have been charged and the court proceeding are a long way off. However, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s decided to pay Freddie Gray’s family a $6.4 million civil settlement even before the officers were found guilty/innocent in the legal proceedings, which again, are a long way off.
So payment has no correlation to guilt, or innocence. Likewise paying off someone in the Vaccine Court doesn’t necessarily correlate to proving that vaccines cause particular illnesses.
I respond:
But autism, and “heavy metal” “poisoning” are myths. And awarding money the cases must first go to the Vaccine Court. Which uses a much lower standard of evidence Daubert standard for scientific testimony and evidence (Judge is gatekeeper; Relevance and reliability; Scientific knowledge = scientific method/methodology; Factors relevant; Testimony by Experts). And so, many people are awarded that shouldn’t have been.
For instance. At first, shaking baby syndrome was blamed on vaccines, now however, it is known that head trauma is involved. And out of all the vaccine related claims only 3% of those are found to be connected ~ loosely. And of those far less than 1% are serious illness resulting from them. Often times these injuries are from bacteria in the vaccine (in other words, they were not prepared and/or kept hygienic).
The 5,000 cases of parents saying vaccines caused their child’s autism lost their case because there is no evidence to support them.
Concluding Thoughts
So with these few examples I have encountered, we see that there is A LOT of bad thinking surrounding the issue. And it is by-and-large by well-meaning persons who are looking for behavior in their children they rightly or wrongly attribute to vaccinations. Us not being able to explain things is a digging issue for the human race. We think we can find answers — immediately — to issues that perplex us. But sometimes we need calmer heads in the matter… like Dr. Carson in the video near the beginning of the post.
Issues Etc. radio show interviews Dr. Kenneth Samples — of Reason to Believe — about the proclivity of Christians to believe in conspiracy theories. He explains and gives a model on how the Christian can test these theories.
Post-Script
In a continuing conversation I was challenged with this:
Find a great deal of unvaccinated autistic children yet? Or still searching? Yea, me too. smile emoticon
So I provided one example to get this person to think critically:
In the United Kingdom, researchers evaluated 498 autistic children born from 1979 through 1992 who were identified by computerized health records from 8 health districts [5]. Although a trend toward increasing autism diagnoses by year of birth was confirmed, no change in the rates of autism diagnoses after the 1987 introduction of MMR vaccine was observed. Further, MMR vaccination rates of autistic children were similar to those of the entire study population. Also, investigators did not observe a clustering of autism diagnoses relative to the time that children received MMR vaccine, nor did they observe a difference in age at autism diagnosis between those vaccinated and not vaccinated or between those vaccinated before or after 18 months of age. These authors also found no differences in autism rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated children when they extended their analysis to include a longer time after MMR exposure or a second dose of MMR.
I got a response. And mind you… this is from a person who is a believer and deals with the confounded logic of atheists and evolutionists. And so here is his response. And his response was merely a cut-n-paste:
Vaccinated boys were 155% more likely to have a neurological disorder (RR 2.55)
Vaccinated boys were 224% more likely to have ADHD (RR 3.24)
Vaccinated boys were 61% more likely to have autism (RR 1.61)
I merely mentioned that this was a s-u-r-v-e-y… by phone. There were not control groups, much of a criteria to test the claims made by these persons called, etc. Here is a bit more:
…Generation Rescue has finally released its long-promised “study” comparing vaccinated versus non-vaccinated children. Not surprisingly, the same day, Dan “Quixote” Olmsted, who’s never met a scientific windmill that he didn’t like to tilt at when it comes to pseudoscientific claims that vaccines or thimerosal in vaccines cause autism and certainly never met a dubious claim that he wouldn’t trumpet as science “proving” a link between vaccines and autism, popped up like the good lapdog he is with a story trumpeting the release of GR’s “study.”
Not surprisingly, given the source, the “study” turns out to be totally underwhelming, nothing more than a phone poll really. (Amusingly, David Kirby has said that he doesn’t consider phone surveys to be “data.”) Even so, expect to see it trumpeted all over antivaccination websites and blogs as “proof” that vaccines cause autism or, at the very least, as “evidence” that compels a study. It might be, if it weren’t so poorly designed and analyzed and if it actually showed what GR claims that it shows…
I linked to an article with this comment: That was a phone-call survey Dan. Here is a more reliable study noted in this science blog:
…Of late, the anti-vaccine movement has hit upon a new strategy. Specifically, they are demanding what they like to call a “vaxed versus unvaxed” study. Basically, their claim is that unvaccinated children are so much healthier than vaccinated children, and they think that such a study would prove it. Of course, they only hit on this message after making some rather embarrassing missteps. In particular, they didn’t seem to realize that a randomized, double blind study of vaccination according to the currently recommended schedule versus unvaccinated children was totally unethical. So, they figured out another angle. They acknowledge that a randomized trial of unvaccinated versus vaccinated children would not be feasible (although they appear not to be able to admit just how unethical it would be), and blithely suggest instead an epidemiological study of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated without realizing just how horrendously difficult it would be to overcome the confounders that would plague such a study or that ethical considerations still require sound scientific justification for such a study. That’s why it’s so cute to see anti-vaccine loons trying to justify such a study.
All of which is why it’s pretty amusing that just such a study was recently reported in Germany. Can you guess what it found? Let’s just say that, to those of us who accept the science showing that vaccines do not cause autism, autoimmune diseases, asthma, and the like, the results were utterly unsurprising:
In their study, the authors compare the occurrence of infections and allergies in vaccinated and unvaccinated children and adolescents. These include bronchitis, eczema, colds, and gastrointestinal infections.
The evaluation showed that unvaccinated children and adolescents differ from their vaccinated peers merely in terms of the frequency of vaccine preventable diseases. These include pertussis, mumps, or measles. As expected, the risk of contracting these diseases is substantially lower in vaccinated children and adolescents.
Surprise, surprise! Unvaccinated kids differ from vaccinated kids only in having a much higher risk of vaccine-preventable disease! Who’da thunk it? But, as is my wont, I need to see the actual study, rather than a news report…
Here is a great comment from my YouTube via Frodojack:
Sad to see the high number of psychos posting here who actually agree with Trump. Well I have news that tops Rafael Cruz taking part in the JFK assassination. Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, secretly help run the Third Reich for Hitler. Trump’s great-great grandfather helped John Wilkes Booth kill President Lincoln. Trump’s ancestor Pontius Pilate Trump helped crucify Jesus. I know it’s true because I read it in the National Enquirer.
Video Description from my YouTube:
Just when you thought he was headed in the right direction… one interview sinks that thought. I almost wonder if he is in the early stages of Alzheimers? At any rate, he comes across here as (a) petty, (b) cheap, (c) bat-shit-crazy, (d) unhinged, (e) confused… I could go on… but really. You can see Mike Pence take deep breaths when he is thinking – WTF?
Remember. I am FURIOUS at the Democrats for being so bad that I have to vote for this guy. And I am very disappointed that the Republicans nominated such a jackass. It boggles the mind!
The videos worth watching that I used for the video are as follows:
Something Cruz said in the “townhall” with his delegation. He said… could you imagine our nominee being in this type of format being asked questions?” That got me thinking of when Medea Benjamin (the head of Code Pink) tried to crash a Cruz event. He gave her the mic and went back and forth with her (like a boss!). Likewise, could you imagine the GOP nominee doing the same?
I posted this on Paul Watson’s YouTube… he seems to be living in two worlds and responding to them in a disjointed manner. While I can post his stuff and mean it… he has to caveat everything because of the organization he is with:
Great stuff, and even posting on my site… but for many years I was into the NWO [conspiratorial view of history] — you can see a small sampling of my reading on this below… While you are really one of the only guys at Info Wars I will post on my site, Info Wars, Prison Planet, Alex Jones, and others and other organizations like them do not like America either.
They would say the Jacobins and Freemasons from France (the Illuminati) infiltrated the founding of our country. The major wars like WWI, WWII, Vietnam, and the like were fought for conspiratorial means, even noting this is how opportunists during the battles of Napoleon became rich in the stock market which eventually influenced the big families here in the states, thus, influencing much of our politics by this “secret cabal.” That 9/11 was an inside job, pushing stuff like FEMA Camps… the list goes on.
The idea that you can comment well on “American history” and patriotism is a bit confusing to me.
Here is one reply to the dumb libs on Twitter I enjoyed:
I changed my view on the matter after my “tri-fecta,” so-to-speak. What happened was (1) Y2K, (2) I started listening to and being challenged by Michael Medved’s “Conspiracy Show,” which lead me to try and (3) follow AND confirm the many references to historical positions made in these books, which failed miserably. These are all scanned onto my computer via my scanner… (mentioned merely for authenticity purposes… conspiracy people need this type of reassurance).
In a recent exchange, a believer in chemtrails posted the above photo and sarcastically asked if these pilots were drunk. Actually [I thought to myself] they looked like military maneuvers via fighter jets… so I got to looking. I eventually found out where this person got it from, Geoengineering Watch:
(click to enlarge)
(BTW, just about every photo on that page does not support their premise!)
So I did about 45-minutes of looking and eventually found the source of the photo (thanks to a feature in BING). It is a Chinese media internet channel (see original post here, be sure to have google translate the page if you are still a skeptic). Bingo… military.
“It’s actually from a 2007 photo of contrails left during an exercise of the Chinese air force practicing high altitude dogfights between F-10 and SU-27 fighters”
Yep. Geoengineering Watch caught knowingly lying and misleading people again:
METABUNK is supposedly owned by the evil, nefarious government set to control us through ice-crystals.[/sarcasm]
THIS IS THE MAIN POINT (humor aside) to remember when someone is backed in a corner and they say this type of thing… say, “okay, let us assume you are right… how does that information of a government owned entity negate these counter points and seeing the phenomenon happening since the dawn of flight?“
In-other-words, if the government, or Sasquatch owned the website (which neither do) , that would not impact at all the point made.
The person who posted the original photo keeps telling me to look up in the sky and see for myself… take note I have pointed out this phenomenon has happened all the time, and that all the below picture ARE someone looking up! To wit, here are a couple other pics I thought were very interesting due to their historical connection to WWII. Here is the info on this first picture (via WIKI):
Fighter plane contrails mark the sky over Task Force 58, during the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” phase of the battle, 19 June 1944. Photographed from on board USS Birmingham (CL-62). (Battle of the Philippine Sea, June 1944)
Here is the second historical shot described (I found this one at The Atlantic):
The condensation trails from German and British fighter planes engaged in an aerial battle appear in the sky over Kent, along the southeastern coast of England, on September 3, 1940
This third one is a Life Magazine shot (many more Life Mag pics can be found here at Contrail Science):
1944 – Allied aircraft vapor trails in skies above (prob.) farmhouse in the Ardennes Forest during last days of the Battle of the Bulge, the final major German offensive of WWII.
I wish to note here that I was told by the same person that sent me these links that I should use discernment in choosing Trump over Cruz… because Cruz is not a nice guy. And true Christians should always be nice apparently… even in their “office” as Senators (here is a bit of that convo here). Anyhew, I merely responded to these latest linked articles that people like he support Trump… and that is all the “discernment I need.”
Snopes squashed that original report from the whacked site InfoWars when they pointed out that,
…the WMR’s [the second linked article in my bullet points] author doesn’t explain how he could possibly know that the unidentified person standing near Lee Harvey Oswald in these photographs was actually a Cuban (other than by assuming he’s Rafael Cruz), nor does he identify the “source” who informed him that the “individual to Oswald’s left is none other than Rafael Cruz.” (By the standards of “evidence” used in typical WMR items, someone’s saying, “Hey, the dude in that blurry Oswald photo looks kinda like Ted Cruz’s dad” counts as a “source.”)…
NOT TO MENTION that Rafael Cruz did not live in New Orleans until 1965 — two-years after the photo of him and Oswald in “Nwawlins.” PolitiFactadds to this whirlwind of “evidence”
…Two photo experts the tabloid hired — Mitch Goldstone of ScanMyPhotos, a digitizing photo service, and Carole Lieberman, a forensic expert witness — said another man in the image appears to be young Rafael Cruz, according to McClatchy.
We could not independently verify these experts’ validation, as neither Goldstone nor Lieberman got back to us.
When we reached out to Kairos, a Miami-based facial recognition software company, Chief Technology Officer Cole Calistra was skeptical about claims of a positive identification. Calistra told PolitiFact that the photos are too grainy “to perform a proper match one way or the other.”
James Wayman, the former director of U.S. National Biometric Test Center in the Clinton administration, said proper analysis requires two full-frontal facial images.
“Without such images, no professional face examiner will be willing to render an opinion,” he said.
That being said, we had freelance programmer Lucien Gendrot test it out using Kairos’ face recognition API. The software could not verify a match between photos of the unidentifiedman next to Oswald and youngRafael Cruz, even at a low threshold of a 25 percent match.
In short, as Snopes wrote in an April 2016 analysis of a similar claim, the low-resolution photos are essentially “of dark-haired young men with similar haircuts.” That’s speculation, not evidence.
One commentator at Free Republic humorously finishes his serious point:
“This is really the idiot the GOP is going to go with against Hillary? At least he’ll release the files about the moon landing hoax.”
What are some of the facts known? (I cannot believe I have to do this!):
In known pictures of Rafael from the time, the era are vastly different between the two men (MetaBunk);
Rafael is almost an entire head taller than the man in the picture (Secrets of a Homicide);
The two “experts” that identified Rafael for the Inquirer are not returning calls to the press (PolitiFact);
Rafael Cruz said he was not in New Orleans until 1965, the photo touted as Rafael were take in 1963 (Heavy).
I am after another piece of evidence that will surely come sooner-or-later… and it is the connection to the CIA:
For one thing, Rafael’s draft card from July 26, 1967 lists his employer as “Geophysics & Computer Service Inc.,” a French-based firm connected to both Schlumberger and Zapata Offshore Company, the former having a since-declassified relationship with the CIA and the latter once run by George H.W. Bush. (InfoWars)
My experience is that if you wait a bit… those more industrious than I uncover embarrassing facts for the conspiracy believers. More to come, surely.
Debunked: German Aeronautics Engineer “I Installed Chemtrail Devices” Whistleblower
Someone linked a story to a conspiracy article about chem-trails being proven by an unnamed “aerospace” engineer that was fired from an unnamed business at an “open mic” event. Yes, like an “open-mic session” at some hipster douche coffee joint… but on a sidewalk or park. It is almost like “no-proof” is proof… like atheists say nothing is something.
Here is the post:
(The article mentioned originally is linked in the above pic.)
In an excellent article, the whistle-blower is debunked by MetaBunk:
On May 12th, 2014, at a German Peace Demonstration in Dresden, a person who claimed to be a former aerospace engineer (later identified as “Jens”) gave a brief talk, claiming to have have installed “chemtrail” spray equipment on planes. But his story fell apart after he presented his “evidence”. The plane he claims to have worked on in 2008 was an 2003 icing test plane, retired in 2005.
You see there! MORE proof this conspiracy is real… er… unless that is… you do just a bit of research.
Just a bit.
CANISTERS IN A JET
In each new jet model, prototype are made for various tests. At MetaBunk, you can find MANY pictures of these preceded with this explanation:
There are several photos that crop up on a daily basis on Facebook chemtrail groups with descriptions like “Chemtrail Plane Interior”. These are almost all photos of pre-production test aircraft which are fitted with ballast barrels, although there are a few that are interiors of firefighting planes. I’ll try to make this post be a comprehensive explanation of all the photos. Let me know if I miss any. And if you see some chemtrail promoters using this photos in error, then please let them know.
Ballast barrels are just big barrels of water that are used to simulate passengers when testing various configurations of weight and balance on the aircraft during test flights. The barrels are sometimes isolated, and sometimes connected with tubes, so water can be pumped around in flight to simulate passenger movements….
One of the reasons I love doing posts like this is that I learn a lot about both the lows of human reasoning can reach as well as all the neat science/engineering stuff your learn. Here is the video:
/p>
Awesome.
Here is a photo during a tour of one of these 787-8 Dreamliner test jets (if you right click and open in other tab you will see the full rez of the photo):
How fun. BTW, the comments section of the MetaBunk post on this is very informative as well.
PATENTS AS PROOF
After pointing a couple of these things out to the person posting the original conspiracy article that is easily disproved by a ninth-grader (well, when my boys were freshman at least), I immediately got the cut-n-paste of all the “patents” via the geoengineeringwatch.org’s conspiracy site started coming in. Here is one on the list commented on:
Patent 5003186
Here is the commentary:
The ‘Welsbach’ patent is well known, old (it’s patent has expired), and more importantly, there’s no evidence that it has ever been fitted, let alone used. But what if it had been used, it’s just a delivery system for a form of SRM. Geoengineering, if it ever happens, will be taking place in the stratosphere, and would not look like contrails, you sure as hell wouldn’t be able to see the aircraft, if they went that way. Balloons or rockets are as likely, as there are few planes that could fly to the required altitude.
Here is a great video debunking the claims made by geoengineeringwatch.org:
Here is another video dealing with some false claims made by Dane Wigington, lead researcher at geoengineeringwatch.org, on the same patent:
Leap of Logic
So the simple question becomes: since when does the existence of a patent mean anyone is doing anything with it? Its a jump in logic that does not prove a thing. Not only that, but even the success rates of patents getting to the end (being made and successfully implemented. is very-very low. For instance, here is one YouTuber making some common sense points MetaBunk makes in their article on the matter as well, “Debunked: Patents. As Evidence of Chemtrails, Geoengineering, Existence, Operability, or Intent“
Patent 1338343
The second patent used in the supplied — tired — list (normally the first) is this one: 1338343– August 14, 1990 – Process and Apparatus for the production of intense artificial Fog. Here are comments on it:
Since no explanation was given on the purpose of the first patent on the list, I thought I would try to figure out what it was about. The US patent doesn’t mention the intended use for the invention. My first thought was that maybe it was for special effects in the movie industry. But, I looked at the corresponding UK patent, and it mentions that it’s for military use.
[….]
Makes sense. The patent was filed during the middle of WWI. And, titanium tetrachloride, the chemical used in the patent, is included in a list of chemicals used for making military smoke screens
You can see it in action in this joint Korea/U.S. amphibious beach landing to surely ruffle the gulag cult to the north:
Misc. Others
After another very long cut-n-paste by a person in a forum similar to the one I am dealing with, we have this zinger:
… if you can tell us WHY each of those patents is relevant, it would be a help.
For example. patent 3899144 1975 Powder Contrail Generator.
This patent was issued for a device to be affixed to a target used in Aerial Gunnery Target Practice. The target is towed behind an aircraft and the Powder Contrail Generator leaves a trail of white particles behind it so the Gun Crew can see their target.
It uses 1.5 kilos of powder.
What does this have to do with “chemtrails”?
Also, please note that the issuing of a patent does not mean that the invention patented is actually in use otherwise we would be born by centrifugal force
You can’t just post up a list of patents and say “These prove chemtrails!” You should explain WHT you think these prove chemtrails
For example, from the list you posted:
“6030506 – February 29, 2000 – Preparation of independently generated the highly reactive chemical species “
What does this patent have to do with alledged spraying????
Keep in mind since I have been following these stories/conspiracies, they have changed… as do all conspiracies that fail to meet the simplest evidential standards. Which is why, for example, most of the “evidence” in the first Loose Change (a “documentary” about our government or massive insurance fraud being behind 9/11) is shed for new “evidence.” As these “so-so” stories fall apart, many are getting away from the spraying of what is typically thought to be aluminium or barium. Other conspiracy nuts would site Manganese (as the video to the right exemplifies).
A great collection of discussions can be found at Contrail Science. I also have a section on my C-O-N-Debunker Page on this topic. Take note as well that amateur rain collectors report high levels of harmful chemical. However, upon review of their collecting techniques, contamination would be the rule.
HAARP
While a bit off topic… I love this exposing of lies and misinformation of some geoengineeringwatch article’s:
